Hue-Tam Jamme

Huê-Tâm Jamme investigates how new technologies reshape urban life, focusing on mobility, work, retail, and social interactions in cities. At the intersection of planning and innovation, her research addresses how to create livable, accessible, and equitable urban spaces. Based on intensive fieldwork in Vietnam, Jamme’s award-winning dissertation introduced the theory of "productive friction," explaining how micro-mobilities foster vibrant street commerce and inclusive social interactions, unlike private cars and mass transit.

She has led projects on car dependence in the U.S., automated food vending in France, and the platform economy in Southeast Asia. Her research spans mobility, retail, transit-oriented development, and public space, employing both qualitative and quantitative methods from a global comparative perspective. Jamme’s work has been published in journals such as Transportation Research, the Journal of Planning Education and Research, and Applied Geography. Her professional background includes several years as an urban development consultant in Asia.

Her contributions have been recognized with prestigious awards, including the Best Dissertation in Planning award and the Rising Scholar Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP), and the Emerging Scholar Award from the American Planning Association (APA), for her paper “Productive Frictions: A Theory of Mobility and Street Commerce Grounded in Vietnam’s Motorbike-Centric Urbanism” published in the Journal of the American Planning Association.