It is with great excitement that the  UCLA Lewis Center welcomes Mike  Manville back to UCLA Luskin as an  assistant professor of Urban Planning.  Professor Manville received both his  MA and PhD in urban planning from  UCLA in 2003 and 2009 respectively  and afterward served as a post-doctoral  researcher with the Lewis Center.  Professor Manville is coming to UCLA  from the Department of City and  Regional Planning at Cornell University  where he taught courses on traffic  congestion, urban public finance, and  spatial economics from 2011-2016. Professor Manville specializes in two  main areas of research: the relationship between transportation and land use, and local public finance. On the first point, he has conducted research into the costs of parking requirements and the benefits of congestion pricing schemes. On the second point, he specifically studies the willingness of residents to finance public services as well as the tendency of local governments to increase the cost of housing through strict land-use restrictions. Professor Manville[…]

Can we be confident about the future of public transit, both in Los Angeles and around the nation? On April 27, UCLA’s Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and Institute of Transportation Studies convened professors, policymakers, and administrators to answer this question at the 9th annual UCLA Downtown Los Angeles Forum on Transportation, Land Use, and the Environment. Los Angeles hasn’t had a problem building transit recently, with two major light-rail extensions opening in 2016 alone. But in his opening remarks, ITS Director Brian Taylor noted that “If you build it, they will come” isn’t cutting it anymore. What transit agencies need to ask is, “What happens after you build it?” How can these investments turn into actual riders?The first panel, featuring Prof. Michael Manville of Cornell, Prof. Evelyn Blumenberg of UCLA, and Emily Castor of Lyft, examined transit ridership patterns and demographics in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Manville provided some context for news stories about transit-loving Millennials. For[…]

If the first part of the “Future of Transit” conference was about cutting-edge research on travel trends and behavior, the next was all about hearing from practitioners about what has worked, what hasn’t, and what is ahead for the industry. The second panel of the day featured representatives from three transit agencies with very different constituencies and challenges. First up was Kurt Luhrsen, VP of Planning for the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, Texas. The Houston region is famous for its sprawl and car culture, but Luhrsen had an inspiring story to tell about a successful redesign of that city’s bus network.As Houston has opened a number of new light rail lines in recent years, Luhrsen explained that the city has also recognized a need to realign its bus network. In particular, rider feedback on the city’s transit system focused on a need to improve existing service, not just build new services. For many years ridership was falling despite[…]

(More photos below the article and on Google Photos). In March, women’s history month, the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies convened Women Making Moves: Gender and the Changing Nature of Transportation to celebrate the rise of strong women in the transportation field in Los Angeles, and to elevate the voices of three rising leaders: Lisa Schweitzer (UP Ph.D. ’04), Assistant Professor at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy, Tamika Butler, Executive Director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, and Chanda Singh (M.A. UP ‘10), Policy Analyst at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. CicLAvia and the LA Cleantech Incubator co-sponsored the event.Herbie Huff (MURP ‘11), Research Associate at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies began the evening by listing some of the many noted female alumni of UCLA’s transportation degree programs. Among them are the current chair of Urban Planning at UCLA Luskin, Evelyn Blumenberg (Ph.D. ’95[…]

(see more photos and Dr. Giuliano’s slides below) Dr. Genevieve Giuliano, this year’s Perloff Speaker, gave a lecture titled, “Spatial Dynamics of the Logistics Industry in California Metropolitan Areas.” This lecture was also part of the Urban Goods Movement Lecture Series, organized by the Lewis Center in partnership with the Community Scholars Program and Center, the UCLA Department of Urban Planning, Labor Occupational Safety & Health Program (LOSH), Downtown Labor Center, Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (COEH), Institute of Transportation Studies, and Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE).Although dealing with urban sprawl has been an enduring urban planning problem, much less attention has been paid to “logistics sprawl,” which is the relocation and deconcentration of logistics facilities such as warehouses outside city centers. The increased distance of the warehouse and distribution (W&D) sector from markets has a negative impact on quality of urban life, causing increased GHG emissions, air pollution, and noise. Some factors that may have changed location patterns include[…]

UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs Professor Michael Storper gave a talk on his recently-published book, The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies. It explores reasons why, over the past 40 years, the economic standings of California’s two largest urban regions, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, have diverged so considerably. In terms of traditional economic theory, divergence is a surprise that requires explanation, and the story of Los Angeles serves as a natural experiment of history akin to the ones explored in Guns, Germs and Steel by UCLA Professor of Geography Jared Diamond.In the 1970s, Los Angeles and San Francisco stood on relatively equal footing in terms of per capita income as two top-tier cities in the U.S. — 4th and 1st respectively. Since then, Los Angeles has come to resemble middle-tier metropolitan areas like Detroit and Cleveland, whereas San Francisco continues to be 1st in the nation in per capita income. San Francisco residents enjoy[…]

This week, 200 attendees meet in Downtown Los Angeles to discuss the future of transportation planning in California The last time Caltrans hosted a statewide transportation planning conference, in 2008, transportation in California was very different. Fastforwarding a short seven years later, California is hosting the first cap-and-trade system in the U.S., all of the state’s regions have Sustainable Communities Strategies linking transportation and land use, and public health at the center of the conversation. These changes, among others, are what bring together over 200 transportation professionals to the 2015 California Transportation Planning Conference hosted in Downtown Los Angeles December 2 through 4. The conference covers various topics. Wednesday begins with a discussion on how transportation planning must evolve in order to maintain an effective transportation system for everyone. Questions of funding and aging infrastructure are on the agenda, including a discussion of system preservation featuring speakers from the Federal Highway Administration, the City of Los Angeles, Southern California Association of[…]

California is a national and international climate action leader. In 2015, the state further charted its course towards an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The state is pursuing a series of reforms to transportation planning in order to hit that long-term target.However, California is also on the leading edges of impacts from climate change. Drought has fundamentally changed a state that has so long depended on imported water and being America’s fruit, vegetable, and nut basket. As public health becomes a national focus, local agencies must respond by incorporating elements of health in their planning and design.Our three Arrowhead Symposium panelists discussed aspects of water, transit access, and public health reminding us of our civic responsibility as planners and architects of the built environment.  Mark Gold spoke of the importance of water policy, reminding us, that “we are currently experiencing the biggest drought California has had in over 800 years.” Steven Cliff, spoke of how Caltrans has[…]