News
Herbie Huff on L.A. Bike Trains
Lewis Center researcher Herbie Huff has been in the news recently, commenting on bicycling in Los Angeles in connection with coverage on an organization called L.A. Bike Trains that arranges and guides bicycle commuting groups. Ms. Huff’s latest interview on this topic was with The California Report. Click here to listen to the interview and read the story.
Lewis Center Researcher Herbie Huff On NPR’s All Things Considered
The Lewis Center’s Herbie Huff was recently interviewed by NPR for a story on All Things Considered on biking in Los Angeles. Click here to listen to the segment and read more about L.A. Bike Trains, an organization that arranges and guides bicycle commuting groups. Ms. Huff is a research associate at the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and the Institute for Transportation Studies, where she works to bring data and research to bear on the most pressing planning and policy questions facing decisionmakers. She holds a M.A. in Urban Planning from UCLA and a B.S. in Mathematics and English from Harvey Mudd College. She is a Mayoral appointee to the City’s Bicycle Advisory Committee and a board member at the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition.
Latest Issue of ACCESS Magazine Now Available
The latest issue of Access Magazine is now available online. You can view and download the issue here, or click on the titles below to be taken directly to each article. In this issue: Going Mental: Everyday Travel and the Cognitive Map; Andrew Mondschein, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Brian D. Taylor Driving Down Diesel Emissions; Robert Harley From Fuel Taxes to Mileage Fees; Paul Sorensen SFpark: Pricing Parking by Demand; Gregory Pierce and Donald Shoup Parking Reform Made Easy; Richard Willson The Access Almanac: Vehicular ad hoc Networks – Storms on the Horizon; Amelia Regan
Complete Streets Initiative Manager Madeline Brozen Participates in UCLA’s GIS Day 2013 Program
Madeline Brozen, Manager of the Lewis Center’s Complete Streets Initiative, delivered a presentation entitled Bicycle Count Data Clearinghouse at UCLA’s GIS Day 2013 program at the Charles E. Young Research Library on Wednesday, November 20. The program also featured the following presentations: Looking for Asokan Edicts with GIS – Thomas Gillespie; A Map for the Future: Measuring Radiation Levels in Fukushima, Japan – Yoh Kawano and David Shepard; TextMapper: Visualizing Locations Stored in Bodies of Text – Michael Shin; and Exploring Social Media Users in Los Angeles with SimplyMap – Steven Swartz For more information on the Bicycle Data Clearinghouse project, click here.
Lecture Recap: Measuring the Economic Impact of Street Improvements in New York City
Eric Lee, the president of management consulting firm Bennett Midland LLC, visited the Lewis Center this week to present his firm’s innovative work regarding the economic impacts of reallocation of street space in New York City for dedicated bikeways, pedestrian improvements, and bus lanes. Mr. Lee first set the stage by showing pictures of the types of projects considered in the study. Quite dramatic changes, such as parking-protected bikeways and the conversion of parking into pedestrian plazas, have taken place in New York City in recent years. Mr. Lee’s research concerns the question, “Will these changes hurt economic activity?” Mr. Lee’s presentation was an overview of the study methodology and findings. Sales tax receipts provided a direct and impartial measure of economic activity. Mr. Lee’s firm compared sales tax receipts on 11 study corridors with comparison corridors — chosen by a typology to have similar scale and use — as well as with borough-wide sales tax data. Only retail and[…]
2013 Lake Arrowhead Symposium Focused on Smart Technologies, Smart Policies
On Sunday, October 19, policymakers and thought leaders from around the country convened in Lake Arrowhead, CA for a three-day symposium on the relationship between technology, data, transportation and land use planning, and the environment. The event, entitled “Smart Technologies, Smart Policies” is the 23rd annual installment in a series of relatively intimate, carefully curated symposia convened by the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. This year, the panels dealt with such questions as: How can the public sector be responsive to the fast-pace and great uncertainty that technological change presents? How are city governments using more data and new technologies to plan and manage transportation systems in innovative ways, from smart parking meters to taxicab GPS to open transit data feeds? What new institutions, regulations, and systems are needed to deal with a changing technological world? To view the entire photo set, please visit our Arrowhead Flickr gallery
Teens & Travel Study Profiled on TheAtlanticCities.com
In a recent article posted on TheAtlanticCities.com, Evelyn Blumenberg, Professor and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and a Lewis Center Faculty Fellow, discusses her research on teens and travel, What’s Youth Got to Do with It? Exploring the Travel Behavior of Teens and Young Adults. To view the article, click here.
Lecture Recap: Driving Detroit: The Quest For Respect In The Motor City
Professor George Galster, of Wayne State University, visited the Lewis Center this week to present a vibrant summary of his new book, “Driving Detroit: The Quest for Respect in the Motor City.” Speaking to a full room of students, faculty, staff and Luskin School guests, Galster offered his insight into how Detroit arrived at its current dysfunctional metropolis. His analytical framework used basic psychological principals to examine how Detroit’s residents quest for securing physical, social and psychological resources contributed to this deterioration. Galster demonstrated this framework with a series of examples, including the “chain of moves” whereby developers continually built new housing on the ever-expanding urban fringes, encouraging residents to persistently purchase a home in a nicer neighborhood than where they currently live. As this cycle continues, the urban core is left to decay, creating an environment where 30% of land is now vacant, leaving dire consequences to the physical and economic environment. He attested this and other rational choices[…]
Lecture Recap: Analyzing Pedestrian Movements in Israeli Cities
This October, Dr. Yodan Rofe visited UCLA to present his work developing a model for pedestrian activity in Israeli cities. Speaking to a full audience, he discussed the state of the practice in pedestrian modeling and the goals and results of his work in Israel. Dr. Rofe cited the work of Jane Jacobs, Kevin Lynch, and Jan Gehl as theoretical predecessors. He defined and explained the “spatial configuration approach” to travel modeling, which draws on the work of Hillier and Hanson, who pioneered this concept in 1989 with their book The Social Logic of Space. This approach entails formalizing the street network in a city as a set of links and nodes, and assigning values to these links and nodes based upon various measures of their centrality and connectedness in the network. Dr. Rofe’s work, funded by a national authority in Israel, aims to identify the variables explaining pedestrian volumes in Israeli cities, with a particular emphasis on understanding the movements[…]
Lewis Center Faculty Lead Study on Impacts of Housing Boom
In the heady years before the Great Recession, did cities and municipalities get carried away with boomtime spending? Once the downturn hit, how prepared were local governments to face suddenly pressing needs in their communities? Urban Planning professors Paavo Monkkonen and Michael Lens plan to address these questions as they lead a three-year, $610,000 study aiming to better understand the behavior of local governments during times of economic upheaval. By painting a clearer picture of how local leaders spent in the good times – and how they cut back in the bad – the researchers aim to help smooth the impacts of future booms and busts on local economies. The project team includes Larry Rosenthal, of UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, and Tracy Gordon of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Since cities and municipalities provide basic services such as police, fire, streets, parks and schools, their financial health has a direct impact on their ability to deliver high-quality housing and neighborhoods[…]