On the heels of the recent City Council vote to allow the construction of a series of micro-parks in Los Angeles, researchers from UCLA Luskin’s Complete Streets Initiative are releasing a comprehensive guidebook to planning, building and maintaining “parklets,”—small parks created in urban areas from the conversion of parking spots, alleyways and other underutilized spaces for cars into places for people. The report, “Reclaiming the Right-of-Way,” compiles best practices from cities in the U.S and Canada that have implemented parklet projects in their communities. These projects, which enhance neighborhoods through low-cost, small-scale inventions, were pioneered in San Francisco but have also appeared in New York, Philadelphia, and Vancouver, B.C., among other cities. “These community-driven projects allow for citizens to be engaged in improving their communities in a new way,” said Madeline Brozen, program manager of UCLA Luskin’s Complete Streets Initiative. “More and more cities are allowing parklets, partly because of this growing demand,” she continued. “However, there are a lot of considerations that both designers and cities must take into account—everything from the landscaping and construction materials to guidelines for ensuring safety[…]

UCLA Urban Planning professor Brian Taylor, who directs the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, and Martin Wachs, a distinguished professor emeritus of Urban Planning at UCLA announce the release of their report, Why It Wasn’t “Carmageddon”: An Analysis of the Summer 2011 Closure of the Interstate 405 Freeway in Los Angeles. The report, co-authored by former UCLA Master of Urban Planning student Earl Kaing and former Master of Public Policy student Zodin Del Rosario, was commissioned by the Mayor’s Office of the City of Los Angeles and examines lessons learned during “Carmageddon,” the full closure of the 405 freeway for major construction during a weekend in July 2011. To view the full report, click here.

Los Angeles City Council on Friday approved plans to temporarily convert red curb and a couple curb-side parking spaces into four small public plazas. Part of a larger movement to cultivate a pedestrian lifestyle in L.A., these sidewalk extension pocket parks, or “parklets,” will provide bike racks, a little greenery and a place to sit or exercise. Of the four Council approved projects, two parklets will be located downtown on Spring Street, one on Huntington Drive in El Sereno and another on York Boulevard in Highland Park. The downtown parklets will open this fall and will represent the first active recreational partklets in the U.S., complete with exercise equipment. A grant from the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation allowed UCLA to partner with the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council to implement the two active partklets in park-poor downtown. Also as part of the Gilbert Foundation grant, UCLA produced a soon-to-be-released parklet toolkit, called Reclaiming the Right-of-Way. Authored by UCLA Luskin Urban Planning[…]

The Los Angeles City Council is expected to approve four pilot parklets by this Friday, reports Lewis Center Complete Streets Initiative Director Madeline Brozen.  The location of the four sites currently awaiting approval by the Council include two spots on Spring Street in Downtown Los Angeles, the York Boulevard Street Porch in Northeast L.A., and the El Sereno Street Plaza.  Brozen noted that “these first demonstration parklets allow for Los Angeles to join the growing list of cities who are using parklets to re-think the use of streets and enhance the public right-of-way.” A parklet is a small, urban park created by replacing under- or mis-used parking spaces on public rights-of-way with items or equipment you would commonly find in a park, such as benches, fountains, flora, artwork, or other accessories. The goal of a parklet is to enhance and encourage non-motorized use of public-rights-of way in order that city denizens can make the most of their habitat, especially at sites that are removed from larger urban[…]

Martin Wachs (left), a distinguished professor emeritus of Urban Planning, and Urban Planning professor Brian Taylor, who directs the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, have an op-ed in the Los Angeles Daily News that examines lessons learned during “Carmageddon,” the full closure of the 405 freeway for major construction during a weekend in July 2011. The piece appears slightly less than two months before Carmageddon’s sequel, which is slated to take place September 28-30. Using an analysis of traffic patterns before and during Carmageddon, Wachs and Taylor conclude that when area residents were confronted with predictions of congested detours and increased travel times, most drivers elected to stay home. “Because there is no evidence that substantial numbers of travelers took detours around the closure, shifted to public transit, or shifted their usual travel to before or after the closure, the vast majority of people who would have traveled through the Sepulveda Pass must have chosen not to attempt[…]

