A team of researchers from UCLA Luskin and UC Berkeley’s Department of City and Regional Planning has received a grant from the California Air Resources Board to explore the impact of transit-oriented development on low-income communities. At UCLA Luskin, the project will be headed up by Associate Dean and professor of Urban Planning Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Paul Ong, a professor of Social Welfare, Urban Planning and Asian American Studies. The $696,000 grant hopes to answer questions about how redevelopment near new transit lines can affect the communities it is meant to serve. As cities across California pursue Senate Bill 375’s directive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, transit-oriented development has emerged as a main strategy to encourage transit use by increasing density around subway, light rail and bus stations. While these new developments are meant to help residents at all income levels find housing close to convenient transportation, in practice the projects are criticized for displacing existing residents, especially low-income communities of color. By[…]

In a May lecture at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Edward Goetz, Ph.D., of the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs discussed his observations and research findings on the aggressive dismantling of public housing seen across the nation since the 1990s. Professor Goetz explored the political climate and public discourse around public housing issues and its role in society and asked why some cities have been more active in eliminating public housing than other cities. He found that in the 1990s, concerns about crime and pressures to gentrify neighborhoods were clear drivers, but the following decade saw more articulated concerns over the racialization of public housing. Cities with stronger concerns about the concentrations of African-Americans in public housing were more assertive in reforming public housing through demolition and relocation. Professor Goetz’s lecture was part of the Lewis Center’s Spring 2013 Housing Lecture Series.

This past April, Peter Capone-Newton, M.D., of the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Lawrence DeFreitas, Youth and Volunteer Programs Coordinator for Community Services Unlimited participated in a special lunchtime panel discussion on food insecurity in Los Angeles. The panel discussed how food insecurity in Los Angeles plays out in the daily reality of families and the disparities in availability of healthy food by neighborhood, with economically disadvantaged and racial/ethnic minority neighborhoods having little to no access to grocery stores with fresh fruits and vegetables. Dr. Capone-Newton defined food security as “access of all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy lifestyle.” In 2011, 14.9% of U.S. households reported food insecurity, indicating that the distribution of nutritious food remains a serious problem even in a country where food supplies are abundant. Dr. Capone-Newton presented research showing that differences in diet-related disease vary across social strata. Over half of the U.S. population is now overweight or obese, with the poor suffering disproportionate[…]

American Planning Association Honors Luskin Center PEV Plan The Los Angeles section of the American Planning Association (APA) has chosen to honor the Luskin Center’s Southern California Plug-in Electric Vehicle Readiness Plan and Atlas with the 2013 Planning Excellence Award for Best Practice. The award is given annually to a planning tool or project that represents a significant advancement to a specific type of planning practice. The Plan and Atlas were selected on criteria including originality and innovation, transferability, effectiveness, quality of analysis and graphic design. The award will be presented at the APA Los Angeles section ceremony June 13 in San Gabriel, CA.The Southern California PEV Plan develops methods for: Tailoring municipal PEV readiness efforts to local land use opportunities. Prioritizing the siting of charging stations at workplaces, multi-unit dwellings, and retailers. Assessing the pricing and cost-effectiveness of charging opportunities for hosts and drivers. The Plan also describes how the cost of PEV charging can be driven down by reforming municipal[…]

On February 7, two “parklets,” or micro urban parks, were officially opened in downtown Los Angeles in a morning ribbon-cutting ceremony on Spring Street; the Lewis Center’s Complete Streets Initiative played a central role in creating these new public spaces. “This parklet is the first in the nation focused on active recreation,” said Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Associate Dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, who was a lead Lewis Center researcher on the project and who spoke at the ceremony. The parklet features bike equipment and a foosball table along with seating and vegetation. The two parklets on Spring Street were designed by the Downtown L.A. Neighborhood Council with support from Councilmember Jose Huizar and the L.A. Department of Transportation. The Complete Streets Initiative worked with these partners throughout the project phases and supported construction with a grant from the Rosaline & Arthur Gilbert Foundation. The local parklet movement is guided by the parklet toolkit (PDF) authored by Loukaitou-Sideris, UCLA Complete Streets Initiative Manager Madeline Brozen, and[…]

Each year, the Lewis Center supports graduate student research on a wide array of topics relating to community and economic development, the environment, housing, and transportation in California. Our Graduate Research Grant program enables students – individually or in small teams – to conduct fieldwork, obtain data, and produce quality reports that would otherwise not be possible without financial support. This academic year, the Lewis Center was proud to award a total of $10,000 in grants to support seven graduate student research projects: Medical Marijuana Dispensaries and Neighborhood Effects in the City of Los Angeles, by Alexander Braithwaite, Ryan Hudson, Caroline Murre, and Laura Rivas (Department of Public Policy) Proposed Communication Strategies for Glendale, California: Information Access on Local Transit Systems for Non-English Speaking Riders, by Diana Gonzalez (Department of Urban Planning) Do Women Make More Stops on Their Commute and Non-Work Tour than Men?, by Haofei Liu (Department of Urban Planning) Possible Joint Financing Mechanisms to Pay for an LAX Connection to Metro[…]

Professor Emeritus Martin Wachs, then-Urban Planning student Shira Bergstein, UCLA Urban Planning Ph.D. Alumnus Dan Chatman, and UC Berkeley graduate studentApril Mo recently completed the first phase of a study examining whether the process of environmental reviews and approvals for infrastructure projects has proven to be quicker where Habitat Conservation Plans exist than in comparable cases where they do not. Habitat Conservation Plans set aside areas of land to protect the habitats of endangered and threatened species. Over the past decade, 20 or more large Habitat Conservation areas have been established in an effort to both preserve endangered environments and to facilitate the construction of important infrastructure like highways and transit lines, by “streamlining” the environmental review process that is required under the National Environmental Protection Act. The completed study reviewed the legislation and financing of habitat conservation plans and found that they are being undertaken far more frequently than in the past.   Wachs says that “they appear to reduce infrastructure costs and speed the construction[…]

Norman Wong, Manager of the Lewis Center Spatial Analytics Program, is part of an interdisciplinary research team led by the UCLA School of Dentistry to provide expert consultation to the tribal consortium that constitutes the governing body of the Riverside-San Bernardino Counties Indian Health, Inc. Mr. Wong  is assisting in the development and evaluation of a home visitor intervention targeting families during the perinatal and early childhood periods of life. The overall goal of the research is to identify successful strategies for adopting, implementing, and sustaining home visiting programs to promote child well-being and prevent child maltreatment in an American Indian community.

Juan Matute, Program Manager  of the UCLA Lewis Center and Luskin Center for Innovation’s joint Climate Change Initiative is working with UCLA Environmental Science undergraduate seniors to evaluate options for carbon neutrality in the City of Hermosa Beach. The project, the first of its kind in California, will evaluate the steps needed to reduce or offset the city’s greenhouse gas emissions. The Governor’s Office of Planning and Research recently recommended use of the U.S. Community Protocol for Accounting and Reporting of Greenhouse Gas Emissions, which means that all California communities will soon use this protocol in planning for climate mitigation. Mr. Matute helped write this protocol as co-chair of the transportation section. The Lewis Center also will begin work soon on an upgrade to its California Land Opportunities Tracking System (or CALOTS) map-based planning website. The upgrade will enable local planners throughout Southern California to monitor the performance of policies related to Senate Bill 375 local government climate change mitigation planning. Should you be interested in[…]