Challenging Inequality UCLA Luskin Professor Ananya Roy Has a ‘Clear Mandate’ for Social Justice; New Luskin Institute: Teaching, Scholarship and New Center to Focus on Inequality and Democracy

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By Stan Paul

On day one of teaching her first UCLA undergraduate course, “Democracy and Inequality,” award-winning scholar, author and teacher Ananya Roy wasted no time getting right to a key point. Roy wanted to convey to students that “unprecedented forms of income inequality currently afoot in the United States have been produced through policies,” including taxation.

Roy describes her course, open to undergrads and grad students, as “taking up the case of persistent inequality in liberal democracies,” as well as covering key frameworks and methodologies for understanding and analyzing poverty and inequality. In doing so, she says that the already very popular course examines forms of action — from the role of government to social movements — that seek to intervene in such problems.

“It is important for us to recognize that various forms of inequality, be it income inequality or racial inequality, have been constructed and maintained,” said Roy, who joined UCLA in 2015 after many years on the faculty at UC Berkeley. And, her own discipline is not free of culpability, according to Roy. Urban planning, she said, is also “complicit in the production of racial inequality,” citing redlining and other forms of spatial segregation as examples.

But, Roy said, “The good news is these forms of inequality can also be challenged and tackled.”

At UC Berkeley, Roy held the Distinguished Chair in Global Poverty and Practice. Her course on global poverty regularly drew hundreds of undergrads each year, and, in 2010, The New Yorker called the advocate of public higher education “one of Berkeley’s star teachers.” The dynamic instructor, who also uses social media to encourage her students to think about their participation in public debate, also earned the Distinguished Teaching Award, the university’s highest faculty teaching honor, and the Distinguished Faculty Mentorship Award.

Roy is also a prolific author. Her book “Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development” won the 2011 Paul Davidoff Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, given for books that promote participatory planning and positive social change. Other titles include “City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics of Poverty” and, most recently, “Territories of Poverty: Rethinking North and South.”

Roy recently joined an international group of scholars as the co-editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR), published by Wiley-Blackwell.

Launch of New Center on Inequality and Democracy

In addition to teaching as a professor of Urban Planning and Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Roy will serve as the inaugural director of the new Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin. The center will be launched with two days of events, Feb. 4-5.

Roy has an ambitious — and still developing — task at UCLA, Luskin and the wider community. At the new institute, based within the Luskin School, she will oversee a multifaceted program of research, training and public scholarship concerned with both the current moment of inequality as well long histories of oppression and marginalization. With research interests ranging from social theory to comparative urban studies, Roy has dedicated much of her scholarship to understanding and analyzing persistent poverty in a prosperous but unequal world.

“The institute’s work is just getting started,” said Roy, but it will be quite different from similar centers and institutes at other universities. Key themes of the institute will be racial justice — and not only in economic terms — and thinking across the global north and south as opposed to focusing only on the U.S. or other countries. And, while the center will seek to “move the policy needle,” Roy said social movements will provide a guide as to how such change can take place.

“We recognize social change happens through the hard work of organizing and mobilizing. We also recognize social movements as producing key ideas, frameworks and approaches for diagnosing the public problems of our times.”

Another goal of the center is to create a space for debate. “I think the point we want to make is that it is necessary to have an intellectual space for debate within the left, within progressive and radical thought and action,” Roy said. “We hope the institute will be such a space. And Los Angeles is the ideal setting for such ambitions.

“It is a great privilege to be able to establish and direct this institute, to do so with a clear mandate for social justice, to do so at one of the world’s great public universities, and in a city that manifests enduring inequalities but is also home to inspiring forms of activism and mobilization.”

To learn more about the new Institute please visit the website at: http://challengeinequality.luskin.ucla.edu/

More about Ananya Roy
Born in Calcutta, India, Ananya Roy earned her bachelor’s degree at Mills College in Oakland, California, and her master’s and doctoral degrees at UC Berkeley. At UCLA Luskin, Roy holds the Meyer and Renee Luskin Chair in Inequality and Democracy and faculty appointments in Urban Planning and Social Welfare.

