Mukhija on Putting L.A.’s ‘Graffiti Towers’ to Good Use

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Scripps News spoke to Urban Planning Professor Vinit Mukhija about the partially built high-rise buildings in downtown Los Angeles that were covered by floor after floor of graffiti earlier this year. The tagged buildings, part of a planned luxury complex abandoned years ago after funding dried up, stoked a national debate over development priorities, including how governments can put abandoned or vacant properties to good use. “The problem does seem to exist that there are too many hurdles for the local government to come in, acquire this project — not leave it empty, stalled for five years — and build something more socially beneficial out of it,” Mukhija said. “This should be an opportunity to make it into the kind of housing we want more than luxury housing. If there’s any housing we want more than luxury housing, it is affordable, non-market-rate housing.” 

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Master of Real Estate Development Receives Final Approval From UC The one-year degree program will stress instruction on the ethical underpinnings of a growing profession

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By Stan Paul and Les Dunseith

Beginning in the fall of 2025, the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs will enroll students in a new Master of Real Estate Development, or MRED, program.

“We are delighted and excited to receive approval for the MRED, which we envision as building a better future for our cities,” said Interim Dean Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, distinguished professor of urban planning. “We see the MRED as a transformative opportunity to train and diversify a new generation of real estate professionals who can best respond to the needs for more and more affordable housing, climate-adaptive and green-building technologies, and age-friendly developments.”

The Office of the President of the University of California notified the Luskin School of the degree’s final approval on Jan. 23. It has been working its way through the approval processes at UCLA and UC for about two years.

Led by Vinit Mukhija, a professor and former chair of urban planning, the program will be a one-year, full-time, self-supporting degree program that emphasizes the ethical underpinnings of a growing profession.

Mukhija said urban real estate development is “one of the most powerful forces shaping buildings, neighborhoods, cities and their suburbs, and metropolitan regions.

“From planning to finance to design, development decisions about what to build and where to build influence equity and urban sustainability in ways that are often neglected in traditional real estate development programs.”

 “Success in real estate development will require a nuanced understanding and ethical response to underlying environmental and social challenges.” —Professor Vinit Mukhija

The MRED will provide key practical skills, integrating students into real-world development projects. It will take advantage of UCLA’s location in the nation’s second-largest city, Los Angeles.

Mukhija also noted the profound role that development has in addressing global grand challenges.

“Success in real estate development will require a nuanced understanding and ethical response to underlying environmental and social challenges,” he said.

Coursework will be led by faculty experts from UCLA Urban Planning, the Anderson School of Management and UCLA Law. An inaugural class of 25 students is expected, growing to about 40 students in the program over time. 

The MRED will be a full-time (44 units minimum), primarily on-campus program spanning 11 months, with students in residence during the fall, winter and spring quarters, which is consistent with other real estate development programs in the United States. 

Applicants to the MRED program at UCLA Luskin must possess a bachelor’s degree or equivalent. At least two years of experience in real estate, urban development or a related field is preferred. 

Unlike other real estate development programs, Mukhija said the UCLA program will be distinguished with an Urban Development core requirement that situates the MRED program’s training within the broader terrain of urban governance and urban life, including the challenges and opportunities presented by concerns about equity and sustainability.

Mukhija expects that many of the applicants will be mid-career professionals who are not typically served by state-supported programs. A significant share of international applicants is anticipated, with some coming from countries with growing urbanization rates and thus facing  new challenges relating to urban growth.

In addition, the program proposes to prepare real estate development professionals who understand the fundamentals of development, as well as the context of urban development and the effect of real estate and urban development on urban life and economic opportunities.

Senate faculty will teach at least 30% of the courses, joined by distinguished and innovative real estate and urban development practitioners. These industry experts with practical experience in real estate will provide the development and experiential knowledge that is “crucial and essential for the holistic, integrative perspective that we intend to cultivate in our students,” according to the documentation prepared by UCLA Luskin in support of the program. 

