Professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris began her tenure as interim dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs on Jan. 1, 2023. Photo by Les Dunseith
Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris is the Interim Dean of the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA, a Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning, and a core member of the UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative.
She has also served as UCLA’s Associate Provost for Academic Planning from 2016 to 2019, as Associate Dean for the Luskin School (2012-2022), and as the Chair of the UCLA Urban Planning Department (2002-2008). She holds degrees in architecture and urban planning. Her research integrates social and spatial issues and emphasizes the need in planning, urban design, and policymaking to understand the perspectives of those who live and work in a community, and especially those of the most vulnerable populations.
The author or editor of 13 scholarly books and over 150 scholarly articles and chapters, she has written on issues relating to mobility and safety, women’s travel, homelessness in transportation environments, gentrification and displacement, ethnic neighborhoods, and inner-city and downtown development and revitalization, among other topics. Her most recent books include: Just Urban Design: The Struggle for a Public City (MIT Press, 2022), Pandemic in the Metropolis: Transportation Impacts and Recovery (Springer Nature, 2022), Transit Crime and Sexual Violence in Cities: International Evidence and Prevention (Routledge, 2020); Urban Humanities: New Practices for Reimagining the City (MIT Press, 2020), The New Companion to Urban Design (Routledge, 2019), Transit-Oriented Displacement or Community Dividends? (MIT Press, 2019), and The Informal American City: Beyond Taco Trucks and Day Labor (MIT Press, 2014).
Her research has been supported by the U.S. and California Departments of Transportation, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mineta Transportation Institute, the Haynes Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, the Gilbert Foundation, the Archstone Foundation, and the AARP, among others.
Loukaitou-Sideris’s research on sexual harassment in public and transit environments was instrumental in the passing of the SB 1161 in California against sexual harassment on transit, and she was recently invited and gave a briefing to the White House Gender Policy Council on this topic.
Loukaitou-Sideris has served as a consultant to the California Air Resources Board, Southern California Association of Governments, Project for Public Spaces, Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative, Los Angeles Metro, LA DOT, the Greek government, and municipal and state governments on issues of transportation and urban design.
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