Friends and Colleagues:

I am deeply saddened to report that our friend Marty Wachs, professor emeritus of Urban Planning, passed away Sunday night. Marty was a 50-year member of the Luskin and Urban Planning Community since his arrival as an associate professor of Urban Planning in 1971. He spent 25 of those years on the UCLA faculty.

Martin Wachs was a professor, chair (three terms), and the director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA who then spent a decade at UC Berkeley, where he was also chair and director of their Transportation Center. He also held appointments at UIC, Northwestern and Rand. Marty was the author of more than 160 articles and four books on transportation, land use and environment. He was an award-winning teacher and scholar, recognized for his research with a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Rockefeller Foundation fellowships, and he was the winner of a UCLA distinguished teaching award.

He was mentor to an entire generation of urban planners and urban planning scholars and a cherished friend of many of the Luskin faculty.

We are in touch with his wife, Helen, and will share details regarding arrangements as they become available. The Luskin School will plan an appropriate commemoration of his life and work, in consultation with his family, in the near term.

I know you all join me in offering our sincerest condolences to his family and friends.

In fellowship,

Gary

Gary M. Segura
Professor and Dean

Further coverage will follow. The Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA is encouraging people to add remembrances of Martin Wachs in the comments section of a post on the ITS website. Email tributes also may be sent to rememberingmarty@its.ucla.edu