Although situated within UCLA Luskin Urban Planning, coursework will also touch upon issues taught in the School’s social welfare, public policy and public affairs degree programs, which share a common thread of social justice and a desire to make society better. And the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies based at UCLA Luskin will play a role in the research component.

In addition to conducting research on real estate and urban development, the MRED students will receive training to become real estate development professionals who can recognize and address the challenges of inclusive urbanization.

“It’s part of our mission,” Mukhija said.

Sharing the American Dream Through Granny Flats and Garage Units

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Urban Planning Professor Vinit Mukhija joined the podcast UCLA Housing Voice in a two-episode appearance focused on how American neighborhoods are being reshaped by the addition of living spaces to existing lots. Often unpermitted, these spaces run the gamut from a fully appointed backyard unit to a storage shed used for shelter. Mukhija’s new book, “Remaking the American Dream,” shows how single-family living has been transformed to meet the growing demand for adequate housing. He delves into the issue with podcast hosts Shane Phillips of the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and Paavo Monkkonen, UCLA Luskin professor of urban planning and public policy. Their expansive conversation includes an assessment of state and local government efforts to bring unregulated housing out of the shadows and encourage the construction of permitted accessory dwelling units. Policies that increase housing density, Mukhija says, allow more people to share the American Dream by “sharing single family lots, … sharing neighborhoods, sharing cities, sharing suburbs.”

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What Large Metropolises Can Learn From Ghettos and Granny Flats

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Urban planning professor Vinit Mukhija is known around the globe for his shrewd insights into what shantytowns and other self-built neighborhoods can teach large metropolises about smart urban planning. With its shortage of affordable housing, Los Angeles can benefit from the pragmatism and ingenuity emanating from these “informal” developments, Mukhija told UCLA Magazine. “I wanted to make better cities, where people are better to each other. And this means taking the best of what economically disadvantaged people build for themselves — slums or ghettos or, as in L.A., unpermitted developments within existing homes,” Mukhija said. His research suggests that, of the more than half-million single-family houses in the city of Los Angeles, at least 50,000 of them have some kind of accessory dwelling unit, many unpermitted. “Instead of trying to wipe them out, we should be bringing them into the mainstream,” he said. In the magazine profile, Mukhija also speaks of planners around the globe who think about the design of a community rather than a single dazzling building. And he offers guidance to governments grappling with the dearth of affordable housing: Provide property owners with grants and loans to upgrade their informal units to safe levels in return for a guarantee that they will not increase rents on any tenants for several years. Also needed: the construction of social housing, as “we cannot expect cities to become inclusive, magically, by themselves.”

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Mukhija on the Complex Challenges of Easing the Housing Crunch

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“Can subdividing the American dream fix the problem of unaffordability?” That question is posed in a New Republic review of the latest book by urban planning professor Vinit Mukhija, which focuses on the informal, un-permitted units that have proliferated on single-family home lots, providing needed shelter amid an intractable affordable housing crisis. Los Angeles alone has about 50,000 of these un-permitted second units, Mukhija estimates in “Remaking the American Dream: The Informal and Formal Transformation of Single-Family Housing Cities.” Unless more housing is built, we will see more un-permitted units, some of them unsafe, the book argues. It also emphasizes that we must invest in and upgrade existing informal housing units, which play a vital role in expanding affordable options for shelter. As the review notes, “A quiet housing revolution is taking place. But if policymakers don’t adapt to the new construction, the changing market is likely to reproduce the same instability and abuse that poor tenants currently suffer.”

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Creating More Inclusive Cities Through Just Urban Design

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“Just Urban Design: The Struggle for a Public City,” co-edited by urban planning faculty members Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Kian Goh and Vinit Mukhija, includes writings by urban planners, sociologists, anthropologists, architects and landscape architects who focus on the role and scope of urban design in creating more just and inclusive cities. Published by MIT Press, the book seeks to strengthen “the potential of cities and city regions to foster inclusive urban public life” by envisioning how to deliver social, spatial and environmental justice in cities. Too often, the opposite is true — the concept of justice rarely appears as an explicit concern in urban design discourse and design practice. “Market-driven urbanism of the last decades has exacerbated injustice through privatization, gentrification, displacement and exclusion,” the editors say. By focusing on justice, urban design scholars and practitioners can reinvigorate their work and help create public cities that are attuned to power dynamics and attentive to the historically vulnerable and disadvantaged.

