Education, healthcare, social security and housing are the four pillars of the welfare state. In China, the equalisation and optimisation of social infrastructure across regions, cities and urban neighbourhoods, has become the next foremost task in tackling the problems of inequalities and uneven development that have accompanied the decades of rapid growth in the post-reform era.

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The SIEW lab brings together multi-disciplinary researchers from Europe, US, Australia, Japan, and China. Their shared interest is in probing the long-lasting and deep-seated problems of growth and inequality in three major types of urban social infrastructure, namely housing, healthcare, and education, with an ultimate interest in improving opportunity, equity and wellbeing among urban citizens.