A Push to Plant Trees in L.A.’s Hottest Places

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Edith de Guzman of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation authored a blog post on a new step-by-step framework to help residents, advocates, city leaders and planners work together on real cooling solutions in the hottest neighborhoods. “Beneath the reputation of Los Angeles as a land of cars, palms and sunshine lies a reality of stark inequalities — including access to trees and shade,” de Guzman wrote for The Equation, the blog of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Nearly 20% of L.A.’s urban forest is concentrated where only 1% of the city’s population lives, endangering lower-income communities and people of color with hotter-feeling summers and poor environmental quality.” de Guzman, a University of California Cooperative Extension specialist on water equity and adaptation policy, stressed the importance of partnering with community members to cool their neighborhoods and combat shade inequity.

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Torres-Gil on Fixing the Caregiver Shortage

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A Next Avenue series on individuals who are breaking new ground on issues surrounding aging highlighted the work of Fernando Torres-Gil, professor emeritus of social welfare and public policy at UCLA Luskin. Torres-Gil has has served as a senior advisor on aging to three U.S. presidents and has a long record of scholarship and advocacy in the field. He spoke of the urgent need for caregivers for older or disabled Americans, saying that the current workforce is underpaid and undervalued. “Young caregivers now will not work for $12 an hour to take care of a disabled person, not when they can go to In-N-Out and get $18, $19, almost $20 an hour and be better treated, have health insurance and have a job that doesn’t wear them down physically,” Torres-Gil said. He also weighed in on the 2024 election, expressing fears that political campaigns will reduce aging issues to “mudslinging, distortions and lies, no substantive discussion.”

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Stepping Up L.A.’s Plan for Safer Streets

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Urban Planning chair Michael Manville spoke to Bloomberg CityLab about the passage of a ballot measure aimed at speeding up the addition of hundreds of miles of bike and bus lanes, as well as wider sidewalks, on Los Angeles streets. The vote on Measure HLA served as a referendum on pedestrian and bicyclist safety and revealed frustration at the city’s slow pace of implementing a mobility plan adopted in 2015. “Hopefully, what this does is it lights a fire under the city to take seriously its own law that has been in effect for quite a while,” Manville said. The story also cited Jiaqi Ma, faculty associate director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and director of the UCLA Mobility Lab. “Unintended consequences need to be considered,” including potential increases in congestion, emissions and freeway traffic, Ma said, but he called the measure’s passage a “good step.”

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A New Era for Sidewalks, the Ultimate Public Space

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A New York Times story on a project to repair and restore 108 blocks of sidewalk surrounding Central Park called on UCLA Luskin Interim Dean Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris to provide history and context. “Sidewalks are the ultimate public space. They exemplify openness and democracy,” Loukaitou-Sideris said. “They really have to be open and accessible to everyone, regardless of age, gender, disability, race, ethnicity.” The urban planning scholar and author of “Sidewalks: Conflict and Negotiation Over Public Space” said sidewalks first became widespread in the United States in the 19th century but have many more uses today. Electric scooters, delivery robots, people using Google Maps on foot, people waiting for Ubers and restaurants expanding outdoors have all found a place on the sidewalk. “There are all these new uses that have been brought about by digital technology and the pandemic,” Loukaitou-Sideris said. “Sidewalks are becoming more important than what they have been, and it might be a new era for sidewalks.”

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Pierce on Water Safety, Affordability and Dwindling Supply

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Gregory Pierce, co-executive director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, spoke to news outlets about California’s water supply, safety, access and affordability. Around the country, water bills are rising as utilities upgrade aging infrastructure to meet standards for clean drinking water. New federal legislation would make permanent a pandemic-era program to help low-income families pay their bills and prevent shutoffs of water service. Investing in water infrastructure is an urgent priority, Pierce told the Los Angeles Times, adding, “We need to do more to support those who can’t pay.” Pierce also spoke to the Water Values podcast about water service and inequity in mobile home parks, and to CapRadio about below-average snowpack levels in California. Warmer storms this winter brought lots of rain but less snowfall — “a worrying trend to see coming to fruition,” said Pierce, who directs UCLA’s Human Right to Water Solutions Lab.

