Justin Kollar is a certified planner, designer, and researcher whose work examines infrastructure as both a material system and a political-ecological project shaping 21st-century urbanism.

He was a fellow at the Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism (LCAU) and holds a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from MIT, master’s degrees in Architecture and Urban Planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Planning.

Justin’s research investigates how the twin forces of climate adaptation and high-tech territorial expansion—through semiconductor fabs, data centers, and AI-driven networks—are transforming land use, resource governance, and metropolitan form. He approaches these questions through the concept of techno-statecraft, analyzing how state, corporate, and utility actors mobilize infrastructure to pursue industrial strategy, reconfigure environmental systems, and reshape territorial governance.

His comparative work in the U.S. Southwest, Taiwan, and China combines spatial analysis, fieldwork, and policy research to connect local design and planning concerns with the systemic resource flows and governance structures that underpin them. By bridging political economy, environmental planning, and urban design, Justin’s scholarship contributes new frameworks for understanding—and shaping—the infrastructural urbanism emerging at the intersection of climate resilience and the digital economy.

Email: jkollar@mit.edu