Yang Zhao

Yang Zhao is a Ph.D. Candidate in the School of Architecture at the Harbin Institute of Technology. His research field is about urban fitness environment design. His current interests focus on public health intervention with the method of urban design based on environmental behavior analysis of sport route choice.

Socio-ecological models of health behavior have emphasized the importance of built environments for physical activity. Given high-density urban development and lack of urban space for sports and fitness, planning the most effective fitness path network and designing friendly urban environment for walking is critical. Therefore he aims to study fitness behavior of route preferences and selection decisions for walking in environmental interventions, determining which built environmental factors should get the priority to target in urban design for sports and health, in order to efficiently use the available urban space for fitness path planning and improve fitness environment for encouraging more walking.