National Shade Map a Stroke of ‘Bruingenuity’

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A new national Shade Map spearheaded by experts at the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation and the nonprofit American Forests made UCLA Magazine’s list of the top 25 “Bruinventions” of the 21st Century (so far).

The tool helps cities across the United States respond to extreme heat by mapping an essential climate solution: shade.

“Never before has it been this easy for communities in the U.S. to know how much shade they have, where it is and whether the source is buildings or vegetation,” said V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. The resource gives decision-makers in more than 360 cities and towns the data to guide local heat resilience efforts.

The top 25 Bruinventions, listed in the latest edition of UCLA Magazine, pays tribute to the long history of creativity and innovation by UCLA students, faculty and alumni. This century’s index of Bruingenuity includes scientific discoveries, technological wizardry, medical marvels, and ingenious gadgets.

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Global Study Reveals Best Cities for Walking and Cycling

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A new global study analyzed walking and cycling patterns in 11,587 cities across 121 countries, revealing that some cities consistently outperform others for active transportation. Dense cities with extensive bike lanes, such as Wageningen in the Netherlands and Copenhagen in Denmark, top the list, while terrain and climate have less impact than previously assumed.

The research also highlights the influence of policy and pricing: higher gas prices and investments in nonmotorized infrastructure significantly increase walking and cycling rates. Cities like Osaka, Japan, and Nairobi, Kenya, showcase how thoughtful urban design can balance pedestrians, cyclists, and vehicles.

Lead author and Luskin professor of urban planning Adam Millard-Ball emphasizes that infrastructure drives behavior: “It’s not that Dutch people are genetically predisposed to cycling; it’s that most Dutch cities have really good infrastructure for cycling. If it were quicker and safe to walk or bike to their kids’ school or to the store or to work, then Americans would do that just as much as anyone else.”

Selina Barajas: Championing Community, Culture, and Equity in Tucson’s Ward 5 UCLA Luskin alumna brings her planning expertise and community-first values to Tucson’s City Council as the first woman to represent Ward 5

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Selina Barajas (MA UP ’10) has always believed that true change begins at the community level — by listening, collaborating, and caring for the places and people who make a city thrive. This November, that belief carried her to a historic victory as the first woman ever elected to represent Ward 5 on the Tucson City Council. This is the first time in Tucson history that the council majority – four out of the six seats – will be women. 

As a fourth-generation Tucsonan, Barajas’ roots run deep. She grew up immersed in the city’s diverse cultures, attending local schools, exploring the Sonoran Desert, and learning firsthand the importance of community connection. From an early age, she witnessed the power of civic engagement through her family and found her passion for advocacy through a youth mentorship program with Chicanos Por La Causa (CPLC).  

Selina Barajas with one hand on her hip, wearing a cowboy hat smiling at the camera. She is standing in a desert in Arizona.

It was at CPLC that she met former Executive Director Lorraine Lee, who became an early mentor and encouraged Barajas to pursue a master’s degree at UCLA, just as Lee had. 

Those early experiences at CPLC laid the foundation for her next chapter, and by 2008, Barajas was enrolled as a master’s in urban planning student at UCLA. 

Barajas says UCLA inspired her lifelong commitment to equity-centered leadership. “My time at UCLA Luskin shaped my approach by emphasizing that community-driven development and social equity are inseparable,” she said. “I learned to center the voices of those most impacted by policies and planning decisions, and to design solutions that reflect their needs, culture, and expertise.” 

She says the master’s program also taught her how to combine analytical rigor with empathy and opportunities to apply her classroom learning in real-world projects. “Luskin taught me to see equity not as an add-on, but as the foundation for lasting, meaningful change. It also provided real-world opportunities to engage directly with communities, applying what we learned in the classroom.” 

“Luskin taught me to see equity not as an add-on, but as the foundation for lasting, meaningful change.”

Barajas also credits Luskin’s urban planning program with sharpening both her technical and human-centered skills. Courses in data analysis and geographic information systems (GIS) gave her the ability to visualize disparities and advocate for equity through evidence-based planning. She also recalled the lasting influence of the late Professor Leo Estrada, one of the first scholars, she says, to center diversity and representation in urban planning. “He taught us that planning is not just about policy or design — it’s about people,” Barajas recalled. “His guidance helped shape my lifelong commitment to community development and equity.” 

After graduating from UCLA Luskin in 2010, Barajas spent a decade working in nonprofits and local government in and around Los Angeles, strengthening her commitment to youth empowerment and inclusive community development.  

Barajas returned to Tucson in 2018 to continue her work at the intersection of environmental justice, cultural preservation, transportation planning and entrepreneurship. She and her husband are in the process of opening  Luna y Sol Cafe, South Tucson’s first-ever coffee shop and bird and butterfly habitat created in partnership with the Tucson Bird Alliance. Designed as a gathering place for connection, conversation, and stewardship, the cafe reflects her vision for an inclusive and sustainable city. Selina Barajas and two other women stand with signs about protecting the land

Barajas also founded Reinas Who Hike, a Southern Arizona collective that inspires women — especially women of color — to connect with nature, advocate for public lands, and build confidence on the trails. 