The Complete Streets Initiative is on the winning team for the SCAG Bicycle Data Clearinghouse project to begin this July. As a part of this multi-part $150,000 project, UCLA will create a web based map interface to house bicycle volume inventory. These data will be collected and standardized for municipalities in Los Angeles County. This effort is similar in nature to other web-GIS interfaces designed by the Lewis Center including CA LOTS (the California Land Opportunities Tracking System), a web-GIS tool which allows planners and developers from throughout the region to identify infill development opportunities in priority growth areas. For this project, Project Director Madeline Brozen will work closely with Norman Wong, who developed sites such as CA LOTS and the KERN COG Traffic Analysis Map. Professor Rui Wang and talented graduate student researchers will round out the UCLA research team. UCLA will work with Ryan Snyder Associates, the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition and Kittleson and Associates to assemble a countywide[…]

UCLA, in partnership with CicLAvia Inc. and the Los Angeles Sustainability Collaborative (LASC) received funding through the Center for Civil Society in the Luskin School of Public Affairs to conduct an economic analysis of the CicLAvia event in October 2012. The project will consist of an economic impact analysis of CicLAvia in low-income communities of color―including East Los Angeles, Downtown Los Angeles, the historic El Pueblo, and the Macarthur Park neighborhoods. While the project methodology is being finalized, researchers will likely visit businesses along the CicLAvia route and collect information regarding their sales revenue on the Sunday before and the Sunday of a CicLAvia event. This new data will be analyzed and developed into a report to be disseminated to policymakers with the goal of institutionalizing CicLAvia as a monthly or weekly event promoting healthy, active living. J.R. DeShazo will serve as the faculty lead, while CicLAvia and the Los Angeles Sustainability Collaborative will provide advice and support during the[…]

ACCESS magazine, a publication of the UC Transportation Center, released its 40th issue at the beginning of July. The magazine, edited by urban planning professor Donald Shoup, covers current issues in transportation policy and practice in a style designed for the general reader. The current issue includes stories on ridesharing services, the relation between population density and effective transit, and the tension between regional planning authorities and local governments. Brian Taylor, Michael Smart and Allison Yoh, of UCLA Luskin’s Lewis Center, wrote an article called “Thinking Outside the Bus,” which looks at improvements to the rider experience on transit between the times that are spent on a bus or train, so that line transfers and trips to and from the stations are made more streamlined. Other contributions from UCLA Luskin scholars include “Can Public Transportation Increase Economic Efficiency?”, by urban planning visiting professor Matt Drennan, and a piece by Shoup on the trend of placing solar panels in parking lots. The magazine[…]

The Lewis Center is proud to announce the winners of this year’s annual GIS contest. The three winning projects successfully applied research methods and spatial analysis to produce descriptive and analytical insights into distinct policy questions.  The 1st place winner will receive $500, the 2nd place winner $300, and the 3rd place winner $200.  In addition, the first place winner’s poster will be featured in the Lewis Center during the 2012-2013 academic year.   1st Place: “The Role of Place-Based Interventions in Increasing Financial Service Access” by Ricardo Gutierrez, Elycia Mulholland, and Sarab Sarung Singh Khalsa (Public Policy and Social Welfare) POSTER (PDF) 2nd Place: “We’ve Been Where You Are – Parent Mentorship and Family Reunification in LA County” by Stephanie Enano (Social Welfare) POSTER (PDF) 3rd Place: “Addressing Rising Family Homelessness in the City of Los Angeles” by Clarine Ovando-Lacroux (Urban Planning) POSTER (PDF)

The Lewis Center is pleased to announce that Professor Paul M. Ong of the Department of Asian American Studies and Urban Planning is the 2011-12 recipient of the C. Doris and Toshio Hoshide Distinguished Teaching Prize in Asian American Studies at UCLA. Professor Ong received his B.A. from the University of California, Davis, a Masters in Urban Planning from the University of Washington, and the Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.  A prolific scholar, Professor Ong has authored or edited 9 books and published over 70 journal articles and papers, including the influential and often-cited State of Asian American series of policy-related studies for which he served as Research Director.  Professor Ong has taught key service courses for both Asian American Studies and Urban Planning at the undergraduate and graduate levels.  In particular, Professor Ong has offered courses that are multidisciplinary and that are engaged with community-based research.  He has provided tremendous service and leadership for the[…]