For a look at Professor Roy’s work in critical poverty studies, see #GlobalPOV: http://blumcenter.berkeley.edu/GlobalPov/

A Conversation with Mary Robinson: Former President of Ireland on Climate Change Luskin Lecture Series features human rights and climate change leader on a sustainable future

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By Stan Paul

Mary Robinson started her career with a deep passion for human rights, from economic and social to food, education, women’s rights, security and peace.

It was only later that the former president of Ireland says she saw the link between human rights and climate change, while serving as the United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Change. Her work and travels in Africa made her aware that climate changes were tied to uncertainties of drought and flooding and that “something was happening.” She heard again and again, in countries such as Liberia, that “things were getting so much worse.” In areas where the focus was traditionally on poverty or other issues, there were now areas where the climate — and planting and harvest times — could no longer be predicted.

“We needed to be talking about the injustice of climate change,” which affects the poor and most vulnerable, even the U.S., citing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on the poor in the U.S., said Robinson, who served as a U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights until 2002.

Following Robinson’s January 12 Luskin Lecture in UCLA’s Charles E. Young Grand Salon, former Los Angeles Times writer and editor Jim Newton moderated a discussion and Q&A session, asking Robinson about the impact of the recent Paris Climate Agreement.

Robinson, organizer of foundations including Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative and The Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, said she was energized by the talks in Paris, which provided a new way of describing the problem, and that she was encouraged that nearly 200 countries that all agreed on individual contributions to be made toward carbon emission reduction.

“It was actually a fair agreement, not strong but fair — that was extraordinary,” said Robinson.  She said that the Paris Agreement provided a new target for the world. “It put a stake in the ground.”

Even so, Robinson, citing a recent U.N. study, pointed out that if all of the countries realized their commitments to carbon reduction and climate change from the Paris Agreement, the world is still on course for a disastrous temperature increase beyond the oft-citied two-degree climate cliff.

Robinson said that more has to be done for a sustainable future, but the Paris agreement is nevertheless important because many countries would have given up, and that many small countries, island nations, will be “under water with 1.5 degrees.”

Robinson, who attended the climate talks in Paris, praised California, saying that the state was notable for its leadership in climate change and illustrating what can be done.

Prior to her presentation, co-sponsored by the Hilton Foundation and the Global Public Affairs (GPA) program at Luskin, a small group of UCLA Luskin graduate students had the chance to talk one-on-one with Robinson.

Jason Karpman, a second-year Urban Planning graduate student, said he was interested in this opportunity to talk with Robinson because of his interest in climate change, specifically carbon sequestration. “It’s the elephant in the room,” said Karpman, adding that, right now, “there are not a lot of options on the table.”

Robinson stressed to her pre-talk audience of Luskin students from Public Policy, Social Welfare and Urban Planning that the quality of leadership matters. “We need the policy decisions that are the right decisions,” and making policy more “people centered.” She added that the goal of sustainability should be to not leave anyone behind, which is what happened in the industrial revolution. She said that while the world must reduce carbon, at the same time, more than a billion people are energy poor, with no access to electricity and still burning dangerous kerosene in their homes.

“We have the gadgets,” said Robinson referring to LED lights, solar power, etc., and the ability to make payments on mobile phones via cell phone applications. “Most developing countries are interested in clean energy,” she said.

The discussion also included a range of important topics such as reforestation that is economically effective, the use of lighter materials such as carbon fiber in vehicles, technology and migration patterns. Migration patterns caused by politics and climate change are shaping up to be “one of the biggest issues worldwide,” said Robinson. “People have to move.” She said the real issue is how to manage migration in big numbers, pointing out how Syria and other countries have suffered both conflict and ongoing drought as well as the problems faced by countries due to an influx of migrants.

“They will come whether we like it or not,” she said. “We have to have leadership now.”

Robinson also has a very personal interest in the future of the planet — her grandchildren, who will be growing up in an age of severe climate change. She pointed out the intergenerational equity of the problem.

“This is about your children and grandchildren,” she said. “It’s their future.”

