Qing Yuan Guo

Qing works on local government strategies. His research examines how English local governments pursue housing growth, with a focus on the executive perspective. Drawing on field research in London boroughs, he studies how councils de risk property investment through planning policy and development management, run council led housing programmes, coordinate local infrastructure, and sustain policy momentum over time.

A second strand of his work concerns the centre of government and its role in post disaster recovery. Through a collaborative study of Rio Grande do Sul's response to the 2024 flood, he examines how governments design and implement large portfolios of projects to address territory wide challenges and build climate resilience. He previously worked as a consultant, advising on transport and sustainability policy, government land and regeneration, agriculture and rural policy, and metropolitan cooperation.

All of Qing's inquiries rest on a pragmatist commitment: academic social inquiry needs to be grounded both in social scientific understanding that explains how collective social endeavours work, and in making knowledge production useful for social actors to instrumentalise in pursuing definite problem solving in line with wider public goods. On this line, Qing draws on Michael Barzelay's approach of recovering design in case studies, Herbert Simon's science of the artificial, and the pragmatist approach to planning practice.

Qing received an Early Career Research Grant from the Royal Town Planning Institute. He served as Chair of the Young Academics Network of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) and as a member of the AESOP Executive Committee in 2025 to 2026.

Research Interest

• Local Government Housing Growth Strategies
• Centre of Government and Portfolio Management for Climate Resilience
• Public Management and Policy
• Pragmatist Planning Theory and Practice

Selected Publications

• Guo, Q. (2023), ‘Bridging psychoanalysis and space: a synthesis of Jacques Lacan’s three registers theory and Henri Lefebvre’s three-dimensional dialectics of space’, in Huo, D. and Gu, J. (eds.), Psychoanalysis Studies, vol.9, Shanghai: The Commercial Press.
• Xin, S., Guo, Q. and Zhong, S. (2021), ‘Rural revitalisation strategy for Suzhou: towards social innovation-driven neo-endogenous development’, in Y. Xu and Kim, J.S. (eds.), Future Suzhou, pp.136-145. Beijing: China Architecture & Buildings Press.
• [minor revision] Xin, S., and Guo, Q. ‘Balancing Structure and Adaptability in Rural Planning: Insights from the English planning system’, Urban Planning International.
• [under review] Guo, Q. ‘Normative behaviour and conformality: evidence based on English local authority planners’, Transactions of the Association of European Schools of Planning.
• [under review] Xin, S., and Guo, Q. ‘Beyond Distribution: "Community Life- circle" and Relocatees’ Lifeworld Rebuilding. Case study in Shanghai, China’, Local Environment.

Conferences

• Guo, Q. (2024). "Toward a Practitioners' Experience-Centered Agenda in Planning Theory?", accept by Association of European Schools of Planning 2024 congress, GAME CHANGER? Planning for just and sustainable urban regions, 8-12 July.
• Guo, Q. (2024). "Why do practitioners find theory not useful?", accept by Association of European Schools of Planning young academics conference, Bridging Gaps: Urban Planning for Coexistence, 19-22 March.
• Guo, Q. (2023). "The crisis of the planning profession: a theoretical response", presented on UK-Ireland Planning Conference 2023, Planning on a Crisis Footing, 4-6 September.

Expertise

Local government strategy, property policies, town and country planning, public administration, program management and implementation, climate resilience policies (infrastructure)