“Whether through hiking, small business, or public service, everything I do is about creating spaces of belonging,” Barajas said. “When people feel seen, valued, and connected, they invest in their community — and that’s how real change happens.” 

Barajas secured her Ward 5 seat after winning the Democratic primary earlier this year and ran unopposed in the general election. She will take office on Dec. 2, 2025, succeeding longtime council member Richard Fimbres, who retired after serving more than sixteen years of service. 

As she prepares to take office, Barajas says she’s ready to bring her planning background and community-first approach to the Tucson City Council. Her priorities include advancing environmental justice, supporting small businesses, improving parks and public spaces, and ensuring Ward 5 residents have a real voice in shaping their city. 

For Barajas, her election win represents both a personal milestone and a collective achievement. “Becoming the first woman to represent Ward 5 is deeply meaningful,” she said. “It honors the generations of women and community leaders who paved the way, and it inspires me to keep opening doors for those who come after me — including my daughters.” 

To current UCLA Luskin students and future civic leaders, Barajas offers simple but powerful advice: listen first, show up, and stay rooted in purpose. “Civic leadership is about building trust,” she said. “Start by engaging with your community, volunteering, and learning from others doing the work. Let your passion for your community guide you.” 

Barajas exemplifies the changemakers UCLA Luskin is proud to call our own. “I envision a Tucson that is inclusive and resilient — a city shaped by the ideas, needs, and voices of the community itself,” Barajas said. “That’s the Tucson I’ll work to build every day.”  

A group of women on a hike in Arizona.

Schwarz on Promoting School Greening as Global Temperatures Rise

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A recent study led by UCLA associate professor of urban planning Kristen Schwarz highlights the lack of shade on California’s K‑12 school campuses, exposing students to extreme heat during outdoor activities. Analyzing over 7,200 urban public schoolyards from 2018 to 2022, the team found that 85% of schools lost tree canopy, with a median coverage of just 6.4%.

L.A. Times reports that many of these schools lack adequate tree cover and children, whose abilities to regulate body temperature are still developing, are particularly vulnerable when exposed to the intense heat outdoors. This presents a pressing concern as global temperatures continue to rise and give way to dangerous heat waves.

“Extreme heat is becoming a major public health concern in California and across the country, and trees can play a really big role in helping us cool down those schools and also build climate resilience,” said Schwarz.

To better understand the cooling effect of trees, Schwarz and her team are examining the trees and microclimates of schools across several districts in California. They hope their findings will inform policymakers and promote school greening to provide a cooler, safer environment for students in the face of global warming.

Keeping California Children Cool: Strategies for Safe Schools and Homes

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By Mara Elana Burstein

As heat waves become more frequent and intense, many California children face unsafe indoor temperatures where they spend most of their time — at home and at school. Access to cooling in homes and schools is now a public health necessity, not a luxury.

Building on years of research on heat resilience and school safety, the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation has released a report offering policymakers a menu of strategies to expand access to cooling in homes and schools. The recommendations focus on the installation and maintenance of air conditioning and other mechanical cooling systems, offering practical, evidence-based options for state leaders seeking to protect children where they live and learn.

Children shouldn’t have to choose between their health and their education. Our research shows that California can take immediate, concrete steps to make schools and homes safer from heat. — Lana Zimmerman, project manager and lead author of the report

The report outlines a set of policy and regulatory actions California leaders can adopt:

  • Set indoor temperature standards for schools and plan similar action during the 2031 Building Standards Code update, or sooner as an emergency health and safety measure.
  • Track cooling access in schools, as the state already does for homes.
  • Coordinate agencies through a state-level advisory committee.
  • Fund existing programs that support equitable access to indoor cooling by serving high-need schools, homes, and regions.
  • Centralize public information and simplify funding processes for local governments and communities.
  • Prioritize equity by investing in high-need regions and supporting workforce training for cooling system installation.

These strategies are informed by new data from the 2025 Luskin California Poll that reveal gaps in access to indoor cooling and public opinion on state action. In the survey, nearly half of parents said they’ve kept their kids home because of heat, and yet one in ten households with children lack working air conditioning (AC). Many more Californians avoid using their AC because of high energy bills.

“Expanding access to cooling is about more than comfort. It’s about health and equity,” said V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. “The solutions outlined in our report recognize that children in low-income households and communities of color are often the most exposed to heat and have the least resources to respond,” added Turner, who is also an associate professor of urban planning at UCLA Luskin.

As California implements new investments in school modernization, clean energy, and community resilience, this research offers a timely guide for aligning those efforts. The report, “Keeping Californians Safe with Cooling Systems in Homes and Schools,” underscores that keeping classrooms cool and homes safe is essential to a healthy, equitable future for the state’s children.

Tilly on the Government Shutdown and Specter of Recession

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UCLA Luskin’s Chris Tilly spoke to Al Jazeera News about the consequences of the U.S. government’s extended shutdown.

About 1.4 million federal employees are furloughed or working without pay, and many government services have been suspended nationwide. Tilly spoke about the multiplier effects that could shake consumer and business confidence in the economy. And he noted that the shutdown is one crisis point in a bigger fight about the role of government, including recent moves to keep taxes low on billionaires and cut back on the social safety net.