To view a video of the Mary Robinson Luskin Lecture, go here

To read coverage in UCLA Newsroom, go here

The Luskin Lecture Series

The UCLA Luskin Lecture Series enhances public discourse on topics relevant to the betterment of society. The series features renowned public intellectuals, bringing scholars as well as national and local leaders to address society’s most pressing problems. Lectures encourage interactive, lively discourse across traditional divides between the worlds of research, policy and practice. The series demonstrates UCLA Luskin’s commitment to encouraging innovative breakthroughs and creative solutions to formidable policy challenges.

Planning a City, At Your Fingertips A new web application created by UCLA Lewis Center provides an array of powerful resources to help anyone — from city planners to community members — track neighborhood changes, with just a few clicks

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Juan Matute, associate director of the UCLA Lewis Center and the Institute of Transportation Studies

Juan Matute, associate director of the UCLA Lewis Center and the Institute of Transportation Studies

By George Foulsham

You’ve lived in your community for about 20 years. You care about what’s going on in your neighborhood, and you’ve noticed it’s changing — but you’re not sure why. More importantly, you’d like to have a voice in the process of change, but you need more facts to participate with an informed voice.

Or, you’re a city planner who is contemplating adding a new neighborhood, or an in-fill commercial development. You have many factors to consider, including

reducing greenhouse gas emissions, access to employment, bringing people out of poverty.

Now, thanks to REVISION, a new web application created by the UCLA Lewis Center, part of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, anyone can aggregate data from various public and private sources to create a complete picture of neighborhood change. And they can do it with just a few clicks.

“We’ve built a tool that allows a great number of people, way more than just the professional planners who already have access to this data, the ability to go in and answer questions that they might have about this regional growth phenomenon,” said Juan Matute, associate director of the UCLA Lewis Center and the Institute of Transportation Studies. “To answer these questions before REVISION, it would have taken someone months of technical training and at least a day to gather the relevant information. Now, even people without technical expertise can get a great deal of insight in less than 20 minutes. So, REVISION makes big data on regional growth readily available at people’s fingertips.”

REVISION, created with the assistance of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), is dedicated to understanding community change in Southern California. With a range of metrics related to accessibility, livability, employment and health, REVISION helps both professional planners and stakeholders without a technical background monitor the progress of the region’s Sustainable Communities Strategy, a plan to improve environmental sustainability, social equity and public health. Users can use the site to answer hundreds of questions about regional and neighborhood change.

“We have created a web application that anybody can access with their web browser, to, with just a couple of clicks and in a couple of minutes, figure out if poverty is getting better or worse in this neighborhood,” Matute said. “Are people from this neighborhood using mass transit or bicycles to commute to work? Are we building new housing where there are a lot of bike lanes and frequent transit service or are we adding a lot of housing out in Lancaster or far-flung suburbs where people have longer distance commutes to access jobs? Or maybe there’s substantial job growth in Palmdale or Lancaster and their commutes are getting shorter.  With a few clicks someone can answer these and other questions.”

The UCLA Lewis Center and SCAG worked together to launch the REVISION application with funding from California’s Strategic Growth Council. Four integrated tools comprise the application:

Users can visualize differences between neighborhoods using the Map Tool.

The Trends Tool helps users identify statistically significant change over time.

The Area Report presents location-specific details from multiple sources: the just-released 2014 American Community Survey, CalEnviroScreen, planning data, Zillow real estate values and Walkscore.com.

The Property Report provides information from the County Assessor and other sources.

REVISION’s area reports have downloadable charts for many sustainability and livability metrics for over 10,000 census block groups in Southern California. The application combines metrics and data from over a dozen private and public sources to provide a dashboard view of community and regional sustainability planning information.

“You can do over a hundred different things with the application,” Matute said. “Somebody could go to the map, go to the various views on neighborhoods and use it to understand neighborhood change that’s associated with gentrification. Maybe people can educate themselves on the issues and come to their own conclusions.”

The REVISION application is currently available for Imperial, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties, though Matute says that the site could be rolled out to a wider area in the future. It can be found on the web at http://revision.lewis.ucla.edu.

