Global Change Should Stem from Local Leadership Author and academic Benjamin Barber says cities present the best hope of solving the world’s problems

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By Zev Hurwitz

While voters weigh the prospects of which presidential contender is best suited to address the big issues in 2016, one academic thinks the real change-makers are at city halls — not the White House.

During an Oct. 26 lecture at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Benjamin Barber, a noted political theorist and author who holds a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University, lectured on his philosophy that the key to addressing major global problems is tackling those challenges from the local level.

“Common sense problem-solving pragmatism makes cities the most useful governing institutions in the world as compared to the 19th Century ideologically based national politics of … countries all over the world,” Barber said.

Mark A. Peterson, chair of the Luskin School’s Department of Public Policy, introduced the speaker, saying that the lecture by Benjamin Barber “couldn’t be more timely.” Photo by Les Dunseith

Speaking in front of a crowd of more than 50 students, faculty and community members, Barber asserted that cities are uniquely positioned to address every major challenge facing the international community because these issues are no longer specific to individual nation states.

“Every problem we face is a problem without borders,” said Barber, a professor emeritus at Rutgers University and founder of the Global Parliament of Mayors. “Cities are positioned to address every major problem we have globally.”

The lecture’s title, “How Cities Trump Trump: Urban Pragmatism vs. Toxic Campaign Demagoguery,” was meant “to draw you in, the same way MSNBC does: with Trump,” Barber said, noting that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s rhetoric claiming an international conspiracy to undermine American sovereignty is flawed and “toxic.”

“Trump is right in pointing to the loss of sovereignty, but where he’s wrong is thinking that it is due to stupidity,” Barber said. “We need to learn how to accommodate, not how to scapegoat.”

Nationalized global power, the way Trump describes it, started disappearing after World War II and hasn’t existed since, Barber said.

“Sovereignty, the jurisdiction of a national government over all of the issues its people face, doesn’t exist anywhere in the world, in any country claiming to be sovereign,” Barber said. “We are still responding to these global, borderless problems with sovereign nationally based governments.”

Because the power spheres are organized differently in the 21st Century, the real power — and driving force for change — lies in cities, which Barber said is euphemistic for all regional and local governance, not necessarily individual municipalities.

Cities have a unique interest in driving solutions to global issues because “the problems of cities and the problems of the globe are very much the same.” To illustrate this point, Barber pointed to two major issues: climate change and terrorism.

Most of the world’s population, in the 21st Century, lives in cities, and most cities are within proximity to bodies of water, meaning that much of the world’s population has a vested interest in combating climate change and rising sea levels. In addition, Barber said, 80 percent of greenhouse gases are generated from cities. Because the cause and the effect are both specific to cities, cities are best suited to address that challenge.

About terrorism, Barber said that problem-solving must come from local leadership because terrorists almost exclusively target cities.

“Nobody has attacked a pecan farm in Sacramento,” he said. “They come after cities because that’s where the people are. Terrorism is aimed at cities because cities represent everything that terrorism rejects.”

In order to address major global challenges, Barber said, cities, and their leaders, need to practice collaboration with interlocutors locally and with other cities.

“Cities work by consensus, by collaboration, by building bridges and working with everybody,” he said.

Barber spoke about his involvement with the Global Parliament of Mayors, an international body of local leaders that convened for the first time in September. There was a need for “enacting common urban legislation, not just best practices.” According to Barber, the United Nations’ model of organizing nation-states based on their sovereignty has stymied opportunities for problem-solving. The Global Parliament of Mayors has potential to be a unifying force beyond international borders.

“This is a founding seedling for what, in time, can become a genuine governance organization — a kind of U.N. body,” he said, calling the ideal for the organization to be a body that is “defined by the natural collaborativeness of cities” and their capacity to work with one another.”

The Department of Urban Planning organized the lecture and the Department of Public Policy co-sponsored it, with assistance by the Luskin Center for Innovation and the UCLA departments of History, Philosophy and Political Science.

Mark A. Peterson, chair of the Luskin School’s Department of Public Policy, introduced the speaker, saying that the lecture “couldn’t be more timely.”

“Much of the American public, and our own faculty and students in the Luskin School, have felt intense frustration over the years of policy stalemate at the national level,” Peterson said after the event. “Dr. Barber presented the possibility of a different pathway for addressing major issues — problems for which there seems little prospect of making progress through congressional and presidential action, regardless of the results of the 2016 elections.”

Peterson also noted the application of Baker’s philosophy in Luskin’s curriculum.

“The motto of the Public Policy Department is ‘advancing knowledge in the public interest’ — an essential requirement for understanding the causes of societal problems and identifying interventions that mitigate those causes,” Peterson said.

