Newton Discusses Police Transparency in Wake of Recent Shooting

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Lecturer Jim Newton of UCLA Luskin Public Policy was interviewed on KPCC’s “Take Two” about police transparency, particularly police body camera footage released after a recent incident. Newton, who covered the LAPD during his 25-year career at the Los Angeles Times, said, “The new wrinkle here is audio and video obviously, but the tension between the department wanting to contain information and the public, principally the press, trying to seek that information certainly goes back at least to the early ’90s when I was covering the police department full time. … Now we’re coming up in this new technical iteration of it, which is the question of what to do with all this body camera footage that police are collecting and what to do with civilian footage and audio that people just have on their cellphones.”

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Storper Weighs In on the Battle for the Bay Area’s Soul

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Professor Michael Storper of UCLA Luskin Urban Planning speaks about the “contest for the heart and soul of the Bay Area” in a wide-ranging interview with Public Knowledge. Storper says the region’s rich history of social connectivity has underpinned its economic success. Now, in the face of rising inequality, “Silicon Valley capitalism must be more than about disrupting markets and daily life.” The Bay Area must draw on its “deep intellectual and humanistic traditions,” he said, “and let’s hope that it is the beginning of a new wave of balancing the advantages of the Information Age with a new public space.”

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Matute Comments on State Debate Over Driving Limits and Climate Change

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Juan Matute, deputy director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, commented in a story on the California Air Resources Board’s efforts to reduce daily driving, or vehicle miles traveled (VMT), as a way to curb greenhouse gas emissions in the state. “As electricity becomes cleaner, the proportion of total statewide [greenhouse gas] emissions from transportation is increasing,” Matute said in a story that originated with the San Diego Union-Tribune. “Cars have a long turn-over cycle, and our urban and regional design has an even longer time horizon for change.”

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Taylor Comments on Elon Musk’s Plan for High-Speed Rail Tunnel in Chicago

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Professor Brian Taylor of UCLA Luskin Urban Planning is quoted in a CNBC web story about Elon Musk’s Boring Company and its contract for a faster transportation link between busy downtown Chicago and O’Hare Airport. The plan is opposed by many local transportation providers, including cab drivers whose ridership has declined significantly because of rideshare services.  “It’s really not managing the problem. It’s just providing an alternative,” Taylor said. “It’s sort of like when you have an interesting breakthrough in the lab, which might take 10 years to complete.”

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Bill to Deem Children Under 12 Too Young for Court Is Backed by Abrams’ Research

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Research by Professor Laura Abrams of UCLA Luskin Social Welfare is mentioned in a story that originated with the Chronicle of Social Change and has been picked up by other media outlets, including the Appeal and the Press-Telegram. Senate Bill (SB) 439 would prevent the juvenile justice system from hearing most cases of children younger than age 12. “I think people have an assumption that juvenile court is potentially a helpful intervention for young children,” Abrams says in the story, which notes her analysis of state juvenile justice data. “But in most cases, the charges aren’t sustained or they’re dismissed, so the family doesn’t get any help at all.”

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NPR, Washington Post Cite Research by UCLA Luskin’s Jisung Park

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A study by R. Jisung Park, assistant professor of public policy, is cited in the online story that accompanies a recent NPR “Morning Edition” piece about the impact of hot weather on brain function. Compared with a 72-degree day, “taking an exam on a 90◦F day leads to a 10.9 percent lower likelihood of passing a particular subject (e.g. Algebra), which in turn affects probability of graduation,” according to Park. The same quote, plus additional information from the study, is included in a data-driven story by the Washington Post headlined, “Heat Makes You Dumb, in Four Charts.”

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Shoup’s New Book Is Reviewed by Planetizen

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“Parking and the City,” a follow-up to Don Shoup’s 2005 publication, “The High Cost of Free Parking” was reviewed recently on the planning-related Planetizen website. “More than just providing an abridged version of ‘The High Cost of Free Parking,’ however, ‘Parking and the City’ passes the torch of parking reform to a new generation of academics, professional planners, and transportation engineers,” writes reviewer James Brasuell. Of the nearly 50 book contributors, 11 are former UCLA Luskin Urban Planning master’s and doctoral students. Meanwhile, other media outlets continue to cite Shoup’s research in stories about the subsidization of parking by cities, including a recent opinion piece by Bloomberg.

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In Op-Ed, Gilens Cites 5 Reforms for Broken Policymaking in Washington

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In an opinion piece for the political news website The Hill, UCLA Luskin’s Martin Gilens, professor of public policy, joins co-author Benjamin I. Page of Northwestern University in proposing a set of reforms that would actually increase democratic responsiveness. They say their research indicates that the most important and most promising changes fall into five groups: 1. Give equal political voice to all citizens; 2. Curb the political power of money; 3. Democratize the electoral process; 4. Improve House and Senate representation of all citizens; 5. Overcome remaining sources of gridlock.

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Taylor Weighs In on the Broken Dreams of Bedroom Communities

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UCLA Luskin’s Brian Taylor lent his expertise in housing and transportation to a KPCC story on the broken dreams of America’s mid-century suburbs. The story focused on Lakewood, a bedroom community that epitomized the good life in California when it was developed in the 1950s. Since then, nearby industries have collapsed and traffic congestion has become acute. “We don’t build the housing we need, then we have huge ramp-ups in housing costs, which has big economic impacts and means people often live much farther from where they would like to, which makes the traffic worse,” said Taylor, professor of urban planning and director of the Institute of Transportation Studies. What California needs, he said, is more housing in areas closer to jobs, rather than the exurban sprawl that has compounded the problem. The story also aired on American Public Media’s “Marketplace,” beginning at the 9-minute mark.

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