“At UCLA, we typically produce research findings” Matute said. “REVISION is more of a public education tool in the spirit of the University’s service mission. It’s making the ability to answer questions about neighborhoods and the region a lot easier for a lot more people.”

Recent Findings Concerning Alcohol Abuse and Suicide Policies minimizing harmful alcohol use are essential for suicide prevention.

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By UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs

Recent studies conducted by UCLA professor Mark Kaplan and a team of researchers shed light on the association between alcohol abuse, racial-ethnic demographics, and suicide. The study, funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, reveals patterns between heavy alcohol use immediately prior to suicide with certain demographic groups, notably 43 percent of American Indian/Alaskan Native men and 35 percent of women demonstrated heavy alcohol use (defined as postmortem blood alcohol level at or above .08) at the time of suicide.

Other particularly vulnerable groups (demonstrating high alcohol use prior to suicide) include:

  • Latinos — 30.6 percent of men and 25 percent of women.
  • American Indian/Alaska Native — 43 percent of men and 35 percent of women.
  • White men — demonstrated 24.4 percent rate of heavy alcohol use.

“Using the 2005-11 National Violent Death Reporting System (n=52,276) and the 2001-02 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (n=43,093), we examined odds of heavy alcohol use among suicide decedents relative to living respondents across racial-ethnic groups after stratifying by gender and then adjusting for age and alcohol dependence,” wrote Kaplan, lead author of the study and Social Welfare professor at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

The paper “Heavy Alcohol Use Among Suicide Decedents: Differences in Risk Across Racial-Ethnic Groups” appears in the January 2016 online issue of the journal Psychiatric Services published by the American Psychiatric Association and emphasizes the markedly elevated risk of suicide associated with heavy alcohol use across all racial-ethnic groups and especially so for Hispanic women. According to Kaplan and colleagues, “Policies minimizing harmful alcohol use are essential for suicide prevention, particularly for the most vulnerable.”

 

New Report Calls for More Consistent Policies for Mobile App Transportation and Taxi Services

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WASHINGTON – Innovative transportation services such as car sharing, bike sharing, and transportation network companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft are changing mobility for millions of people, yet regulation of these services often varies greatly across geographic areas and industry segments.  Policymakers and regulators should formulate consistent policies that encourage competition among new and traditional transportation services — such as taxis and limousines — in order to improve mobility, safety, and sustainability, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

California was the first state to establish statewide regulations for transportation network companies and as such UC researchers played a large role in the report. The report was authored by a diverse group of academics and practitioners, including Brian Taylor, director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies at the Luskin School of Public Affairs. Taylor served as chair of the committee. Other notable members of the committee include Michael Manville, Cornell University and Jennifer Dill, Portland State University, both of whom are alumni of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

The availability of on-demand transportation services through smartphone apps is increasing shared mobility. The growth in these services follows and amplifies a recent rebound in taxi and public transit use. As of June 2015, Uber provided more than 1 million rides daily worldwide, while Lyft operated in 60 U.S. cities with more than 100,000 drivers.

The rapidly expanding services provided by TNCs, however, raise policy and regulatory challenges with regard to passenger and driver security, public safety, insurance requirements, employment and labor issues, and accessibility and equity. Current regulation of taxis and other for-hire transportation varies considerably across and within jurisdictions, even when the services offered are similar. Most large cities with sizeable street-hail markets extensively regulate taxis, while smaller cities where dispatch service is the norm tend to have lighter regulation. This pattern raises public policy concerns when taxi regulation is more stringent than that of TNCs. Leveling the regulatory playing field requires a reassessment of existing regulations governing taxi, limousine, and TNC services to determine the minimum necessary to ensure quality service and allow effective competition.

“Smartphone applications and GPS data are making feasible transportation services that have never before been realized on a large scale, and these services have the potential to increase mobility while reducing congestion and emissions from surface transportation if regulated wisely to encourage concurrent ride sharing,” said Taylor, who is also a professor of urban planning at the Luskin School of Public Affairs. “A key hurdle for policymakers at all levels of government is to both promote and facilitate innovations that meet the public’s mobility needs while achieving greater policy consistency among these new services and between them and traditional taxi and limousine services.”