“However, the actions to be taken, whether by national governments or subnational institutions, are necessarily determined by governing institutions embedded in political processes, ideally with full opportunities for democratic choice and accountability. All of these elements are features of the Public Policy MPP curriculum and prominent in Dr. Barber’s scholarship and public engagement.”

Barber has authored 18 books, including 1995’s best-selling “Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World” and 2013’s “If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities.”

Soham Dhesi, a first-year Master in Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) student attended the event. Like Peterson, Dhesi said she found parallels between Barber’s lecture and her Luskin coursework in urban planning.

“A lot of people ask me, ‘What is urban planning — haven’t cities already been built?’” Dhesi said. “This is an answer to how cities can be important tools to address these global problems.”

Dhesi referenced the histories and theories of urban planning and course discussions on grassroots movements and individual participation in change-making, saying she found application of Barber’s views on the potential for cities to lead the way.

“Citizens, through their participation in the city, can bring about change,” she said. “Cities are a way for people to participate, which is harder to do at a national level. This goes in line with what we were learning in class about community development.”

A Landmark Honor for UCLA Luskin’s Community Scholars Urban Planning project recognized as 2016 UCLA Community Program of the Year for impact on Los Angeles

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By Stan Paul

For more than a quarter-century, a unique UCLA community outreach experiment has brought UCLA Urban Planning students, faculty and community stakeholders together to focus on jobs, wages, workers and many other important Los Angeles issues.

The Community Scholars — a joint initiative of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs’ Department of Urban Planning and the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education — began with the first evening class in 1991.

“The very first class was a totally an experiment,” said UCLA Urban Planning instructor Gilda Haas. Haas and Urban Planning lecturer Goetz Wolff continue to teach in the program, and both have been a part of Community Scholars from the beginning.

Haas said it began with conversations on rethinking economic development in Los Angeles and “how the university could be more helpful to the community.”

Community Scholars has won the Landmark Award as the 2016 UCLA Community Program of the Year, an award recognizing UCLA programs that have made a significant impact in the communities they serve throughout many years of service.

Keith Parker, assistant vice chancellor of government and community relations, said that Community Scholars was selected because of the “longstanding commitment to economic and environment sustainability and the work of labor, community organizations in greater Los Angeles over 26 years.”

The Community Scholars program serves as part of a capstone project for 15-25 master of urban and regional studies (MURP) students each year. And, while the yearly two-quarter research seminar serves as a graduation requirement for the students, the program also recognizes the role the community plays in shaping development policy in L.A.

Past Community Scholars project topics have included manufacturing, banking, Walmart, home-care workers, immigration, green-collar jobs and the right to health in South Los Angeles. Although looking at industries in L.A., at their core, these topics focus on the human dimension and are “concerned about working people,” Haas said. For example, the project for the first year was Accidental Tourism, and it focused on the hotel and restaurant industry, specifically unions and workers.

The most recent project was dedicated to longtime Urban Planning professor Jacqueline Leavitt, who had served as the director of the Community Scholars program since 1999 until she passed away in November 2015. The most recent report was led by Goetz Wolff, “Delivering the Good: Strategic Interventions Toward a Just & Sustainable Logistics System in Southern California,” and served as the client project for the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy.

“Delivering the Good” focused on the movement and distribution of goods, via the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and the disproportional negative impact on local communities, labor and the environment.

As for future topics, Wolff said, “They bubble up, issues that arise in the community. They all look at what will it take to improve L.A.”

Haas said that a number of students who have participated in the program have gone on to become research staff for labor unions and community organizations.

“People learn to appreciate, listen to and communicate with others,” Haas said. “This is a good role for a university and students.”

The award was presented Oct. 13 at the annual UCLA in Downtown L.A. reception at Los Angeles City Hall.

Examining Voting in L.A. at the Neighborhood Level Researchers at UCLA Luskin’s Center for Neighborhood Knowledge produce maps to document the county’s voter trends and behavior

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By Stan Paul

All politics is local.

Researchers at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs’ Center for Neighborhood Knowledge (CNK) have taken that phrase to heart in an effort to determine the impact of voter behavior.

Silvia Gonzalez, an Urban Planning Ph.D. student at Luskin, and fellow CNK researchers have gathered data to create a map of all eligible voters by neighborhood in Los Angeles County. That data was then filtered to produce maps showing the percentage of registered voters and actual voters who turn out at the polls.

“My doctoral studies focus broadly on understanding patters of socioeconomic inequality, how these are constructed and reproduced in societal, economic and political context,” Gonzalez wrote in her proposal for a UCLA summer research mentor fellowship grant. Gonzalez, who also is assistant director of CNK, said that her interest is in “community power,” including the impact of voting.