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How L.A. Residents Can Help Capture Stormwater

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When it rains in California, water agencies throughout the Southland use dry wells, dams and large spreading grounds to capture stormwater, but Los Angeles residents also may play a part in filling the arid region’s reservoirs. An LAist story on residential water capture included comments from Edith de Guzman, a water equity and adaptation policy cooperative extensive specialist affiliated with the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. It’s difficult to determine just how much an individual household’s yard could contribute to water capture through rain gardens, permeable pavement or swales, but landscaping innovations like those could make an impact, according to research in the 2015 report, Stormwater Capture Master Plan. The study was prepared for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in partnership with TreePeople, where de Guzman worked as director of research at the time. “Parcel by parcel there is an additive effect and we’ve shown that additive effect is really significant,” she said.

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A Fee to Ease Manhattan Traffic

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News outlets covering New York City’s plan to charge a congestion fee to drivers entering the most traffic-choked parts of Manhattan called on UCLA Luskin transportation experts to provide insight. Donald Shoup, distinguished research professor of urban planning, told Gothamist that New York is unusual in that nearly all of the curb spaces are unmetered. “This is some of the most valuable land on earth, and you could use it free if you bring a car,” he said, calculating that the city could generate $6 billion annually by charging $5.50 a day for every free curb parking spot. Urban Planning chair Michael Manville told the Associated Press that American cities should take heed of London’s experience, where several exemptions to a congestion pricing program have contributed to the return of clogged streets. “There’s always going to be carve-outs,” he said. “But the further and further you start going down that road, there lies madness.”

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Turner on Shade Equity Master Plan for Rural California Desert Region

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An Associated Press article on efforts to increase shade equity in a rural desert community in Riverside County cited V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation (LCI), whose work focuses on cities adapting to hotter conditions. The master plan inaugurated in the Eastern Coachella Valley, where summer temperatures regularly exceed 100 degrees, is among other efforts in the United States to increase climate resilience in Latino and other marginalized communities disproportionately exposed to extreme heat. The project, a collaboration of partners including LCI, is funded by a grant from the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research in California. “What was sort of being left off the table was how heat is affecting rural communities,” said Turner, associate professor of urban planning and geography at UCLA. Community members, part of a collaborative workshop with Luskin urban planning students on social justice issues, are also supporting the project.

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Experts Decry Decision That Would Gut L.A.’s Affordable Housing Plan

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Experts at the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies based at UCLA Luskin are at the forefront of research relating to affordable housing, and this work served as the basis for an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times questioning a city planning department decision that would shield some wealthier neighborhoods from multifamily development. Aaron Barrall and Shane Phillips of the Lewis Center’s Housing Initiative write that a review of data “shows that L.A.’s current capacity for development … is disproportionately concentrated in lower-income neighborhoods and communities of color.” Half of this capacity is in the poorest quarter of Los Angeles, while the wealthiest 10% furnishes less than 1%. Although the authors call the situation “disheartening,” they say the city still has time to adopt a strategy to add homes where they’re needed most. “Until L.A. takes those steps,” they note, “very little about this housing plan can be called fair.”

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UCLA Report Examines California Public Transit Agency Labor Shortage

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A report co-authored by Jacob Wasserman, a research project manager at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, was highlighted in a Streetsblog article about labor shortages and their impact on public transit systems in California. Wasserman and co-authors Allie Padgett and Keenan Ky-An Do studied 20 California transit agencies, interviewing a number of workers, to understand ongoing labor shortages at the state’s transit agencies and efforts to attract and retain transit workers. “Raises may not prove enough to alleviate [labor] shortages, given rising costs of living, competition from other sectors and years of prior wage stagnation,” the authors wrote. They cite worker responses including California’s long commutes and high housing costs that make it difficult for them to work close to home. “Hard working conditions on transit push people away and out, even [though] pay and benefits in transit may be better,” they wrote.

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