To address public safety concerns, regulations currently focus on background checks of drivers, vehicle inspections, and minimum standards for vehicle liability insurance. Procedures for driver background checks are based on common practice but their efficacy has not been rigorously evaluated; likewise, the safety benefits of viewing shared driver ratings and operator and vehicle images on mobile apps have not yet been well-documented. Therefore, regulators at the state and federal levels should evaluate these safety requirements for their effectiveness and cost, the report says.

Regulated taxis offer critical transportation for people with disabilities in many areas, and although TNCs have introduced pilot programs to provide such services, they do not currently provide wheelchair-accessible services on an extensive or reliable basis, the report says.  About 10 percent of the U.S. population has a physical limitation; 3.6 million people use a wheelchair and another 11.6 million use a cane, crutches, or a walker. A decline in taxi fleets due to the continued rapid rise in TNCs could decrease the availability of for-hire vehicles for a substantial number of these travelers unless the quantity of TNC services for those with disabilities expands.

Further, most shared mobility services require users to have a credit card on file with the provider and arrange the trip using a smartphone. However, roughly 8 percent of U.S. households lack bank accounts that allow them to have credit cards, and 50 percent of adults earning less than $30,000 and 73 percent of adults over age 65 do not own smartphones. The committee concluded that local officials should ensure that the mobility needs of low-income, older and disabled riders are met as these new services expand and evolve.

In addition, policymakers and regulators should examine the pros and cons of alternative employment classifications of both TNC and taxi drivers. While new mobility services offer expanded opportunities for flexible, part-time employment for students or those seeking transitional income between careers, TNC drivers and most taxi drivers are classified by their companies as independent contractors, which limits their access to benefits tied to employment. This lack of benefits raises policy issues concerning employer-provided health care, workers’ compensation for injuries, and vacation and sick leave for those for whom such work is their sole source of income.

Policymakers and regulators should also consider whether traditional for-hire and shared mobility services are best monitored and regulated at the state, regional, or local level on the basis of market and service characteristics and regulatory capabilities. In addition, transportation planning bodies should develop methods for incorporating shared mobility into transportation planning initiatives and promote collaboration between public- and private-sector transportation providers.

Other UC researchers contributing to the report were Susan Shaheen of UC Berkeley and Daniel Sperling of UC Davis. Sperling is chair of the Transportation Research Board (TRB), which initiated and funded the study.

The study was sponsored by the TRB, a program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The Academies are private, nonprofit institutions that provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, technology, and medicine. They operate under an 1863 congressional charter to the National Academy of Sciences, signed by President Lincoln.  For more information, visit www.nationalacademies.org.

 

MPP Student Selected as Semi-Finalist for Presidential Fellowship

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Public Policy student Ryan Rosso has been selected as a Semi-Finalist for the Presidential Management Fellowship (PMF) program.

The Presidential Management Fellowship is a leadership and career development program administered by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Fellows are given a two-year appointment at a Federal agency, in addition to participating in career development and networking activities organized by the program. Throughout their appointment, fellows work through a series of developmental assignments and receive feedback for their work.

Rosso, one of 5 UCLA Semi-Finalists and the only Luskin representative, was selected from a pool of approximately 6,000 applicants. A first year in the MPP program, Rosso is concentrating in public finance, education and tax and hopes to work as a budget analyst in the future.

 

In Memoriam: Jacqueline Leavitt (1939 – 2015), Professor Emerita of Urban Planning

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UCLA Urban Planning scholar, committed teacher and mentor, and community activist dedicated to social justice passes away following distinguished career.

By Stan Paul

The UCLA Urban Planning Department mourns the loss of Professor Emerita of Urban Planning Jacqueline “Jackie” Leavitt who passed away November 27 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 76.

Professor Leavitt’s research during her decades-long career focused on housing and community development policy, public housing, and the multiple meanings of home, among many other urban and social issues. As a founder of the American Planning Association (APA) Planning and Women Division she is considered a pioneer in research on gender and community development. Additionally, her work brought to light the ways in which low-resourced populations managed to live, work, and survive in cities and regions across the globe.