The team has culled data on areas of Los Angeles with various majority ethnic groups, such as Latinos, who represent a significant percentage of the L.A. population. Other areas studied include those with a majority population of Asian, African American, Hispanic and Non-Hispanic White.

“This work will help organizations dedicated to political and civic engagement, and will show where there are opportunities to increase those rates,” said Paul Ong, CNK director and professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare and Asian American studies at UCLA. The data show general trends and also voter behavior within various groups, said Ong, who is serving as Gonzalez’s faculty mentor.

For example, by creating a gender parity index that reflects the level of female voter participation compared to men, the researchers studied who is more likely to vote in L.A. County. Turns out that it’s women, following a nationwide trend, according to Gonzalez and her CNK colleagues.

Among voters of all ages, the CNK researchers found that in Los Angeles, 52 percent of millennials (ages 21-34) registered in both 2012 and 2015 had not voted in the 2012 election cycle. About 1.1 million were registered in both 2012 and 2015. Actual voting percentages increased progressively in older age categories with seniors (65+) having the highest registration-to-voter turnout ratio, with voters comprising about 75 percent of the more than 850,000 registered in 2012 and 2015. More total millennials were registered, however, so the actual turnout between millennials and seniors was relatively similar in number, according to the researchers.

Ong said that this is a long-term project with a goal of building a database and disseminating results that the public will find useful. “We are very interested how political engagement plays out for communities,” he said.

The impact of their research on this year’s general election in November may not be that significant, Ong, said, but it may prove useful in the long term. The researchers will integrate neighborhood voting patterns from November’s election as soon as the data becomes available.

Team members include Gonzalez; Alycia Cheng, CNK analyst; and C. Aujean Lee, CNK research assistant and Urban Planning doctoral candidate.

Data sources for the maps included the October 2015 voter registration roll counts and November 2012 voter history file from the L.A. County Registrar, the 2010-14 American Community Survey population estimates by tract and the 2006 L.A. County Geographic Information System (GIS) data portal. Low population or non-urban areas were excluded.

The maps may be viewed online.

The mission of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge is to conduct basic and applied research on the socioeconomic formation and internal dynamics of neighborhoods, and how these collective spatial units are positioned and embedded in the Southern California region. The CNK emphasizes the study of diversity, differences and disparities among neighborhoods, and it explicitly covers immigrant enclaves and minority communities.

CNK examines neighborhoods through multidisciplinary lenses and through collaboration with community partners. Equally important, CNK is dedicated to translating its findings into actionable neighborhood-related policies and programs, and to contributing to positive social change.

A UCLA Luskin Welcome Departments of Public Policy, Social Welfare, Urban Planning welcome six new faculty members

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By Stan Paul

Six new members of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs faculty were warmly welcomed at a reception held Oct. 18 and hosted by their new Luskin departments of Public Policy, Social Welfare and Urban Planning. Interim Dean Lois Takahashi and the three department chairs were also on hand to welcome the new teachers and researchers.

This year, the School’s three departments strengthened their faculty teaching and research rosters with the additions of Darin Christensen and Zachary C. Steinert-Threlkeld (Public Policy), Leyla Karimli and Laura Wray-Lake (Social Welfare), and Michael Manville and Kian Goh (Urban Planning).

In Public Policy, Darin Christensen will be teaching three classes at Luskin this year. “The students are great, really engaged,” said Christensen, who recently received his Stanford Ph.D. in political science. Christensen said he will be showing his Master of Public Policy (MPP) students how to bring evidence to bear on policy decisions, teaching them tools for wrangling and exploring data, as well as statistical methods that generate credible claims about “what policies work.” In another course offered this quarter, he is discussing how political institutions and public policies affect why some countries are rich and peaceful while others with persistent poverty and instability.

Also joining the Public Policy department this year is Zachary C. Steinert-Threlkeld, who will begin teaching this winter quarter on topics including social networks and protest. “I study protest,” said Steinert-Threlkeld, who completed his Ph.D. in political science this year at UC San Diego. “Wherever there is a protest in the world, I go to Twitter and see what people say. Are they expressing political grievances because they’re mad about the economy?”

Steinert-Threlkeld, who studies social media as it relates to subnational conflict, teaches analysis of “big data.” “If anyone wants to learn with Twitter data,” he said, “they can reach out to me. I would love to be working with motivated students or faculty.”

