Pierce on L.A.’s Just Energy Transition Initiative

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Greg Pierce, research and co-executive director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, co-authored a correspondence piece in the April 2025 publication of nature energy on lessons learned from L.A.’s just energy transition initiative. The city’s commitment to reach a 100 percent renewable equitable electricity grid by 2035 was followed by a 2021 study establishing the feasibility of local grid decarbonization pathways which emphasized that only justice-oriented strategies would ensure equity outcomes. Pierce and his co-authors were part of the LA100 Equity Strategies effort, a two-year partnership between the city’s electric utility — the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) — researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, UCLA, and local community-based organizations (CBOs) which was concluded in late 2023. In the nature energy piece, Pierce and colleagues summarize what other cities can learn from their findings and include five key insights that may be helpful for other cities working on a just transition.

Mullin on Political Shift in Attitudes on Environmental Protection

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Megan Mullin, faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation was a guest on the UCLA Daily Bruin podcast “Bruin to Bruin.” The episode focused on the growing polarization in environmental politics, the aftermath of the 2025 Los Angeles County fires and the UCLA Luskin professor of public policy’s work and journey as an environmental researcher. The UCLA Luskin Endowed Chair in Innovation and Sustainability was asked about the shift in attitudes about environmental protection between political parties in the U.S. “We all care about clean water, we all care about clean air, and if you put it to the test, we all want a climate that’s livable for human populations. How we get there becomes the real challenge,” said Mullin, who also is leading a UCLA team tasked with developing policy recommendations to help Los Angeles recover from the 2025 wildfires. “It’s been a 30-year trajectory of division.”

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Hererra on Slow Harms and Citizen Action

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Political Science Veronica Hererra was a recent guest on the Sur-Ubano Podcast based at the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design. The episode focused on Hererra’s 2024 book, “Slow Harms and Citizen Action” (Oxford University Press), which chronicles the struggle against toxic exposure in urban Latin America. The podcast cites toxic pollution as the cause of more than 12 million deaths each year with 92 percent occurring in middle- or low-income countries, and notes that because environmental harms are often slow moving — yet long-standing problems — they can be difficult to detect and result in inaction or resignation. “I find that the strength and the success and failure of environmental movements is really tied up in this larger story of democracy building in the region, in the historical legacies of the struggle for human rights as part of the struggle for democratization…something that the book emphasizes,” Hererra said.

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Tilly on the Effects of Tariffs in California

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UCLA Luskin Urban Planning Professor Chris Tilly spoke to Newsweek for an article about the effect that the Trump tariffs are having on California’s economy. California, known as the engine of the nation’s economy — with busy major ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach — is already seeing the consequences of the latest tariffs on imports, according to experts who also see inflation and recession fears growing amid destabilized markets. California, the fifth-largest economy in the world and the largest state economy in the U.S., is the largest importer and second-largest exporter in the nation. The tariffs also have impacted employment throughout the state, including California warehouses which have experienced large job losses, Tilly said. “California warehousing employment has not trended upward since 2022, and has fluctuated since that time, in my view because it was flirting with overcapacity,” Tilly said, adding, “Though the job losses look large, they are well within the range of recent fluctuations.”

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Kaplan on Homicide Rates and Gun Violence

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Mark Kaplan, professor emeritus of social welfare at UCLA Luskin, commented in a Dayton Daily News article about gun-related crimes in the city of Dayton, Ohio. The story follows an investigation of gun violence data over the past quarter century that shows gun violence has been concentrated, and remains concentrated, in the same neighborhoods in the city. Four out of five shootings and violent gun crimes with injuries occurred in the west and northwest portions of the city, according to the newspaper’s research of Dayton Police Department data. The story also cited a recent citywide survey that found that many Dayton residents worry about firearm violence. Kaplan noted that homicide rates around the globe are highly correlated with income and wealth inequality and that areas with high levels of gun violence usually are segregated, disadvantaged, neglected and under resourced. He added that a “constellation of interrelated pathologies” contributes to gun violence and where it takes place.