 

Mukhija on Bringing Un-Permitted Housing Out of the Shadows

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A Los Angeles Times editorial calling on city leaders to make it easier to legalize backyard homes cited research by urban planning professor Vinit Mukhija, an authority on the informal economy of un-permitted housing units. Accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, are a relatively easy way for Los Angeles to add more housing at a lower cost. L.A. had at least 50,000 un-permitted secondary units on single-family lots in 2014, according to research by Mukhija, author of “Remaking the American Dream,” a new book on the transformation of an urban landscape once dominated by single-family homes. While recent state laws have eased the process of legalizing ADUs that were built without a permit, regulations in the city of Los Angeles continue to be complicated, time-consuming and expensive, the editorial maintained. It urged city leaders to do everything in their power to help property owners bring their un-permitted units and tenants out of the shadows.

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New Book by Mukhija Redefines Single-Family Living and the American Dream

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A new book by urban planning professor Vinit Mukhija tracks the evolution of single-family living, once held up as an expression of American individuality and prosperity but now under reexamination as homeowners modify their property in response to economic, social and cultural demands. In “Remaking the American Dream: The Informal and Formal Transformation of Single-Family Housing Cities,” published by MIT Press, Mukhija uses Los Angeles as a case study and includes lessons from Santa Cruz, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis and Vancouver. Across the U.S. and in other countries, homeowners are building backyard cottages, converting garages, basements and recreation rooms, and carving out independent dwellings from their homes to increase and diversify the housing supply. In addition to such un-permitted “informal housing,” some governments are modifying once-rigid land-use regulations to encourage the construction of additional units on lots formerly zoned for a single home. These trends have resulted in a transformation of both the urban landscape and the American psyche, Mukhija writes. He urges planners, urban designers, and local and state elected officials to broaden their thinking on housing options, particularly for disadvantaged groups. “After almost a century of public policy and cultural support for an ideology of single-family housing homeownership, there is a growing recognition that the social, economic and environmental cost of single-family living may outweigh its benefits,” Mukhija writes. “I see the potential for a more open, diverse, just and sustainable American city.”

 

Mukhija, González on Legalizing Informal Housing Units

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Urban Planning Professor Vinit Mukhija and Latino Policy and Politics Initiative research director Silvia González were featured in a New York Times article about the prevalence of informal housing units nationwide. The affordable housing crisis has prompted people of every income level to decide to build themselves, creating a vast informal housing market that accounts for millions of units. “This is one of the most significant sources of affordable housing in the country,” Mukhija said. Priced out of many housing options, many renters choose unpermitted living situations that are unsafe or overcrowded, González said. Legalizing informal housing would make units safer, add value to homes and give tenants the security of a sanctioned unit, she said. González participated in research for the nonprofit Pacoima Beautiful that found that informal units can help combat gentrification by creating low-cost housing and allowing families to pool resources.

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Mukhija on Shortcomings of Housing Relief

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Professor of Urban Planning Vinit Mukhija spoke to the New York Times about the failures of the federal housing relief packages created during the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to the economic devastation caused by the pandemic, Congress created a $46.5 billion fund for emergency rental assistance, one of the biggest infusions in federal housing aid in generations. However, resistance from landlords and difficulties navigating the informal housing market made it difficult for residents to access aid packages, and much of the aid is unspent. The relief package did not account for informal and un-permitted housing arrangements, including subletters and roommates whose claim to their space often isn’t documented. “There’s a completely hidden story about how do we access millions of tenants that are in un-permitted units,” Mukhija said. In Los Angeles County, there are an estimated 200,000 illegal housing units, highlighting the contrast between the low-income rental market and the rest of the housing market.

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