In Social Welfare, Laura Wray-Lake, who comes to UCLA from the University of Rochester, will be teaching two classes in winter: research methods with children and youth, and development and resilience for the Master of Social Work (MSW) students. “I was really excited about the interdisciplinary environment” at Luskin, she said, explaining that her area of research is civic engagement. “I’m really interested in how to get young people interested in politics and the communities, and solving social issues.”

Leyla Karimli brings an international focus to Social Welfare on topics including child welfare, education and child labor. With more than a decade of international research and practice, her work has taken her to a number of countries in Africa as well as Colombia, the Philippines, Tajikistan and Krgyzstan. She will be teaching on program evaluation and topics including a multidisciplinary analysis of poverty and social exclusion, one of her main research interests.

Returning to UCLA, assistant professor Michael Manville said he is currently teaching courses on transportation and the environment and another on shared mobility. Manville, who earned his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Urban Planning at Luskin, most recently was an assistant professor at Cornell University in the Department of City and Regional Planning. Manville said the rest of the year he will be teaching transportation, land use and public finance, primarily for the Urban Planning Department’s master’s students.

Urban Planner Kian Goh plans to teach a winter quarter seminar titled “Urban Futures,” with a focus on space, ecology and society. In the spring, she will teach a studio course on site planning and a qualitative methods course.

“This year I am continuing my research broadly on the politics of urban climate change adaptation and research on the L.A. region,” said Goh, who comes to Luskin from Northeastern University. “It’s inevitable, not just because I am here but because it so interesting. I think the L.A. region is an example of urban form.”

Goh has focused her research on cities from New York to Jakarta.

“It is really helpful to look at other cities,” she said. “I think of the challenges we face here and all of the opportunities. We’ve learned a lot from other regions.”

Lending Obama Administration a Hand on Housing Study by UCLA Luskin Urban Planning scholars is cited in new White House Housing Development Toolkit

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By Stan Paul

A recent study by UCLA Luskin Urban Planning faculty researchers is part of a new toolkit on housing development announced and published this week by the Obama administration.

The Housing Development Toolkit, now available online, outlines barriers to housing development but also includes a list of actions that state and local governments can use to “promote healthy, responsive, high-opportunity housing markets, despite the common and sometimes challenging political barriers to reform and improvement.”

The 2015 Luskin study, “Do Strict Land Use Regulations Make Metropolitan Areas More Segregated by Income?” — previously published in the Journal of the American Planning Association — is referenced in the toolkit addressing local barriers to housing development that affect affordability for working families. Authors Michael Lens, assistant professor of Urban Planning, and Paavo Monkkonen, associate professor of Urban Planning, urge that density restrictions be removed because they drive urban segregation.

“Inclusion in this publication demonstrates both the timeliness and relevance of the work our Luskin researchers do,” said Lois Takahashi, interim dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

In their study, Lens and Monkkonen find that inherent local planning problems can be alleviated somewhat by regional and state efforts.

“State governments are well-positioned to push cities to build more housing — especially cities that try to exclude types of housing affordable to lower-income households,” Monkkonen said.

In addition, Lens and Monkkonen point out that “efforts to force wealthier parts of the city to build housing for low-income households, i.e., inclusionary housing, have a greater potential to reduce segregation than bringing higher-income households into lower-income parts of the city.”

“I think this is a remarkably informed document, and it is great to see that the Obama administration is thinking this way and is motivated to put this information out there,” Lens said. “It is complementary to HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rules and work, and recent case law (Inclusive Communities v. Texas Department of Housing and Community Development) might nudge localities toward relaxing regulations and allowing more multifamily development.”

The White House publication cites restrictive zoning and land-use regulations — as well as a cumbersome approval process — as the causes for a slow response to demand for housing across the United States. It also highlights beneficial practices already in use across the country as well as potential starting points for bringing housing planning and development in line with 21st century needs.

Although encouraged by the report, Lens said that the Obama administration also has very little power, if any, over local land-use decision-making. He cautioned that “there are a lot of great ideas in here that for the most part” could be ignored by local governments.

However, “there is a growing movement in California advocating for changes in the way urban growth is accommodated with existing city boundaries,” Monkkonen said. “I hope that the endorsement of the White House in this regard will push these efforts forward.”

The Housing Development Toolkit may be found at:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/images/Housing_Development_Toolkit%20f.2.pdf

Very Happy ‘To Be a Part of This’ Open House brings together students, faculty, staff and alumni from all three UCLA Luskin departments for an evening of celebration

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By Stan Paul

The UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs Open House highlighted the first official day of the fall quarter for new and returning graduate students in the departments of Public Policy, Social Welfare and Urban Planning. Following a busy week of orientation and information sessions, the event brought students together with Luskin alumni, faculty, staff and representatives from the school’s many student organizations.