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Turner on Cooling Cities

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V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation (LCI), was interviewed for a NBC 7 story about the cooling impact of special surface coatings that may reduce heat by reflecting light instead of absorbing it. The story is focused on a parking lot in San Diego’s Mission Bay coated with a product designed to reduce surrounding temperatures, or the “urban heat island” effect. “Surfaces like asphalt are really, really hot because they soak up a lot of the sun’s energy and slowly re-radiate it back throughout the day,” Turner said. She added that a lighter surface can quickly reflect more of the sun’s heat and, as part of a comprehensive cooling approach, may drop the overall temperature in an urban area by a couple of degrees. Lighter pavement is a start, but the best way cities and people can get cooler is by adding more trees to create shade, she said.

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LA County Transportation Subsidy Program Hits a Few Bumps

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Madeline Brozen, deputy director of the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies commented in a LAist article on delays in a Los Angeles County subsidy experiment designed to assist lower-income L.A. County residents pay to ride public transit and other modes of transportation. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the L.A. Department of Transportation launched a universal basic mobility pilot program in 2022, offering 1,000 South Los Angeles residents $150 a month for a year. But, Phase 2 which began last year, has experienced delays preventing its 2,000 enrollees to use the prepaid cards. Brozen, the lead researcher at UCLA evaluating the program with a team from UC Davis, said participants in Phase 1 reported that the extra cash for transportation helped them balance their budget, lessened stress and allowed them to connect more with family and friends. “They were able to … use their financial resources in other ways,” Brozen said.

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How to Fix Los Angeles’ ‘Mansion Tax’

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L.A.’s Measure ULA, the so-called ‘Mansion Tax,’ has led to a drop in high-value property sales in Los Angeles, according to new UCLA Luskin research. Michael Manville, professor and chair of urban planning and Shane Phillips, housing initiative project manager at the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, co-authored a Voices piece in the Los Angeles Times about the measure’s impact since voters approved it in 2022. “Our research shows that over the first two years since ULA was implemented, high-value property sales in the city fell by about 50% — a far steeper decline than elsewhere in the county during the same period,” wrote Manville, Phillips and co-author, Jason Ward, co-director of the Rand Center on Housing and Homelessness. They stress the need to reform the measure and offer suggestions such as state legislation they say could reduce ULA’s negative effects while preserving its goal of raising funds to help low-income renters.

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Commins on Los Angeles Leadership and Wildfire Recovery

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UCLA Luskin lecturer Stephen Commins is quoted in a New York Times story about Los Angeles businessman Rick J. Caruso and speculation on the wealthy developer’s next moves in local and state politics. Caruso, who spent $100 million running unsuccessfully against current mayor Karen Bass in 2022, is considering re-entering politics in another mayoral bid or possibly running for governor of California in 2026. The story focuses on Caruso’s re-emergence in the public spotlight through criticism of Bass’s handling of recovery and rebuilding efforts following the recent wildfires, characterizing him as a “shadow mayor” pushing steps already taken by city leadership. “The optics are terrible,” said Commins, who has studied government response to disasters. “I could write you a long script of everything that went wrong in the city of L.A., but jumping into the dog pile and pummeling people, or acting like you are a parallel government, is very destructive.”

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Yaroslavsky on LAHSA Funding Fight

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Former longtime L.A. leader Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, commented in a CBS News/KCAL broadcast about plans by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to create a new homelessness department, stripping funds from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA). “LAHSA was created as a result of a lawsuit between the city and county some 30 years ago or more,” said Yaroslavsky, who was on the city council at that time. “The county is the human service provider, mental health, health, drug rehabilitation, things of that sort,” he said. “The city has to provide the housing or shelter for these individuals to get them off the street and to get them back to where they can function in society. One without the other is a prescription for failure, with a capital F.” On April 1, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to approve a new county homelessness department.

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