Piper Gaubatz

Piper Gaubatz is a Professor of Geography at the Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a Faculty Affiliate at the Department of Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning. Her career spans urban transformation studies in China, Japan, and the U.S., with a focus on public space, globalization, and environmental history.

• Princeton University (AB in Sociology, Secondary in Architecture)
• UC Berkeley (MA and PhD in Geography)
• Postdoctoral: East-West Center (1990-91), Yale Agrarian Studies (2005-06)

Research explores four themes: urban form (political economy of space), urban change (historical continuity), urban ecology (environmental interactions), and social justice (inequality in urbanization). Current work analyzes public squares in China through GIS, fieldwork, and policy analysis.

Grants include Fulbright, National Academy of Sciences, Henry Luce Foundation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Recent publications focus on urban sustainability (2020), public squares (2019), and regional inequality (2017).

• Advises PhD students like Sainan Lin
• Editorial roles: Cities, Urban Morphology, Eurasian Geography
• Field research in 18 cities across China, Japan, and the U.S.