Ong on Lost Time in Census Count

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Paul Ong, research professor and director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, spoke to news outlets about the shortened timeline for participating in the 2020 U.S. Census. The deadline moved from Oct. 31 to Sept. 30, which will “massively and adversely hurt low-income people of color,” Ong told the Orange County Register. “It’s really disappointing to see the Census Bureau ending it one month earlier given the setbacks with the pandemic that already put us on track for a flawed census. The one additional month could have at least somewhat closed the gap. But we’ve lost that time now.” In a Politico story on state and local efforts to encourage census participation, Ong said, “If we don’t have an accurate count, and if we particularly miss the disadvantaged populations who are in need, then it’s those neighborhoods that will be cheated out of money that should be going there.”

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Loukaitou-Sideris Highlights Societal Value of Parks

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Urban Planning Professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris spoke to USA Today about how to address inequities in the accessibility of parks and public spaces. Across the United States, the nicest parks tend to be in the wealthiest, whitest neighborhoods. Lack of access to parks means that people living in dense, urban areas have a harder time getting physical exercise and are more likely to have health conditions like diabetes, obesity and heart disease. “These are the neighborhoods that need these open spaces the most, because they do not have private open spaces,” Loukaitou-Sideris said. In dense cities where land costs are high, she recommended creating smaller spaces of greenery distributed through neighborhoods atop parking spaces or between existing structures. “Public space is an important good in a democracy. That’s where, historically, people from different walks of life would come together,” she explained. “You want a society that can give these different amenities to its residents on some level of equality.”

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Diaz on Trump’s Speech, COVID-19 and Racial Justice

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Sonja Diaz, executive director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative at UCLA Luskin, provided live commentary on the Republican National Convention as a political analyst on KTLA News. On the convention’s final night, Diaz noted that President Trump’s speech did not meaningfully address two issues important to Americans: the COVID-19 crisis and nationwide calls for racial justice. Trump has decried protests against racism as lawlessness but has not acknowledged police misconduct, Diaz said. His comments on the coronavirus “haven’t really got into the meat of how it’s impacted families,” focusing instead on placing blame on China, she said. With the death toll, job losses and safety fears caused by COVID-19, Diaz questioned whether Trump’s speech was adequate to win back disaffected voters. “I don’t know how that’s going to play with white female voters across this country,” she said.

 

Yaroslavsky Weighs In on GOP Convention

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, weighed in on the Republican National Convention as an analyst for CBS2/KCAL9 News. Yaroslavsky said the convention had two goals: humanizing Donald Trump and demonizing Joe Biden. The president was portrayed as an empathetic family man, and his Democratic opponent was cast as a radical socialist who was soft on law and order. Yaroslavsky noted that, “if there’s chaos in the streets of America tonight, which is what Trump is implying, it’s on his watch.” The convention had the feel of a “very well-produced reality show” that at times seemed out of place several months into the COVID-19 pandemic. “The rest of us are sitting here saying why are there a thousand people sitting on the White House lawn without masks when we can’t go to a restaurant,” Yaroslavsky said. With polls narrowing, he added, “Democrats cannot take this election for granted. This is going to be a close race.”

 

UCLA Study Cited in Essay on Why Movies Portray Developers as Evil

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A 2018 article about anti-development attitudes, authored by UCLA Luskin’s Paavo Monkkonen and Michael Manville, is mentioned by the Libertarian magazine Reason in an essay that focuses on the propensity of Hollywood to portray real estate developers as bad guys. The essay traces the movie trope of an evil developer as far back as Frank Capra and his Depression-era movies like the 1946 Christmas classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” That movie presents one of the best-known rich-guy villains in movie history: Mr. Potter. Such characters reflect circumstances explored by Manville and Monkkonen when they wrote about how the high cost of land and the complexity of regulations can make real estate development difficult. Reason quotes directly from the UCLA article, saying, “These circumstances could select for developers who are both affluent and out-of-step with conventional ways of behaving: Only deep-pocketed, hard-charging and confrontational people will be willing and able to lobby elected officials and get rules changed in order to build.”