“I entered urban planning believing in its ability to support social movements through both rigorous research and ethical practice,” she said in a 2008 interview by Progressive Planning Magazine. “In a country where rights are being usurped, and where the government has an ability to demolish public housing…, I still hold to beliefs for social and economic justice, and have tried to develop ways to bring those themes into my classrooms, not as an afterthought but an integral and basic goal.”

“Jackie loved her students, cared for her friends, had passion for her work and community activism. She was as comfortable inspiring her students to change the world, or talking at international gatherings for the rights of the poor, as she was holding the hand of public housing tenants and bringing holiday gifts to their children. We will miss her greatly,” said UCLA Luskin Associate Dean Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris.

An award winning scholar, Professor Leavitt was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to study the privatization of rental housing in New Zealand and Los Angeles, and won first place in the “New American House” competition earlier in her career. She studied the impact of privatization on tenants living in public housing and led projects that helped community organizations reverse disinvestment in underprivileged urban areas. Most recently, she worked with UCLA Emeritus Law Professor Gary Blasi to study the working conditions of taxi drivers in Los Angeles, expanding this research to include women taxi drivers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and New York City.

Professor Leavitt held both master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Urban Planning from Columbia University, where she is recognized as one of the school’s outstanding practitioners and a central figure in the feminist movement within Urban Planning.

She came to UCLA in 1983 as a visiting lecturer after teaching posts in prestigious planning programs at Columbia University, New York University (NYU), Cornell and City University of New York, and taught continuously in the UCLA Urban Planning Department for the last 32 years. Throughout her career, Professor Leavitt was a committed teacher and mentor, serving as faculty director of the Urban Planning Department’s undergraduate Urban and Regional Studies minor and teaching undergraduate courses in Urban Planning and UCLA’s Undergraduate Honors Collegium. Since 1999, she served as the director of the UCLA Urban Planning Department’s Community Scholars Program, a joint program with the UCLA Labor Center (a unit of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, IRLE), bringing labor and community leaders together with urban planning graduate students to conduct applied research projects. Professor Leavitt’s work “embodied her deep commitment to participatory planning, and both brought the university into the community and brought the community into the university,” said Chris Tilly, IRLE Director and Professor of Urban Planning.

The impact of her research and practice was far reaching. She served as a consultant to nonprofit resident groups, the Swedish Council for Building Research, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the New York City Housing Preservation and Development Agency. She also served on the Nickerson Gardens Community Development Corporation, which was formed to assist one of the largest public housing projects in Los Angeles.

“Jackie Leavitt was a fierce and stalwart critic of the systems and forces that marginalized so many. She was strong willed and articulate, and creative and innovative. That combination of fierceness and creativity is how I will remember her. She was one in a million,” said Luskin Interim Dean Lois Takahashi.

“Jackie was a long time Urban Planning colleague whose passionate commitment to social justice touched every aspect of her research and teaching on housing, gender, labor, and community development. She will be greatly missed by many of us,” said Evelyn Blumenberg, Professor and Chair of the UCLA Department of Urban Planning.

Professor Leavitt is survived by her brother Howard Leavitt and his family. A celebration of her life will be held in Los Angeles and New York (locations to be determined), where her ashes will be distributed. The UCLA Department of Urban Planning will hold a gathering in celebration of her life on Sunday, March 6 at UCLA.

ITS Partners with Caltrans to Deliver California Transportation Planning Conference 200 attendees meet in Downtown Los Angeles to discuss the future of transportation planning in California

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The last time Caltrans hosted a statewide transportation planning conference, in 2008, transportation in California was very different. Fastforwarding a short seven years later, California is hosting the first cap-and-trade system in the U.S., all of the state’s regions have Sustainable Communities Strategies linking transportation and land use, and public health at the center of the conversation. These changes, among others, are what bring together over 200 transportation professionals to the 2015 California Transportation Planning Conference hosted in Downtown Los Angeles December 2 through 4.

