The Downside of ‘Managed Retreat’ in Wildfire Zones

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A recent San Diego Union-Tribune includes information from UCLA Luskin’s Liz Koslov about the debate over how best to protect people, homes and facilities located in areas prone to wildfire. “Managed retreat,” the methodical relocation of communities away from hazardous areas, has mostly been discussed in relation to coastal areas threatened by rising sea levels. Its potential value in fire-prone lands is a topic of debate. The story cites an interview by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) with Kathryn McConnell of the University of British Columbia and Koslov, assistant professor of urban planning at UCLA, in which they say creating more unmanaged open space in fire zones could lead to a buildup of dry brush and result in increasingly severe wildfires. Koslov holds more optimism for policies that reduce wildfire fuels, especially near populated areas. “The wildland buffer project in Paradise, California, is a great example,” Koslov said during the PPIC interview. Officials there are acquiring land sold by people whose homes were destroyed in a 2018 fire to create a network of trails, parks and managed open space as a protective firebreak. “The idea is to help people stay there more safely, while also doing some retreat and land repurposing,” she said.

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Experts Say U.S. Labor Force Needs More Foreign-Born Workers, not Fewer

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In an article about the growing demand for foreign-born workers in the United States, Yahoo Finance spoke about immigration policy with Amada Armenta, associate professor of urban planning and faculty director of the Latino Policy and Politics Institute at UCLA. Noting that former President Donald Trump has vowed to finish a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, the story cites the GOP platform’s promise of the “largest deportation operation in American history.” Experts say such rhetoric misrepresents the country’s current and future employment needs, particularly with a large group of U.S. workers entering retirement. “Good policy can improve the politics around this issue, which has been really mired in dysfunction for decades,” Armenta said. “So, what we need are some courageous leaders who will change the narrative about the importance of immigrants in the United States and do their job to create legal opportunities for people who have been working here for decades.”

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Protecting Transit Riders, Serving the Unhoused

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Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, interim dean of the Luskin School, spoke with UCLA Blueprint about her research into strategies that address the rising number of unhoused people seeking shelter within public transit systems. Nationwide, transit agencies are partnering with law enforcement, health departments, social workers and others to ensure the safety and comfort of all passengers while connecting homeless riders with services. But challenges abound, including a lack of funding, staffing and available housing, Loukaitou-Sideris has found. Her team has assessed a wide variety of programs, including discounted fares, rides to shelters and, in Philadelphia, an expansive facility for resources located in the region’s public transit hub. Loukaitou-Sideris’ goal is to help transit agencies learn from one another’s experiences. “You cannot resolve the problem overnight,” she said. “If instead of seeing the numbers going up and up and up, we start seeing a trend going down, down, down, then it’s a step in the right direction.”

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On U.S. Cities’ Reluctance to Embrace ‘Congestion Pricing’

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Urban Planning Chair Michael Manville spoke to LAist’s “AirTalk” about the reluctance among some cities to launch “congestion pricing” systems to ease traffic, raise revenues and improve climate conditions. Just weeks before Manhattan was due to implement congestion pricing, becoming the first U.S. city to take the plunge, New York’s governor halted the program. “Seeing it go down is not a good omen for the political fortunes of L.A.’s program,” which is far from getting off the ground as officials keep a series of studies under wraps, Manville said. In international cities including Singapore, London and Milan, he noted, congestion pricing has been successfully launched, with growing support among residents. “The funny thing about congestion pricing is that, in places where it has been implemented, people like it,” Manville said. “But it’s noncontagious. Almost no one looks at the success abroad and says, ‘Oh, we want to do that here.’”

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Yaroslavsky on Tamping Down Political Violence

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, commented on a KCAL News/CBS News Los Angeles broadcast about the latest instance of political violence — the attempted assassination of former U.S. President Donald Trump at a recent Pennsylvania political rally. The former Los Angeles city councilman and county supervisor was asked how current politicians can ease tensions and tone down potentially dangerous political rhetoric. “I think mostly for the foreseeable future in the short term … the tension should be tamped down and the rhetoric will be less provocative, on all sides of the political spectrum,” he said, “… both because it’s the right thing to do and it’s also the politically correct thing to do.” Yaroslavsky said that people expect leaders, “from the top and all the way down the chain,” to bring unity and to try to bring people back together to stop the rhetoric that provokes political violence. “Words matter,” he said.

