About Willow Lung
Dr. Lung is Associate Professor in the Urban Studies and Planning Program at the University of Maryland, College Park. At UMD, she also serves as Director of the Small Business Anti-Displacement Network, Director of the Urban Equity Collaborative, and Director of Community Development at the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education. Her scholarship focuses on how urban and suburban policies and plans contribute to and can address social inequality, particularly in neighborhoods undergoing rapid racial and economic change.
Dr. Lung has written extensively on suburban poverty, racial segregation, immigration, residential and commercial gentrification, redevelopment politics, and neighborhood opportunity. Her latest book, The Right to Suburbia: Combating Gentrification on the Urban Edge (University of California Press, 2024) investigates how marginalized communities in the suburbs of Washington, DC—one of the most intensely gentrifying metropolitan regions in the United States—have battled the uneven costs and benefits of redevelopment. Her first book, Trespassers? Asian Americans and the Battle for Suburbia (University of California Press, 2017), takes an intimate look at the everyday life and development politics in a Silicon Valley community as it transitioned from majority-White to majority-Asian American. Dr. Lung's research has also appeared in various books and journals, such as Journal of Urban Affairs and Journal of Planning, Education and Research.
Dr. Lung is a regular contributor to Bloomberg’s CityLab. Her work has also been featured in various popular media outlets, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, National Public Radio, New Republic, and Al Jazeera. It has been supported by the Ford Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of Justice, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Kresge Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Enterprise Community Partners, Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development, and other government agencies and private foundations. She has advised the White House’s Domestic Policy Council and National Economic Council on federal policy related to tenant protections and affordability.
Dr. Lung is a nonresident fellow at the Urban Institute’s Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies program. She is also Affiliate Faculty at American University's Metropolitan Policy Center and at the University of Maryland's Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity, Department of American Studies, programs in Historic Preservation and Asian American Studies, and Maryland Population Research Center. Dr. Lung is a former Nancy Weiss Malkiel Scholar, Ford Postdoctoral Fellow, and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Fellow. She serves on boards of the Society for American City and Regional Planning Historians, Journal of the American Planning Association, and advisory committees for Poverty & Race Research Action Council and the Purple Line Corridor Coalition.
Dr. Lung holds a Ph.D. in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.C.P in Urban Studies and Planning from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a B.S in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity from Stanford University.
Areas of Expertise
suburban diversity and poverty; racial segregation; immigration; commercial gentrification; redevelopment politics; neighborhood opportunitySelected Publications
Books
Lung-Amam, Willow. 2024. The Right to Suburbia: Combating Gentrification on the Urban Edge. Oakland: University of California Press.
Lung-Amam, Willow. 2017. Trespassers?: Asian Americans and the Battle for Suburbia. Oakland: University of California Press.
Journal Articles or Book Chapters
Alvarez, Nohely, Bi’Anncha Andrews, Willow Lung-Amam. Keeping BIPOC- and Immigrant-Owned Businesses in Place: Policies to Combat Commercial Gentrification and Small Business Displacement. Journal of Planning Literature (online first). https://doi.org/10.1177/08854122251323897
Finio, Nicholas, Willow Lung-Amam, Gerrit Knaap, Casey Dawkins, and Brittany Wong. 2024. Equity, Opportunity, Community Engagement and the Regional Planning Process: Data and Mapping in Five U.S. Metropolitan Areas. Journal of Planning Research and Education 44, 1, 16-27.
Lung-Amam, Willow. 2023. The Not So New South: Asian Immigration and the Politics of School Integration in the Research Triangle. The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 9, 2: 55-74.
Lung-Amam, Willow, Nohely Alvarez, and Rodney Green. 2022. We Make Us Safe: Alternatives to Policing in a Latinx Immigrant Suburb. Journal of Urban Affairs 46, 8: 1682–1706
Lung-Amam, Willow. 2021. Surviving Suburban Redevelopment: Resisting the Displacement of Immigrant-Owned Small Businesses in Wheaton, Maryland. Journal of Urban Affairs 43, 3: 449-466.
