Dr Jianxiao (Shaw) Liu

Jianxiao Liu is an urban planner and geographer whose research asks how cities are organised, how people move through them, and who urban space is designed for. He joined the University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment as a Marie Curie Fellow to lead CanisCity, a project on human–dog coexistence in cities. He works in close collaboration with Professor Debbie Hopkins and Professor Jamie Lorimer, and is based in the School’s Tech Life Lab.

Jianxiao trained in urban planning and geographic information science and received his PhD from the University of Hong Kong. His research spans three connected areas: human mobility and travel behaviour; the built environment, wellbeing and governance; and land-use and spatial planning. Often drawing on large digital and spatial datasets, his work has examined cross-boundary travel and ride-hailing, the relationship between neighbourhood environments and older adults’ mental health, and the recovery of public life after COVID-19, alongside studies of land-use change and associated ecological risk. This research, focused mainly on Hong Kong and mainland China, has appeared in journals including Cities, Applied Geography, Journal of Transport Geography, Land Use Policy and Geography and Sustainability. He also reviews for international journals in geography, urban studies and transport.

Alongside research, Jianxiao has worked on several planning projects in China, from master plans to village conservation. He has also published on planning law and institutions and contributed to a national study on spatial planning legislation. This experience underlies his interest in turning spatial evidence into regulations and designs that planners can use.

Awards and Funding

• 2026: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellowship (European Commission)
• 2025: Second-Place Best Conference Paper Award (International Conference on Urban Informatics)
• 2024: HKU Foundation First Year Excellent PhD Award (University of Hong Kong)
• 2024: Honourable Mention, China National Youth Urban Planning Paper Competition (Urban Planning Society of China)
• 2022, 2023, 2024: Talent Development Scholarship (HKSAR Government Scholarship Fund)
• 2023: Gold Award, Jin Jingchang China Urban and Rural Planning Graduate Student Paper Competition (Urban Planning Society of China)
• 2023: First Prize, Smart Cities Innovation Competition (International Society for Urban Informatics)
• 2022: Third Prize, China National Youth Urban Planning Paper Competition (Urban Planning Society of China)
• 2022: Hong Kong, China-APEC Scholarship (HKSAR Government Scholarship Fund)
• 2021: First Prize, Global Open Data Innovation Competition (Shenzhen Municipal People’s Government)
• 2021: GIS Rising Star Award (National Engineering Research Center of Geographic Information System, China)
• 2021: HKU Foundation Postgraduate Fellowship (University of Hong Kong)
• 2020: First Prize, Shenzhen Open Data Innovation Contest (Shenzhen Nanshan District People’s Government)
• 2018: National Scholarship for Graduate Students (Ministry of Education of China)

During his PhD, a series of human–dog conflicts in Chinese cities prompted widespread public debate about the place of dogs in urban life. This debate led Jianxiao to see the city not only as a stage for the human dramas of commuting and dwelling, but as a shared, often contested multispecies space. If human movement is mapped and analysed to make cities more efficient and equitable, he asked, why not extend the same lens to the mobilities and needs of the animals with whom we share such close, yet complex, lives? That question led him to more-than-human cities and to CanisCity.

Hosted at the University of Oxford, CanisCity (Canine Cityscapes: Sensing, Modelling, and Designing for More-than-Human Co-Residents) is a two-year Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions fellowship funded by the European Commission. In private life, pet dogs are often treated as members of the family, but their presence in public space is increasingly contested, and people who rely on assistance dogs still face barriers to accessing everyday places and services. The project examines how urban governance and spatial design shape human–dog conflict. It also explores what recognising dogs as urban co-residents, rather than solely as property, could mean for making cities safer and more inclusive for people and dogs alike.

Using the UK as a testbed, the project combines comparative analysis of the laws and policies governing dogs, spatial modelling of human–dog conflict and fieldwork on dogs’ everyday experience of the city. It aims to inform dog-inclusive design and policy in UK and European cities, and may also offer lessons for rapidly urbanising cities elsewhere, including in China.

• Liu, J., Cai, Z. and Miao, Y. (2026) Assessing bikeability across scales: a context-specific framework for Xiamen Island, China. Transportmetrica B: Transport Dynamics, 14(1): 2640908.
• Liu, J., Lin, Z., Chau, K.W., Shi, Y. and Yang, L. (2024) Urban resilience in face of the pandemic: Tracing changes in public events before, amid and after the fifth wave of COVID-19 in Hong Kong. Cities, 147: 104827.
• Liu, J., Chen, S., Ho, H.C., Yang, L. and Bao, Z. (2024) Associations between neighborhood compactness, perceived accessibility to urban amenities, and mental distress of older adults in a high-density city. Applied Geography, 171: 103397.
• Liu, J., Gu, H., Zhou, L., Zhang, H., Wang, L., Yu, Y. and Liu, Z. (2024) Resilience and recovery: Evaluating COVID pandemic effects on ride-hailing mobility and driver income dynamics. Journal of Transport Geography, 117: 103901.
• Liu, J., Wen, C., Liu, Z. and Yu, Y. (2024) From isolation to linkage: Holistic insights into ecological risk induced by land use change - a case study of Xiapu County, China. Land Use Policy, 140: 107116.
• Liu, J., Wang, M., Chen, P. and Chau, K.W. (2024) Riding towards a sustainable future: An evaluation of bike sharing’s environmental benefits in Xiamen Island, China. Geography and Sustainability, 5(2): 276–288.
• Liu, J., Yu, Y., Chen, P., Chen, B., Chen, L. and Chen, R. (2023) Facilitating urban tourism governance with crowdsourced big data: A framework based on Shenzhen and Jiangmen. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 124: 103509.
• Liu, J. and Shi, W. (2021) A cross-boundary travel tale: Unraveling Hong Kong residents’ mobility pattern in Shenzhen using metro smart card data. Applied Geography, 130: 102416.