The conference covers various topics. Wednesday begins with a discussion on how transportation planning must evolve in order to maintain an effective transportation system for everyone. Questions of funding and aging infrastructure are on the agenda, including a discussion of system preservation featuring speakers from the Federal Highway Administration, the City of Los Angeles, Southern California Association of Governments and Caltrans.

“At the conference, transportation stakeholders and decision-makers will exchange ideas and learn about the latest developments in transportation planning from a national, state, and local perspective,” said UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) Associate Director Juan Matute. “We are grateful to have partnerships between research centers like UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and state and local agencies. These are essential opportunities for knowledge transfer.”

Matute will be moderating the session titled “Planning for Accelerating Transportation Change” on Thursday morning. UCLA ITS Director Brian Taylor will present during the Friday morning panel about the future of transportation. Director Taylor is joined by LADOT General Manager and UCLA ITS advisory board member, Seleta Reynolds, as well as Daniel Witt, Manager at Tesla Motors and two notable consultants, Jeffrey Tumlin of Nelson/Nygaard and Alan Clelland of Iteris.

UCLA ITS would like to thank the event co-presenters and sponsors: Caltrans, Southern California Association of Governments, Lyft, SoCalGas, Metro, Green Dot Transportation Solutions and Cambridge Systematics.

For live coverage of the event, follow tweets with the #2015ctpc hashtag.

 

 

Social Welfare professor receives grant to create center in Watts Jorja Leap awarded a $200,000 two-year funding commitment

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Social Welfare professor Dr. Jorja Leap has been awarded a $200,000 two-year funding commitment from the California Wellness Foundation to create the UCLA Luskin Watts Center for Nonprofit Management. This funding will support the first phase of a ten‐year initiative designed to respond to a critical need for leadership expansion and support within nonprofit agencies. In response to the UCLA Luskin 2013 report, “Spread Thin: Human Services Organizations in Poor Neighborhoods,” the Center represents an effort to develop leadership, fundraising capacity, policy advocacy and communication technology among the small and struggling nonprofit agencies of Watts.

What differentiates the Center’s approach from similar programs is its unique integration of adapted training, mentoring and resource provision through re‐granting. The Center will offer active, ongoing leadership development, focusing on the use of communication technology, fundraising diversification and strategy, as well as expanding knowledge and skills in policy advocacy.

The Center will pair each nonprofit agency participant with a dedicated UCLA coach‐mentor. The coach‐mentor will provide organizational case management and support, along with reinforcing what is learned through trainings and communicated throughout group sessions. The role of the coach‐mentors will include problem‐solving, consultation on adaptation and application to ensure learnings truly apply both to needs and programming in Watts and within the scope of the work the participant is engaged in, along with general support and accountability. In addition, to foster sustainability, coach‐mentors will be building skills in the first cohort of selected individuals, preparing them to mentor subsequent cohorts composed of the next generation of Watts nonprofit leaders.

The Watts Center for Nonprofit Management will launch in January 2016.

 

My neighborhood: the Friday the 13th Paris Massacres Urban Planning professor Michael Storper’s first-hand account of the Paris attacks

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By Urban Planning professor Michael Storper

The massacres occurred in the 10th and 11th arrondissements, for the most part.  I moved to the 10th in 1990.  At that time, there was a housing shortage in Paris and, desperate to find a place, I took one in a neighborhood I knew nothing about.  It turned out to be a down-and-out, but central part of Paris.  It was a declining area of small artisanal industries in metal-cutting, paper manufacture, and such.  It had a lovely but abandoned 19th century barge canal, known as the Canal St. Martin, running through it.  It had lots of poor people, public housing and drug traffic.  Parisians called it la zone.   Over the years, it gentrified.  Capitalizing on the extraordinary beauty of the canal, with its art nouveau bridges and locks, and some good industrial but also bourgeois architecture, it very slowly attracted young people, hipster families and such.  Cafes opened on the canal, and then the whole area became slowly converted into interesting new boutiques and restaurants and other attractions, driven in part by the rising rents in the nearby Marais and 3rd, just on the other side of the Place de la République.  I have a deep attachment to the neighborhood because I’m not a latecomer, here just for the coolness; I was here when it wasn’t cool and when I often came home at night to semi-hostile youth hanging out in front of my building, playing music, smoking joints, sometimes teasing the residents (especially the women).  We’ve had various rounds of negotiation with them, sometimes their parents, and so on, to resolve these issues, and sometimes there has been police intervention.  With gentrification, most of that is gone, and now it seems almost too clean, a bit boring.