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Extreme Heat’s Rising Toll on Public Health

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News outlets seeking expertise on the impact of extreme heat have called on V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. Turner spoke to The New York Times about emergency rooms nationwide struggling to treat life-threatening heat-related illnesses. “It’s difficult for us to know how many people are impacted by extreme heat when we look at emergency room data,” Turner said. Around 2,300 people were reported to have died from heat-related illnesses in the United States in 2023 — triple the annual average between 2004 and 2018 — but that number may be an undercount, since many hospitals use software that does not include codes for heat-related conditions. Turner also spoke with Spectrum News about a California ballot measure that would allow the state to borrow $10 billion to address climate change. “The investment today is going to save us in the future because we will only see worse, more intense, longer heat waves, longer heat seasons impacting more areas of the state,” Turner said. 

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Understanding Europe’s Political Turmoil

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News organizations covering political upheaval in Europe have turned to the 2024 Berggruen Governance Index (BGI) for a deeper understanding of nations’ capacity to meet the needs of their people. PA Media cited the index’s finding that “long-term scars” caused by austerity and Brexit have stifled economic growth and undermined social cohesion in Britain. The public’s level of trust in many government institutions is at near-record lows, according to the BGI, a collaboration between the Los Angeles-based Berggruen Institute and the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. In France, the researchers found that “sluggish economic performance, persistent inequalities and tensions around migration” fueled a surge in support for the political right, according to the Democracy News Alliance. That said, the index still ranks the quality of governance in Britain and France among the highest of the 145 countries assessed.

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Pierce on California’s Water Quality

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Greg Pierce, director of UCLA’s Human Right to Water Solutions Lab, commented in a CalMatters article about nearly 1 million California residents whose water does not meet state standards, according to an annual assessment released by California’s State Water Resources Control Board. The report, which updates earlier research by Pierce and colleagues at the Luskin Center for Innovation, notes that while more than a decade has passed since the state recognized clean, safe, affordable and accessible drinking water as a human right, nearly 400 water systems statewide don’t meet state requirements, particularly in disadvantaged and lower income communities of color. Despite nearly a billion dollars spent on grants in disadvantaged communities, estimated costs of fixing water systems would require billions of dollars over the next several years. “The subtext of this report is pretty clear,” said Pierce, who commended the water board’s transparency and extensive analysis. “The state just needs to put its money where its mouth is.”

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Parking Reform Can Seem Slow, but Technology Isn’t the Problem

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For years, Professor Donald Shoup has said, “price the curb,” but acting on that advice can vary from city to city. For example, it can mean adding parking meters on New York City’s Upper West Side to generate income from about 1,700 parking spaces that historically provided free storage for car owners in one of the nation’s densest, most expensive neighborhoods. As reported on Streetsblog, the Department of Transportation’s long-awaited “Smart Curbs” plan seeks to address rampant double-parking and traffic snarls resulting from increased online ordering and delivery drivers unloading packages on streets packed with private cars. But with just 175 meters, Shoup said, “they’re just nibbling around the edges of problems with parking on the Upper West Side.” Shoup also recently spoke with Government Technology  magazine about technological innovation in curb management, saying he imagines a near future when parking payment will be handled by the cars themselves, via electronic technology.

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A Deepening Political Divide Over Clean Energy Investments

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Megan Mullin, faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, spoke to The Atlantic and The New York Times about the growing political polarization surrounding policies to combat climate change. A new Pew Research Center survey found that support for electric vehicles and renewable energy has fallen among Republicans over the past four years. During that time, President Joe Biden has launched initiatives including the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which invests at least $370 billion in the manufacturing of electric vehicles, solar panels and other renewable power, while former President Donald Trump has dismissed global warming as a “hoax.” “It’s on Republican airways right now because the IRA is one of Biden’s key successes,” Mullin said. She did point to a bright spot in public opinion data: Climate change has become a more urgent concern among Democrats over time, now ranking near long-standing Democratic priorities as education and health care. Mullin also expressed hope that the economic logic of clean energy investments will eventually outweigh partisan politics.

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