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Hecht on Infrastructure Projects’ Threat to Tropical Forests, Rural People’s Rights

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In an opinion piece published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, leading tropical scholars, including Professor Susanna Hecht of UCLA Luskin Urban Planning and the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, warn that large-scale infrastructure projects in Latin America are undermining efforts to prevent climate change and biodiversity loss and enhance community land and resource rights. The researchers suggest alternative approaches to infrastructure, guided by an understanding of development that prioritizes human and environmental flourishing, equitable participation in decision-making, climate change mitigation, and a deepened relationship between science and public debate. The opinion is a response to the Group of 20’s emphasis on investment in large-scale infrastructure as a means of promoting economic growth. Governments are also promoting investment in infrastructure as a response to economic recession in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the authors. They outline how science can guide infrastructure planning to emphasize sustainability and respect for human rights.

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Nothing Uglier Than Redistricting, Yaroslavsky Says

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Los Angeles Initiative Director Zev Yaroslavksy spoke with KPCC’s Airtalk about the process of redistricting in relation to recent corruption charges against suspended City Council member Jose Huizar. Every 10 years, district lines are redrawn to reflect changes in population based on the census, and some have noted that the shuffling of districts gave Huizar a large swath of Los Angeles’ asset-rich downtown. “There’s nothing uglier or more difficult than the redistricting process every 10 years,” said Yaroslavsky, who described the political and sentimental factors at play. Most elected officials “want to keep as much of their district as they can” and some have close ties to the neighborhoods and constituents they may have represented for a decade or more. When politicians redistrict for themselves, self-interest can play a role, but Yaroslavsky also noted that there are “unintended consequences of so-called independent commissions.” He concluded, “There is no perfect system for redistricting.” 

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Risk of Undercounting Native Tribal Populations, Akee Says

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Associate Professor of Public Policy Randall Akee was featured in a Spokesman-Review article discussing the risks of undercounting Northwest tribal community populations. The Census Bureau announced that it will cut door-to-door counting short by a month, leaving census workers scrambling to meet the new deadline of Sept. 30. Indigenous people living on reservations were undercounted more than any other group in the 2010 census, the article noted. Tribal leaders fear that the shortened timeline could lead to an even more drastic undercount this year, resulting in less federal funding and other resources for tribes. Akee explained that the COVID-19 pandemic has stalled self-response rates. “There are so many competing messages about other things, and it’s hard for this to take hold in communities where people are worried about their economic stability and their actual health,” he said. “Filling out a census form is further down in people’s priorities.”

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Newton on What Harris Brings to the Democratic Ticket

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Jim Newton, lecturer and editor of UCLA’s Blueprint magazine,  spoke with Nine News Australia about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s selection of Sen. Kamala Harris as a running mate. Biden and Harris “come from different backgrounds and different parts of the country,” Newton said. “I think her presence on the ticket makes the ticket feel much bigger and much more appealing to a bigger section of the country.” Newton, who has tracked Harris’ career for two decades and interviewed her for the first edition of Blueprint in 2015, called her a tough political figure who has sparred with critics from both the left and right. He added that the selection of the first Black woman on the presidential ticket of a major party shows that Biden is open to “a new idea of America, rather than this country fighting to retain a white-majority establishment political culture.” 

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II&D Research Cited in L.A. Proposal to Forgive Household Debt

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News reports about a Los Angeles City Council member’s proposal to forgive the household debt of Angelenos hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic cited a report on the risk of widespread evictions compiled by the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy (II&D). Councilman David Ryu pointed to the research in making a case for the debt relief proposal, which would be funded through the Federal Reserve’s Municipal Liquidity Facility program, part of the federal CARES Act. “If we don’t deal with this crisis now, it will create an avalanche of homelessness and a generation of people buried in debt, and Los Angeles will pay the price for decades to come,” Ryu said. News outlets covering the proposal include the Larchmont Buzz, Los Feliz Ledger and Beverly Press. The II&D report was also recently cited by the Los Angeles Daily News and Pasadena Now.