My building has two floors of offices.  On the ground floor is an unemployment office and a center where migrants seeking  political asylum can apply.  The lines that snake in front of the building have changed composition in the past few years, from heavily East Asian to South Asian and of course, Syrian and Iraqi.  I see and, sometimes, speak to these people.  I know the security guard who keeps the line orderly.  The office is closing now, as the application process is being consolidated into another center in another place.

From my living room window, on the 4th floor, I look down on a primary school.  The parents bring the kids promptly at 8:30 am, and the school yard can be seen from my window, filled with raucous happy kids at recreation time.  The population seems to be a balanced mix of people with Asian, African and European heritage.

This area of Paris is now one of the liveliest.  The killers hit this neighborhood in order to target this young France, a world city’s pleasure and freedom zone.  Rather than going after the Champs Elysées or the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre, they wanted to get a generation in its territory.

On Friday evening, a friend had organized a get-together in a wine bar in the 1st arrondissement, between Châtelet and Louvre.  On the ground floor is a bar with one table, and then a subterranean wine cellar, where we gathered to drink red wines and – yes – eat cheese and charcuterie.  At about 10 pm my godson called to inform me.  As the evening wore on, we were told not to go out, and there were rumors of attacks spreading, some (falsely it turned out) said to be at Châtelet or Les Halles or City Hall.  We lowered the steel shutters and the two young bartenders poured champagne and then we moved on to Japanese whisky.  At 2, it was decided that we needed more comfort, so the friends who had organized the evening, who lived nearby, invited everyone to their place, about 500 m away.  The other patrons were mostly very young, in their early 20s, and afraid to walk anywhere.  We had to reassure them, as they were shaking.  All of us, about 20 or so, including bartenders and other patrons, ended up at my friends’ apartment, where a large bowl of pasta and more wine and whisky were prepared for a nice 3 am dinner.  Then we waited it out, checking media.

The atmosphere was a strange mix of jolly and other-worldly.  But the camaraderie was really nice.  A dinner of semi-strangers mixed with a group of friends, and different age groups.  Too much was drunk.  As it turned out, that was the pattern for the night, what was called open doors, portes ouvertes, all over the city as we waited it out.

At about 5 am, some people decided to bed down, but some of us wanted to go home.  So, we almost immediately found Ubers. The Ubers and taxi drivers came out en masse, as a public service, as metro lines had been shut down.

The next day, I had an appointment, and decided to keep it, in the Marais.  An eerie normality prevailed.  Quieter than usual, but with a fair number of people quietly shopping.  On the way home, I rode my bicycle first through the Place de la République, and there was a crowd lighting candles at the base of the statue of Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic, and the tears were flowing.  From there, I went by the restaurant just across the canal from my place, Le Petit Cambodge, where I have eaten dozens of times and where 15 died.  There, too, a stunned crowd, candles, notes and flowers, and the Mayor, Anne Hidalgo.

Sunday was in some ways worse for most people, as the shock of this new situation set in.  The uncertainties and the gravity of a new form of urban guerilla warfare, organized and planned.

Sunday night, I went to friends’ for a dinner on the rue de la Fontaine au Roi, less than 15 minutes by foot. The city was more deserted than in August.  As I reached the intersection, there it was:  the two cafes and laundromat that had been shot up on Friday night, with 19 deaths. A big crowd, flowers, candles, poems, tears. These friends had whats-apped me Friday night, with Céline telling me that they could hear shots.  That’s one thing for adults, but they have three kids.  What do you tell your kids, who already lived through the January massacre, also in the 11th arrondissement, when your teenage daughter asks:  why do they keep shooting people in our neighborhood?  When Gaspard, who is six, asks: why are all those people crying in the street?