Hanyang University · Social Sciences
Professor Hyungun Sung's research lab specializes in urban and environmental health, focusing on the interplay between urban spatial structure, built environment, and public health outcomes. The lab investigates how urban design—particularly density, land-use mix, walkability, and transit accessibility—affects human behavior, pedestrian safety, and responses to infectious disease outbreaks. Using advanced statistical modeling such as multilevel regression, ARIMA, and spatial analysis, the lab examines real-world impacts of events like MERS and COVID-19 on mobility, retail activity, and transit use in Asian megacities, especially Seoul. The research bridges urban planning, public health, and data science to inform resilient and people-centered urban development.
Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.
Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) had an enormous influence on urban design theories and practices. This study aims to operationalize Jacobs’s conditions for a vital urban life. These are (1) mixed use, (2) small blocks, (3) aged buildings, and (4) a sufficient concentration of buildings. Jacobs suggested that a vital urban life could be sustained by an urban realm that promotes pedestrian activity for various purposes at various times. Employing multilevel binomia
COVID-19 has sparked a debate on the vulnerability of densely populated cities. Some studies argue that high-density urban centers are more vulnerable to infectious diseases due to a higher chance of infection in crowded urban environments. Other studies, however, argue that connectivity rather than population density plays a more significant role in the spread of COVID-19. While several studies have examined the role of urban density and connectivity in Europe and the U.S., few studies have bee
This study investigates whether the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak in Korea affected online and offline retail sales and determines the presence of a substitution or delay effect between the two. We analyze the monthly retail sales of electronic goods, semi-luxury goods, and groceries using an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model with intervention. The findings are as follows. First, offline sales of electronic goods declined by 7.9%, while online sales increa
There has been a great deal of research on the relationship between the built environment and walking activity, but many studies have produced inconclusive or conflicting results. In this research we aim to enrich the association of the built environment with walking activity by examining its impact in Seoul, a Korean megacity characterized by high-density development and a well-equipped public transportation system. The results show that neighborhoods with a relatively higher land-use mix and r
This study examined the impact of density, diversity, design, distance to transit, and destination accessibility, five measures, known as the 5Ds, that characterize the built environment, on pedestrian–vehicle crashes in Seoul, Korea. Using spatial analysis based on 500-m grid cells, this study employed negative binomial regression models on the frequencies of three specific types of pedestrian–vehicle crashes: crashes causing death, major injury, and minor injury to pedestrians. Analysis shows
Globalization sometimes provides unexpected negative effects on public health because of the outbreak and proliferation of avian infectious diseases resulting from more active inter-national movement of people and goods. Seoul had experienced the MERS(Middle East Respiratory Syndrome). During its outbreak and proliferation, citizens tried to avoid its potential infection among people. One of its responses was to take less rail transit. This study is aimed at identifying the impacts of the outbre
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