“This week solidified my decision to come here,” said Jordan Hallman, a first-year Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) student who came to UCLA from Denver, Colo. “I know I definitely want to be a part of this.”

Fatima Cervantes, who is from the Los Angeles area, said she decided to start the Social Welfare master’s program (MSW) this year as part of her commitment to social justice.

Faculty were also on hand at the event, greeting new students and catching up with Luskin alumni.

Ailee Moon, a professor of Social Welfare, said she started the first day of the quarter with her 8 a.m. course on the foundations of social welfare policy. “I love this class,” said Moon, who added that she had a great first impression of her 108 students who continued the first-day discussion after class and were already showing up for office hours.

Recent Urban Planning alum Nathan Holmes MURP ’15, a planning deputy with Los Angeles Council 15, shared advice for new and continuing students. “Continue talking to people,” Holmes said. “The more you talk to people, the more you learn.” Holmes stressed the importance of continuity and building “a stronger bridge between students taking Urban Planning and those already working in a variety of roles.”

Tina Gall, a 1982 Urban Planning alum and municipal government consultant, offered the following advice: “Once you complete your degree, always remember to give back.”

Students representing the School’s many organizations were busy meeting students interested in the variety of opportunities Luskin groups have to offer. “We’ve had a lot of people sign up, with good representation from all three departments,” said second-year Public Policy student Cameron Burch, a member of the Luskin Women’s Leadership Network.

Tae Kang, who graduated with his Master of Public Policy (MPP) in June, said that, after a summer of teaching, he is working for a startup philanthropic initiative. Kang said of Luskin: “I learned how much teamwork, communication and collaboration matter,” adding that he is already applying the lessons he learned at Luskin to his new venture.

Although absorbing all of the first week activities and information has been a challenge, Urban Planning student Khaliha Haynes said, “I am really happy to be here and excited to see what can be accomplished over the year.”

Luskin staff and advisers who helped plan the week’s activities — and worked hard to make the annual event a success — joined the Open House festivities.

“There’s something magnetic about the start of the academic year,” said Jennifer Choy, associate director of admissions and recruitment for the Department of Urban Planning. “The new students are bright, passionate and invigorating — ready to make the most of their time here at Luskin, excited to take this next step in their professional, academic and personal path toward public service.”

“Everyone has been very helpful and nice,” said first-year MPP student Ramandeep Kaur. “That’s the best part.”

Gary Segura Named UCLA Luskin Dean A faculty member at Stanford since 2008, Segura is the Morris M. Doyle Centennial Professor of Public Policy and professor of political science and Chicana/o studies

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By George Foulsham

Gary Segura, the Morris M. Doyle Centennial Professor of Public Policy and professor of political science at Stanford University, has been named new dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

“Chancellor [Gene] Block and I are confident that Gary will provide outstanding leadership as dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs,” Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Scott Waugh said in an announcement.

Segura’s anticipated start date is Jan. 1, 2017. He will succeed Lois Takahashi, who has served as interim dean since August 2015.

“I am honored and excited to be selected as dean of the Luskin School of Public Affairs, and to come to UCLA,” Segura said. “The Luskin School and its distinguished faculty represent an outstanding intellectual community whose work makes important contributions in addressing human problems at the individual, community, national and global levels. The three nationally prominent departments and the affiliated centers are asking and answering critical questions about the challenges — personal and structural — that real people face every day.  It will be my privilege to join them and do whatever I can to broaden and deepen their impact in Los Angeles, across California and beyond.”

A member of the Stanford faculty since 2008, Segura is also a professor and former chair of Chicana/o-Latina/o studies. Additionally, he is a faculty affiliate of African and African American studies; American studies; feminist, gender and sexuality studies; Latin American studies; and urban studies. In addition, he is the director of the Center for American Democracy and the director of the Institute on the Politics of Inequality, Race and Ethnicity at Stanford.

In 2010, Segura was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Prior to joining Stanford, he was a member of the faculty at the University of Washington, the University of Iowa, Claremont Graduate University and UC Davis.

Segura received a bachelor of arts magna cum laude in political science from Loyola University of the South, and a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on issues of political representation and social cleavages, the domestic politics of wartime public opinion and the politics of America’s growing Latino minority.

Segura has published more than 55 articles and chapters, and he is a co-editor of “Diversity in Democracy: Minority Representation in the United States” and a co-author of four books: “Latino America: How America’s Most Dynamic Population is Poised to Transform the Politics of the Nation”; “Latinos in the New Millennium: An Almanac of Opinion, Behavior, and Policy Preferences”; “The Future is Ours: Minority Politics, Political Behavior, and the Multiracial Era of American Politics”; and “Latino Lives in America: Making It Home.”

