Category: Uncategorized

Fulton began with the basic question everyone came to discuss: How does resilience relate to planning? Resilience is usually thought of in economic or environmental terms, and the resiliency of the built environment and social fabric of the city receive much less attention.   Bill Fulton argued that we should think about how cities and the…

Most people are familiar with hard infrastructure- perhaps images of roads, bridges, buildings, and sewers immediately come to mind. Yet many may not be as familiar with the concept of soft infrastructure, which refers to human capital and the social and cultural resources that cultivate healthy communities. Nurit Katz, Chief Sustainability Officer at UCLA, moderated…

The Sonoran Desert covers large parts of California and Arizona, and is the hottest desert in North America. Yet the desert area also hosts Phoenix, AZ, a metropolitan area of 4.3 million and one of America’s fastest-growing cities. Roughly two decades ago Phoenix decided to prioritize the preservation of desert land in the northern part…

Both of California’s major regions, Los Angeles and the Bay Area, sit on active earthquake faults. How resilient will they be when the next one hits? Together, three panelists offered insights on just how many systems and approaches come together to form earthquake preparedness — or lack thereof — in California. Consider the wide range…

As is tradition, Lewis Center Director Brian Taylor closed the symposium with an impromptu synthesis of the past few days. He spoke about what he thought were some of the most compelling and provocative themes: Yin and Yang Taylor noted a pattern of yin and yang throughout the event. Hope for the best, but plan…

On any given night in Los Angeles, roughly 58,000 people are homeless. Lewis Center Faculty Fellow Paavo Monkkonen moderated an important panel on this topic yesterday that delved into the question of whether homeless was at its core a housing problem. The question is counter-intuitive, but all three speakers- Inner City Law Center’s Adam Murray, PATH’s Chris…

When the first road was built to Yosemite in 1856, entry to the park cost $1 by foot and $2 by horse. The November ITS Brown Bag seminar saw 2nd year student Casey Osborn, whose passion for the outdoors is longstanding (see photo), provide this and other delightful insights in a talk that tackled the tense relationship between some of our most beloved wilderness locations and…

It is the mark of a UCLA transportation scholar that when asked what trains will do for Los Angeles, they respond first with an explanation of what trains will not do. Trains in Los Angeles are not going to fix traffic, nor are they going to transform the way Angelenos move about the city. What…

Lewis Center Director Brian Taylor and Faculty Fellow Paavo Monkkonen highlighted different aspects of the sharing economy at an October event held at the downtown LA workspace collective Maker City LA. The event was put on by the American Planning Association’s Los Angeles chapter, and saw Taylor discuss the implications of increasingly popular car-share services such as Uber…