Nicholas Finio, Willow Lung-Amam, Gerrit Knaap, Casey Dawkins, and Elijah Knaap. 2021. Metropolitan Planning in a Vacuum: Lessons on Regional Equity from Baltimore’s Sustainable Communities Initiative. Journal of Urban Affairs 43, 3: 467-485.
Lung-Amam, Willow and Casey Dawkins. 2020. The Power of Participatory Story Mapping: Advancing Equitable Development in Disadvantaged Neighborhoods. Community Development Journal 55, 3: 473-495.
Lung-Amam, Willow, Rolf Pendall, and Elijah Knaap. 2019. Mi Casa no es Su Casa: Transit-Induced Gentrification and the Fight for Equitable Development in an Inner-Ring, Immigrant Suburb. Journal of Planning Education and Research 39, 4: 442-455.
Lung-Amam, Willow and Alex Schafran. 2019. From Sanford to Ferguson: Race, Protest and Democracy in the American Suburbs. In The Routledge Companion to the Suburbs, edited by Bernadette Hanlon and Thomas Vicino, 220-229. London: Routledge.
Lung-Amam, Willow, Eli Knaap, Casey Dawkins, and Gerrit-Jan Knaap. 2018. Opportunity for Whom? The Diverse Definitions of Neighborhood Opportunity in Baltimore. City and Community 17, 3: 636-657.
Lung-Amam, Willow, Stacy Harwood, Gerardo Sandoval, and Siddhartha Sen. 2015. Teaching Equity Planning in a “Post-Racial” Multicultural World. Journal of Planning Education and Research 35, 3: 336-342.
Lung-Amam, Willow. 2013. That “Monster House” is My Home: The Social and Cultural Politics of Design Reviews and Regulations. Journal of Urban Design 18, 2: 220-241. Republished in: Nicolaides, Becky and Andrew Weise (eds). 2016. The Suburb Reader. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
Op-Eds
Lung-Amam, Willow. “Gentrification isn’t just happening in cities. It’s also happening in America’s suburbs.” Next City, September 30, 2024.
Lung-Amam, Willow and Nohely Alvarez. “To narrow the racial wealth gap, help entrepreneurs of color own property.” CityLab (Bloomberg), April 28, 2022.
Lung-Amam, Willow. “Businesses are victims of gentrification too. Small businesses were already being displaced in gentrifying neighborhoods. The pandemic made it worse.” CityLab (Bloomberg), May 19, 2021.
Lung-Amam, Willow. “Why Trump’s suburban strategy failed. Did Black and brown cities deliver democrats the election? Yes — And so did Black and brown suburbs.” CityLab (Bloomberg), November 12, 2020.
Professional Reports
June-Friesen, Katy and Lung-Amam, Willow. 2025. Introduction. In Community Ownership Strategies for Keeping Small Business in Place, edited by Reemberto Rodriguez, Katy June-Friesen, Willow Lung-Amam, and Dejuan Johnson*. College Park, MD: Small Business Anti-Displacement Network.
Nohely T. Alvarez, Andrews, Bi’Anncha, Willow Lung-Amam, and Katy June-Friesen. July 2024 (second edition). Small Business Anti-Displacement Toolkit: A Guide for Small Business Leaders. College Park, MD: Small Business Anti-Displacement.
Lung-Amam, Willow and Gerrit-Jan Knaap. 2023. Introduction. In Keeping Small Businesses in Place: Voices from the Field, edited by Reemberto Rodriguez, Willow Lung-Amam, Gerrit-Jan Knaap, Dejuan Johnson, and Katy June-Friesen. College Park, MD: Small Business Anti-Displacement Network.
Recent Courses Taught
- URSP688G: Story Mapping Neighborhood Change in Washington, DC, University of Maryland, College Park
- URSP673: Community Development, University of Maryland, College Park
- URSP688Z: Planning and Design in the Multicultural Metropolis, University of Maryland, College Park
- URSP372: Diversity in the City, University of Maryland, College Park
Associate Professor