Bogang Jun
Visiting Associate Professor, MIT Center for Real Estate
Talk recording
Cities are increasingly exposed to a variety of shocks, ranging from pandemics to climate-related disruptions. Yet urban responses to these shocks often vary significantly within cities. This talk examines how the structural organization of urban economic activities shapes resilience at the intra-city level. Drawing on the economic complexity framework, I explore how relatedness among amenities and the complexity of local economic structures influence the survival of businesses, the persistence of urban mobility, and the adaptation of consumption patterns during crises. Using detailed spatial data on small businesses, mobility, and credit card transactions in Seoul, the talk presents evidence from three empirical studies covering the COVID-19 pandemic and an extreme heat wave. The findings suggest that areas characterized by higher relatedness and economic complexity tend to sustain economic activity and attract population even under adverse conditions. Together, these results highlight how the micro-structure of urban consumption and amenity networks contributes to urban resilience.
About the speaker
Bogang Jun is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Data Science at Inha University. She also serves as Director of the Research Center for Small Businesses Ecosystem, funded by the National Research Foundation of Korea. She is currently a Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the Center for Real Estate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her research lies at the intersection of economic complexity, economic geography, urban economics, and economic development, with a particular focus on the use of large-scale spatial and transactional data to study urban economic systems and resilience. Dr. Jun received her Ph.D. in Economics from Seoul National University and holds a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering. Prior to joining Inha University, she was a Postdoctoral Associate at the MIT Media Lab’s Macro Connections (Collective Learning) Group from 2016 to 2019. She also held a research position at the Chair of Innovation Economics at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany.
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