Active in professional service, Segura is a past president of the Western Political Science Association, Midwest Political Science Association and Latino Caucus in Political Science. From 2009 to 2015, he was the co-principal investigator of the American National Election Studies. Segura has also briefed members of Congress and senior administration officials on issues related to Latinos, served as an expert witness in three marriage equality cases heard by the Supreme Court, and has filed amicus curiae briefs on subjects as diverse as voting rights, marriage equality and affirmative action.

“I am thrilled that Gary Segura is taking the helm as the next dean of the Luskin School,” Takahashi said. “He is the perfect leader to bring the Luskin School into its next phase of growth. I look forward to working with him on what I know will be a smooth transition.”

In his announcement, Waugh praised Takahashi and the search committee.

“I want to thank search/advisory committee members for assembling an outstanding pool of candidates and for their roles in recruiting Gary,” Waugh said. “I also want to recognize and thank Lois Takahashi for her distinguished leadership of the school as interim dean during the past year.”

The search committee was chaired by Linda Sarna, interim dean, UCLA School of Nursing; professor and Lulu Wolf Hassenplug Endowed Chair in Nursing. Other members were: Rosina Becerra, professor of social welfare; Evelyn Blumenberg, professor and chair, Department of Urban Planning; Michael Chwe, professor of political science; Todd Franke, professor and chair, Department of Social Welfare; Vickie Mays, professor of psychology, and of health policy and management; Mark Peterson, professor and chair, Department of Public Policy, and professor of political science and of law; Susan Rice, chair, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs Board of Advisors, and senior consulting associate, Brakeley Briscoe Inc.; Daniel Solorzano, professor of social sciences and comparative education, GSE&IS; and Abel Valenzuela Jr., professor and chair, César Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies, and professor of urban planning.

Gentrification and Displacement in Southern California UCLA urban planners release online mapping tool to help analyze impact of developments near Los Angeles area transit projects. The goal? ‘Progress that is fair and just’

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By Stan Paul

A team of researchers at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs has created an interactive mapping tool to help community leaders better understand the effects of new light-rail and subway projects and related developments — especially on low-income communities.

Researchers view the project as a resource to help communities and policymakers identify the pressures associated with development and figure out how to take more effective action to ensure that new construction isn’t always accompanied by current residents being priced out of their neighborhoods.

The Southern California portion of the joint UCLA-UC Berkeley Urban Displacement Project on gentrification and displacement in urban communities is available online.

“There has been a strong interest in neighborhoods around subway stations and light-rail stops,” said Paul Ong, director of UCLA Luskin’s Center for Neighborhood Knowledge and a professor of Urban Planning. “These locations have the potential for extensive private investments because transit gives people an alternative to using cars. This is particularly attractive to today’s young professionals.”

However, according to Ong, the downside to this “upscaling” is that changing the character of a neighborhood with additional transportation options can lead to lower-income disadvantaged households being pushed out.

“Sometimes, landlords aggressively — and perhaps illegally — force them out,” said Ong, who is also a member of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. “Higher rents make it difficult for low-income households to move into the neighborhood, so we see a net decline in their numbers. They are replaced by those who can afford the higher housing cost — people referred to as ‘gentrifiers.’”

Ong said that most of those who can afford higher housing costs do not purposefully want to displace people living in poorer households, “but, nonetheless, gentrifiers are a part of the larger socioeconomic process.” The goal of the Urban Displacement Project, according to the researchers, is not to stop neighborhood change because many people can benefit from these developments. “The challenge,” Ong said, “is ensuring that progress is fair and just.”

The UCLA team, funded in part by the California Air Resources Board, created a database for the Los Angeles County region that included information on demographics, socio-economic and housing characteristics in neighborhoods that are near transit projects and those that are not.

Key findings by UCLA researchers for L.A. County include:

  • Areas around transit stations are changing and many of the changes are in the direction of neighborhood upscaling and gentrification.
  • Examining changes relative to areas not near light-rail or subway projects from 2000 to 2013, neighborhoods near those forms of transit are more associated with increases in white, college-educated, higher-income households and greater increases in the cost of rents. Conversely, neighborhoods near rail development are associated with greater losses in disadvantaged populations, including individuals with less than a high school diploma and lower-income households.
  • The impacts vary across locations, but the biggest impacts seem to be around the downtown areas where transit-oriented developments interact with other interventions aiming to physically revitalize those neighborhoods.