“We economists feel like there’s a lot of reasons to be concerned because the economy is already fragile,” said Tilly, a labor economist and professor of urban planning and sociology. “The Federal Reserve and economic forecasters are saying we’re scarily close to falling into a recession. So it may not take much to push us over the edge.”

On Migrant Crackdowns and Empty Humanitarian Rhetoric

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UCLA Luskin’s Ananya Roy spoke to KPFA’s Against the Grain program about the recently published book “Beyond Sanctuary: The Humanism of a World in Motion.”

Co-edited by Roy and Veronika Zablotsky, the book’s essays examine how poor and vulnerable migrants are viewed and treated, and the empty humanitarian rhetoric of liberal democracies of the West.

Being forced out of a country that one considers to be home is a form of racial segregation and oppression, Roy said on KPFA.

“We wanted to take seriously the fact that hundreds of thousands of migrants are crossing deadly borders, risking death, risking separation from loved ones, risking never to be able to return home. And to understand what happens to migrants after they cross these borders, which is often the illegalization of their presence, of their migration, the denial of asylum status,” said Roy, a professor of urban planning, social welfare and geography and founding faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy.

Book by Kian Goh Honored by Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning

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UCLA Luskin’s Kian Goh has been awarded the 2025 Paul Davidoff Book Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP).

Goh’s book “Form and Flow: The Spatial Politics of Urban Resilience and Climate Justice,” published in 2021 by MIT Press, explores the politics of urban climate change responses in different cities — New York City; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Rotterdam, Netherlands — as well as the emergence of grassroots activism in resistance.

“The study brings both ethnographic depth and impressive critical theory to one of the most important issues of our moment,” the ACSP Award Committee said, praising Goh for skillfully drawing a throughline across disparate geographies in a way that does not feel contrived.

Goh is an associate professor of urban planning at UCLA Luskin and associate faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy. Her research focuses on urban ecological design, spatial politics, and social mobilization in the context of climate change and global urbanization.

The Paul Davidoff Book Award recognizes an outstanding book publication regarding participatory planning and positive social change, including opposing poverty and racism and addressing social and place-based inequalities. The award honors the memory of Paul Davidoff, who established the field of advocacy planning and worked toward social equity in the profession.

 

UCLA, Community Partners Help Fire Recovery Through Free Soil Testing

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In an effort to support the region’s recovery in the aftermath of the 2025 Los Angeles County wildfires, a team of UCLA researchers is joining with community partners to test soil samples from neighborhoods hit hard by the blazes.

The fires in the Pacific Palisades-Malibu area and the Altadena-Pasadena communities claimed at least 31 lives and damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures, according to county officials.

It also left many residents wondering what was in their soil.

“Soil screening is a necessary first step, but it’s not a solution,” said Kirsten Schwarz, an associate professor of environmental health sciences and urban planning with joint appointments at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

“Fire-impacted communities are eager for actionable solutions and soil amendments, like compost and mulch — low-cost, accessible options that help us manage risk,” she said.

Schwarz and Jennifer Jay, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, co-lead the LA Urban Soil Social Impact Collaborative, which is hosting pop-up soil testing events, workshops and remediation projects across the region.

At an Oct. 4 event at the Washington Park Community Center in Pasadena, the collaborative welcomed more than 80 residents and screened more than 200 soil samples using portable X-ray fluorescence analyzers to detect heavy metals, including lead, a known cause of significant illness. Participants were able to have up to three soil samples screened and received personalized consultations on how to improve soil health and safety in their yards and gardens.

The collaborative, which includes UCLA researchers and community-based, tribal, private, and academic partners from across Los Angeles, is funded by UCLA’s Center for Community Engagement. The group aims to leverage university research and resources and apply local and Indigenous knowledge to advance equitable access to healthy soils.

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Sending a Pointed Message Through Real Estate

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“Spite houses” — structures built or modified specifically to annoy someone — are flourishing in the United States, where private-property culture, individualism and the country’s fragmented zoning laws create ideal conditions for satisfying personal grudges through real estate.

A CNN article about the phenomenon cited Boston’s four-story Skinny House, built by a returning Civil War soldier to block his brother’s view, and more recently, the Equality House, one of two properties bought across the street from Topeka, Kansas’ Westboro Baptist Church, known for its anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and for picketing at soldiers’ funerals. The owner painted the homes in rainbow colors of the Pride Movement.

“Hostile architecture is very American,” said Paavo Monkkonen, UCLA Luskin professor of urban planning and public policy. “Your house represents more here than it does in other countries. It’s a more personal symbol because it’s a homeownership society. There’s more neighbor-to-neighbor conflict.”

Spite houses are a local, highly personal kind of hostile architecture, which more broadly includes things like uncomfortable park benches meant to keep homeless people from sleeping on them.

“The U.S. approach to urban design is often not people-centric, in the sense that in certain parts of the city you want to build things that no one will go to, plazas that will be empty, because you want to protect your own peace and quiet,” Monkkonen said.