Tan Yigitcanlar

Tan Yigitcanlar is an eminent Australian researcher with international recognition and impact in the field of urban studies and planning. He is a Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at the School of Architecture and Built Environment, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. Along with this post, he carries out an Honorary Professor role at the School of Technology, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianopolis, Brazil, and the Founding Director position of the Australia-Brazil Smart City Research and Practice Network.

He has been responsible for research, teaching, training, and capacity building programs on the fields of urban studies and planning in esteemed Australian, Brazilian, Finnish, Japanese, and Turkish universities. His research aims to address contemporary urban planning and development challenges—that are economic, societal, spatial, governance or technology related in nature. The main foci of his research interests, within the broad field of urban studies and planning, are clustered around the following three interdisciplinary themes:

 Smart Technologies, Communities, Cities and Urbanism—e.g., examining the disruptive externalities and beneficial impacts of urban technologies and digital transformation of urban services and infrastructures on our cities and societies.
 Sustainable and Resilient Cities, Communities and Urban Ecosystems—e.g., exploring the urban and environmental dynamics and challenges to determine strategies for planning and designing sustainable, resilient, responsive, healthy and liveable natural and built urban environments.
 Knowledge-Based Development of Cities and Innovation Districts—e.g., scrutinising the impacts of global knowledge and innovation economy on our cities and societies, and developing strategies for space and place making for knowledge-based activities in cities.

He has been providing research consultancy services to all tier governments (i.e., federal, state, local)—along with for international corporations, and non-governmental organisations—in Australia and overseas. These services helped government and industry form their key strategies, become more resilient, and better prepared for the emerging disruptive conditions. He has received over $4 million funding from research consultancy projects and national competitive grant programs.

He is the lead Editor-in-Chief of ‘Elsevier’s Smart Cities Book Series’, and carries out senior editorial positions in the following 14 high-impact journals: ‘Land Use Policy’, ‘Sustainable Cities and Society’, ‘Cities’, ‘Journal of Knowledge Management’, ‘Journal of Urban Technology’, ‘Knowledge Management Research and Practice’, ‘Sustainability’, ‘Global Journal of Environmental Science and Management’, ‘Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity’, ‘Asia Pacific Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship’, ‘Measuring Business Excellence’, ‘Urban Science’, ‘International Journal of Information Management’, and ‘International Journal of Knowledge-Based Development’.

He undertook the Chairman role of the annual ‘Knowledge Cities World Summit’ series between 2007 and 2019. Under this brand, he organised 12 international conferences in the following locations: Monterrey (Mexico); Shenzhen (China); Melbourne (Australia); Bento Gonçalves (Brazil); Matera (Italy); Istanbul (Turkey); Tallinn (Estonia); Daegu (Korea); Vienna (Austria); Arequipa (Peru); Tenerife (Spain); and Florianopolis (Brazil). He also contributed to the organisation of other over two-dozen international conferences in various capacities. He has also delivered over 60 keynote and invited talks at the prestigious international academic conferences and national industry events.

He has disseminated his research findings extensively including about 250 articles published in high-impact journals, and the following 19 key reference books published by the esteemed international publishing houses: ‘Companion of Creativity and the Built Environments’ (Routledge, 2023); ‘State of the Art and Future Perspectives in Smart and Sustainable Urban Development’ (MDPI, 2022); ‘Urban Analytics with Social Media Data’ (Chapman and Hall/CRC, 2022); ‘Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence’ (Springer, 2022); ‘Reviews and Perspectives on Smart and Sustainable Metropolitan and Regional Cities’ (MDPI, 2021); ‘Smart Cities and Innovative Urban Technologies’ (Routledge, 2021); ‘Approaches, Advances, and Applications in the Sustainable Development of Smart Cities’ (MDPI, 2020); ‘Geographies of Disruption’ (Springer, 2019); ‘Planning, Development and Management of Sustainable Cities’ (MDPI, 2019); ‘Urban Knowledge and Innovation Spaces’ (Routledge, 2018); ‘Technology and the City’ (Routledge, 2016); ‘Knowledge and the City’ (Routledge, 2014); ‘Sustainable Urban Water Environment’ (Edward Elgar, 2014); ‘Building Prosperous Knowledge Cites’ (Edward Elgar, 2012); ‘Knowledge-Based Development for Cities and Societies’ (IGI Global, 2010); ‘Sustainable Urban and Regional Infrastructure Development’ (IGI Global, 2010); ‘Rethinking Sustainable Development’ (IGI Global, 2010); ‘Knowledge-Based Urban Development’ (IGI Global, 2008); ‘Creative Urban Regions’ (IGI Global, 2008).

His research outputs have been widely cited and influenced urban policy, practice, and research internationally. As of March 2022, his research was cited over 14,000 times, resulting in an h-index of 70 (Google Scholar). According to the 2020 Science-wide Author Databases of Standardised Citation Indicators, amongst the urban and regional planning scholars, he is ranked as #1 highly cited researcher in Australia, and #7 highly cited researcher worldwide. For this achievement, he was recognised as an ‘Australian Research Superstar’ in the Social Sciences Category at The Australian’s 2020 Research Special Report.