I am a planner, designer, and scholar of infrastructural urbanism. I hold a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from MIT, master’s degrees in Architecture and Urban Planning from Harvard GSD, and a BA from Michigan. I was a Fellow at MIT’s Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism.

I develop the concept of techno-statecraft to analyze how states, firms, and utilities use infrastructure as industrial strategy, reshaping resource governance and metropolitan form. My comparative work in the U.S. and Asia combines spatial analysis, fieldwork, and policy research to link local planning decisions to broader energy-water-land flows and governance. My goal is to provide clear frameworks and actionable evidence for designing climate-resilient, digitally intensive regions.

Email: jkollar@mit.edu / justinmkollar@gmail.com

Publications

Refereed Journal Articles

Kollar, Justin. “Techno-Statecraft and Industrial Strategy: Semiconductor Development in Arizona.” Contemporary Social Science, October 6, 2025: 1–20.

Kollar, Justin, and Andrew Stokols. “Geopolitical Ecologies of Cloud Capitalism: Territorial Restructuring and the Making of National Computing Power in the U.S. and China.” Environment & Planning A: Economy and Space, 2025.

Stokols, Andrew, and Justin Kollar. “Extended State Infrastructure Power in an Age of Networked Competition: The cases of Thailand and Taiwan.” Environment & Planning A: Economy and Space. 2024.

Sevtsuk, Andres, Justin Kollar, Daniel Pratama, Rounaq Basu, Jawad Haddad, Abdulaziz Alhassan, Bahij Chancey, Mohamad Halabi, Rawad Makhlouf, and Maya Abou-Zeid. “Pedestrian-Oriented Development in Beirut: A Framework for Estimating Urban Design Impacts on Pedestrian Flows through Modeling, Participatory Design, and Scenario Analysis.” Cities 149 (June 1, 2024): 104927.

Kollar, Justin. “Failure to innovate: Urban technocracy and the making and unmaking of Sidewalk Labs' smart city.” Projections 16, 2022: 164–193.

Book Chapters

Kollar, Justin, Thomas Nideroest and Mirwais Rahimi. “Planning with Uncertainty: Situating planning practice in the landscape of Afghanistan’s city-regions,” in Shelagh McCartney, Samantha Solano, Sonja Vangjeli and Hannes Zander, eds. Landscape Approach: From Local Communities to Territorial Systems. Actar, 2022: 55–66.

Raman, Thiyagarajan Adi, Justin Kollar and Scott Penman. “Sasaki: Filling the design gap—Urban impressions with AI,” in Imdat As, Prithwish Basu, eds. Artificial Intelligence in Urban Planning and Design: Technologies, Implementation, and Impacts. Elsevier, 2022: 339–362.

Kollar, Justin. “Cultivating (Post)colonialism: Architecture, Landscape, and the Politics of the Taiwan Sugar Corporation,” in Daniel E. Coslett, ed. Neocolonialism and Built Heritage: Echoes of Empire in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe. New York: Routledge, 2020: 236-256.

Kollar, Justin. “Democratizing Control Over the Landscape: A Genealogy of Taiwan’s Infrastructural Bureaucracy,” in Flavio Sciaraffia, Thomas Nideroest, Sourav Biswas and Hannes Zander, eds. From the South: Global Perspectives on Landscape & Territory. Santiago: Universidad del Desarrollo, 2019: 109–118. Includes Spanish translation.

Kollar, Justin, Leire Asensio, David Mah, Elizabeth Wu, Han Yang, and Xinhui Li. “Life-Styled China-Town Studio Themes,” in David Mah, Leire Asensio Villoria, eds. Life-styled: Health and Places. JOVIS, 2016.

Journal Editorials

Sevtsuk, Andres, and Justin Kollar. “Rez de Ville: The Urban Ground Floor as a Project for City Design.” Built Environment 51, no. 2 (2025).

Professional Public Reports (Selected)

Reconciliation, Reconstruction, Resilience: The Goals and Mechanisms for a Spatial Planning Framework in Afghanistan. White Paper. Afghanistan, 2020.
Lead Author, with Dr. Bish Sanyal (Key Advisor), Takafumi Inoue and Wendell Joseph. Completed while at Sasaki for the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Ministry of Urban Development and Land supported by the World Bank Urban Development Support Program.