Users of the mapping tool can examine neighborhood-level data on racial/ethnic composition, which areas have seen upscaling, gentrification, population density, percentage of people living in poverty, median household income and level of education. More specific data is also available, including the number of households with a Section 8 housing voucher and low-income housing tax credits.

“Our goal is that local and state governments will use the information to guide decisions regarding public investments that are just; community groups will use the information to help tell their stories of preserving the best parts of their neighborhood; and engaged citizens will become more aware of critical issues facing society,” Ong said.

As part of the study, the Bay Area team analyzed nine case studies and the UCLA team looked at six more in L.A. County to capture geographic diversity and to examine different stages of the gentrification and displacement process.

“Also, we want to focus in more detail on the phenomenon of commercial gentrification, which leads to the closing down of mom-and-pop stores and ethnic small businesses in some neighborhoods,” said Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, principal investigator on the Los Angeles team. Most of the existing studies focus only on residential gentrification said Loukaitou-Sideris, professor of urban planning and associate dean of the Luskin School.

For example, the UCLA team looked at studies based on the “live experiences of real communities” such as six disadvantaged neighborhoods located near Los Angeles Metro Rail stations. The also examined the impacts on Asian-American businesses near transit-oriented developments, as well as the impact of new outlets such as Wal-Mart and Starbucks on ethnic small businesses in L.A.’s Chinatown.

Loukaitou-Sideris said the researchers discovered one important difference between the strategies used by Los Angeles and the Bay Area.

“We found that Bay Area municipalities have in their books many more anti-displacement policies than municipalities in L.A. County,” she said. “However, we do not know yet how effective these policies have been in limiting displacement.”

Luskin Urban Planner Receives American Planning Association Scholarship Graduate student Ana Bonilla awarded APA’s Judith McManus Price Scholarship for 2016

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Ana Bonilla

Ana Bonilla, an urban and regional planning master’s (MURP) candidate at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs,, has been awarded the 2016 Judith McManus Price Scholarship by the American Planning Association (APA).

Bonilla, who is also completing a joint master’s degree in public health at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, will receive the $4,000 scholarship awarded each year to women and minority students in accredited planning programs who intend to pursue careers in the public sector, said Monica Groh, APA Director of Emerging Professionals.

After working in the healthy communities field in her hometown of Long Beach for a number of years, Bonilla said her decision to enroll in the concurrent master’s programs was inspired by “the inextricable link between planning and other disciplines, specifically health.”

Now in her third year in the concurrent program, Bonilla said she is looking forward to applying the principles of these fields in Los Angeles County.

“We know now that the built environment can impact our health — that our zip code is a better predictor of our life expectancy than our genetic code. But now we need to move into ‘how’ we address these seemingly intractable problems,” Bonilla said. “I want to push these ideas further and bring the conversation forward on how we can embed health and equity in our land use systems and practices so that we can promote the health and well-being of all Angelenos.”

More about the Judith McManus Price Scholarship may be found at:
https://planning.org/scholarships/recipients/mcmanusprice.htm

To see current and past winners of the McManus Price Scholarship please visit:
https://planning.org/foundation/price.htm

A Summer Spent Tackling Global Challenges International Practice Pathway blogs provide a look at life abroad for UCLA Luskin’s Public Policy, Social Welfare and Urban Planning students

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By Stan Paul

From the sun-bleached poor neighborhoods on the edge of Bengaluru, India, to the traffic-choked streets of Mexico City, students from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs have been tackling global urban challenges this summer as they participate in a unique fellowship program.

Through the International Practice Pathway (IPP) fellowships sponsored by the Luskin School’s Global Public Affairs Program and the UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative, master’s students from all three of Luskin’s departments (Public Policy, Social Welfare, and Urban Planning) received placements with recognized international organizations.

“These are not ‘trips.’ They are professional-level placements in low- and middle-income countries that provide students with a hands-on experience in different areas of global public affairs,” said Stephen Commins, associate director of Global Public Affairs at Luskin. Commins, also a lecturer in Regional and International Development in the School’s Department of Urban Planning, said that students can link their required second-year research and policy projects (requirements for their respective master’s programs at Luskin) with these placements.

IPP, an integral part of the Global Public Affairs Initiative at Luskin, is a global gateway for students from all three Luskin departments to work with local and international communities negatively affected by various political, economic and environmental processes within the context of international development.

As part of the program, all Luskin IPP fellows have been blogging about their experiences this summer on the Global Public Affairs website.

Gus Wendel’s IPP placement took him to Mexico City. For the Urban and Regional Studies master’s (MURP) student, the joy on a child’s face in the simple act of play says it all — even from behind the mask of a luchador, a Mexican wrestler.

