Minkyu Park’s research interest revolves around resilient urban infrastructure. To be specific, he has the question of how the risk or vulnerability of flood can be quantified or visualized, how the failure of an infrastructure disrupts other infrastructures in urban system, and how the recovery following a flood event minimize social and economic losses in planning process. In terms of research methods, he is digging into network analysis to quantify the physical environment of urban areas.
He spent his childhood in Seoul which was dynamically transforming in 1990, and was curious about the process of change in Seoul and why people kept coming into the city. While studying urban planning in Korea, he visited Jakarta two times, he witnessed traffic being almost completely paralyzed because some roads were submerged by rainfall and the sea level rise. Through these experiences, he became eager to delve into urban resilience as a strategic concept for future cities in response to climate changes.
Minkyu Park is a current PhD student in Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Maryland College Park; alumni of the University of California, Irvine (M.A. in Urban and Regional Planning 2019) and the University of Seoul (M.S.and B.S. in Urban Planning and Design).He worked at the University of Seoul as an assistant researcher for the project of “Urban Planning Model of Green Compact City” and “Case of Seoul Land Readjustment”, and the work was focusing on analyzing the relationship between variables. Since August 2019, he has been studying and researching under Professor Marccus Hendricks.