Mid-south Regional Resilience Master Plan. Public Document. Shelby County, TN, USA, 2019.
Co-author/Contributor, Analysis, Planning and Research with Sasaki for the Shelby County Resilience Council.

Kabul Urban Design Framework. Public Document. Kabul, Afghanistan, 2019.
Co-author/Contributor, Planning and Implementation Research with Sasaki for the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

Public Writing and Other Published Work (Selected)

Kollar, Justin. “The New Power Brokers: Big Tech, State Lawmakers, and the Grid.” 100 Days in Appalachia, August 7, 2025.

Kollar, Justin. “Don’t Be Fooled—The AI Bubble Is the Strategy.” Techno-Statecraft. August 7, 2025. (Over 10,000 reads)

Kollar, Justin. “The New Infrastructural Order: Looking at How Digital Industries are Rewiring Land, Power, and Resources.” Techno-Statecraft, February 11, 2025.

Kollar, Justin, Niko McGlashan, and Sarah Williams. “Creating Action with Data Using Data to Increase Equity in Urban Development,” in Bringing Digitalization Home Symposium, Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, September 2023.

Kollar, Justin. “Territorial planning in an era of global uncertainty: Geo-politics, techno-industrial development, and climate change in Taiwan.” Working Paper for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Taiwan, R.O.C.), Taiwan Fellowship, March 2023.

Kollar, Justin, Thomas Nideroest, Sourav Biswas. “The Gap Between Aspiration and Reality: How Designers and Planners See Their Role in Addressing Climate Change,” World Landscape Architect, May 19, 2022.

Kollar, Justin, Thomas Nideroest, Sourav Biswas. “Design Climate Survey - Final Report: The Gap between Professional Aspirations and the Reality of Work in addressing Climate Change,” International Landscape Collaborative, April 6, 2022.

Keillor, Gretchen and Justin Kollar. “Townology: A Personality Profile for Small Town Types.” Winter 2020 edition of Small Town and Rural Planning, Small Town and Rural Planning Division of the American Planning Association (APA), 2020.

Conferences and Workshops

Kollar, Justin. “The Geopolitical Ecology of Cloud Capitalism in the U.S. and China” Paper presented at the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Conference, Detroit, MI, March 2025.

Kollar, Justin. “The Resource Frontiers of Cloud Capital in Oregon’s ‘SiliconForest’” Paper presented at the Graduate Research in STS (GRiSTS) Conference, Harvard Kennedy School, November 21-23, 2024.

Kollar, Justin. “Towards a Geopolitical Ecology of Semiconductor Production: Land and Resource Dynamics in the U.S. and Taiwan.” Paper presented at the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Conference, Honolulu, HI, April 2024.

Kollar, Justin. “Territory and Function: Planning Reform and the Ecological Security of the Semiconductor Industry in Taiwan.” Paper presented at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, October 19-21, 2023.

Kollar, Justin and Andrew Stokols. “Endless frontier? State power, territorial security, and digital innovation in an age of geopolitical competition.” Paper presented at the 10th East Asian Regional Conference in Alternative Geography, New Geo-politics in East Asia, National Taiwan University, December 9-12, 2022. With Andrew Stokols. Best Paper Award.

Kollar, Justin. “Making of the ‘Homeland’: Territorial planning, ecological (in)security, and the politics of high-tech supply chain restructuring in Taiwan.” Paper presented at the Graduate Research in STS (GRiSTS) Conference, Harvard Kennedy School, October 13-15, 2022.

Kollar, Justin. “Varied Geographies of Flood Risk: Multi-scalar Analysis of Socio-Economic Vulnerability to Flooding Across the Contiguous United States.” Paper presented at the UCLA Climate Adaptation Research Symposium, September 8-9, 2021.

Kollar, Justin and Kai Ying Lau. “Strategic Development Frameworks for Five Provincial Capital Cities in Afghanistan: Rapid Landscape Assessments and Probabilistic Urban Expansion Scenario Modeling.” Paper presented at the 12th Annual Geodesign Summit ‘Resilient by Geodesign,’ February 9-10, 2021.