But in Mexico City, one of the world’s most populous urban centers, the streets are choked with cars and relentless traffic. It’s no place for children to play freely without worry and constant danger.

That may be changing, if only two hours at a time. But it is a start for Wendel who is focusing on creating safe, temporary play spaces for children to run, jump rope or enjoy crafts and other activities. Wendel worked on a project called Peatoniños, developed in collaboration with the Urban Humanities Initiative and Laboratorio Para La Ciudad.

“Peatoniños is a project that aims to liberate and recuperate the streets of Mexico City so that kids can use them to participate in activities such as playing freely, conversing with neighbors, learning new things, imagining different worlds, or making new friends,” Wendel said in an interview. The name of the project is a combination of the words peatón (pedestrian) and niños (children).

He said the collaboration began after a visit to UCLA by Laboratorio founder and director Gabriella Gómez-Mont, who took part in a conversation on issues of youth mobility, mortality and playfulness in Mexico City. The conversation focused on changing public consciousness through changes in public narrative.

Part of that narrative, Wendel explained, includes the following statistics: In Mexico City, 56 percent of the population is under 26 and the number one preventable cause of death for youth is pedestrian-automobile accidents.

“This stark condition implicates a range of current practices surrounding cars, traffic, pedestrian mobility, youth mobility, multi-modal access to the street,” he said.

While it is still early to draw conclusions from the experience, “it is hard not to see the ways that Los Angeles can learn from Mexico City’s example — specifically the relationship between community members and local government,” Wendel said.

“But each play street intervention is only successful as far as local community members are willing to get involved,” he added. For example, those who informally operate public parking, known as “viene vienes,” voluntarily helped to close down streets to traffic for two hours during the first intervention, making it possible to ensure kids are playing in a safe place.

Wendel said that establishing trust between community stakeholders and government and planning for a certain degree of uncertainty seem to be critical elements to ensuring that these types of interventions work.

“Cars and the culture that supports them are relentless, both here and in L.A., so establishing different tactics for slowing traffic and shutting down streets in a civil manner is crucial,” he said.

* * *

Upon landing in Zambia in southern Africa, Corina Post, a master of social welfare (MSW) student at Luskin, said her first impression was that everything seemed “normal” and similar to Los Angeles. “The streets are paved; traffic laws are abided,” she blogged.

But Post, who was placed with World Vision, said she soon noticed small differences. “I felt not too far from home initially, until subtleties reminded me of the privileges the western world holds,” Post said.

As an example, she recounted an early experience from her time in Zambia. During her ride from the airport, she noticed an advertisement for a bank sweepstakes with an unusual prize: 1,000 bags of concrete. She said that “knowing concrete is its own commodity” was one of the first reminders that she “was no longer in Kansas; I was in Africa.”

Other small differences included her interactions with the people in her host country. “People seem to be quite kind to me — honestly, kinder than I have ever been received abroad.” For example, when Post said she went to an exercise class the teacher offered to drive her home. And when asking for directions she said she was not only given directions but people offered to walk with her, a “change of pace from the ‘time is money’” culture she said is used to in the U.S.

A major takeaway for Post was “the gross disservice we as global citizens practice in the homogenization of whole continents.” But, she continued, “This drives me to gain as much exposure as possible to share back home.”

* * *

Master of Public Policy (MPP) student Diego De La Peza traveled to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. There he was paired with the Instituto de Sexualidad Humana, a sexual and family health clinic at the Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo, which focuses on educating the Dominican population on sexual abuse and health issues.

“My project has been conducting quantitative research on victims of sexual abuse and analyzing patterns of services solicited, common diagnostics, and social behaviors of these patients,” De La Peza wrote in his blog. He said that his goal is to combine his findings with procedures set by the ministry of public health. He explained that the purpose is to make recommendations on how primary health doctors should respond when a sexual abuse victim seeks medical attention.

“Working on this project in a country whose sexual health beliefs are highly influenced by patriarchy and religion has been an eye-opening experience,” he wrote. “I found it unbelievable the difference that being with a male figure has when walking the streets of the city. Through my research, I have also learned about men’s perspective on women sexuality, and I cannot help but think about all the work that needs to be done in order to break down these barriers that are blocking the country from reducing such high levels of sexual violence.”

De La Peza said that this experience has been educational and inspiring.

“My work environment serves a constant reminder that there are people working hard to improve the issues of the country, advocating for policy changes and better government interventions,” he said. When asked if he would do it again, he wrote: “Without even processing the question, I couldn’t help but answer: in a heartbeat.”

To read all of the IPP fellow blogs from around the world please visit http://global.luskin.ucla.edu/blog/