Bohnett Fellows Make a Difference in L.A. Mayor’s Office UCLA Luskin's signature executive apprenticeship program provides on-the-job training and networking opportunities, including this visit to Washington, D.C.

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By Adeney Zo
UCLA Luskin Student Writer

From L.A. to D.C., students in the David Bohnett Fellowship program are making an impact wherever they go.

This fellowship program, sponsored by the David Bohnett Foundation, gives UCLA Luskin students the unique opportunity to work in the L.A. Mayor’s office.

UCLA Luskin was the first of three schools across the nation to offer the Bohnett Fellowship, followed by the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University and the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Since its inception in 2006, fellows have had the chance to apply their studies to local issues, from homelessness to transportation alternatives.

Second-year Social Welfare master’s student Skylar Lenox had the opportunity to form and implement the Mayor’s Volunteer Corps, a group meant to “connect Angelenos with high impact volunteer opportunities . . . with Mayor Garcetti’s vision. It’s about finding opportunities that are high impact and meaningful,” said Lenox.

Kelsey Jessup, a second-year Public Policy student, was already interning at the Mayor’s office when she was accepted into the program, but the fellowship opened the doors to new opportunities within the office.

“Even as an intern they treat you as part of the staff . . . but with the fellowship expectations rose,” said Jessup. “I was there full time, doing bigger projects and more pressing things for the office.”

Jessup works in the Performance Management and Budget & Innovation department. At the start of her fellowship, Jessup became involved in one of the largest projects at the mayor’s office. “When Mayor Garcetti came to office in 2013, he took the role of CEO and planned to interview and evaluate all general managers of the city departments,” Jessup said. “I worked with my team on the analysis, and it was a great opportunity to learn about all the departments.”

Beyond working locally, however, fellows had the opportunity to travel and speak with students and policymakers across America.

In October, Bohnett Fellows from three different cities converged in Detroit to discuss how policy changed and revitalized Michigan’s most populous city. A group of UCLA Bohnett fellows also attended the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C., an annual event for mayors to discuss policy issues. The program was featured in Governing magazine.

“The conference allowed me to get out of academia and in the practical world,” Lenox said. “It has been the link between theory and practice, which allowed me to better get into the mindset of a practitioner.

“I learned what it means to be a leader in your city and evaluate policy in a way that brings in not just [the] ideal,” she said.

The conference allowed for Bohnett fellows to witness the perspectives and ideas of mayors in different areas of the U.S., and facing different challenges, coming together in a cohesive discussion.

“My biggest takeaway was that I felt inspired by what people across the nation are doing. Just being around all these mayors who want to collaborate and serve the public is inspiring,” Jessup said. “It makes me proud to work in a city that’s part of that movement.”

Both Lenox and Jessup will be finishing their work at the Mayor’s Office this year, but their future in policy and social work is just beginning.

Jessup, who studied theater as a UCLA undergraduate and worked in a variety of fields, views the fellowship as a window of opportunity for a career in public policy. “I’m learning skills, but without the experience of the fellowship I would have had a much harder time getting work experience on the field,” said Jessup. “It’s given me the foot in the door that I really didn’t know how I was going to get.”

Lenox is equally optimistic about the path she will take following the end of the fellowship and her studies at UCLA Luskin. “The fellowship is not just funding our education – they are really invested in us as leaders and future change makers,” said Lenox. “I really see social work as one of the most powerful disciplines you can be trained in for creating positive social change and being a service to others.”

VC Powe, executive director of External Programs, has overseen the program since its inception. She says the proof of the program’s promise is that all the graduates of the fellowship have secured full-time jobs in public service fairly quickly after graduation.

More information about the Bohnett Fellowship, including application information for UCLA Luskin students, can be found on the program website.

Op-Ed: Turn to Europe for Models for California High-Speed Rail Stations Urban Planning professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris argues in the L.A. Times that train stations should strive to connect with their communities.

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In an op-ed published in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, Urban Planning professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris shines light on California’s unique opportunities in building the nation’s first bullet train.

In designing the rail system, Loukaitou-Sideris wrote that cities should focus on the extending half a mile around the station and the broader region in order to make the most of the $68 billion investment.

“The arrival of high-speed rail can provide opportunities to transform adjacent station areas and reshape local economies through thoughtful planning and policies that integrate the railway stops with the local business and physical environment,” Loukaitou-Sideris wrote in the op-ed.

Loukaitou-Sideris encouraged California to look to rail systems in Europe as examples for designing a transportation system that would build community and stimulate the economy. She provided examples of European rain systems that incorporate its surroundings in an efficient way, including Madrid’s Atocha high-speed railway terminal and Germany’s Leipizig central train station, which both serve as shopping, eating and entertainment destinations.

“The architects of stations must focus on breaking down the barriers caused by coping with a massive transportation infrastructure, employing good design to place rail tracks out of the way and to increase the station’s connectivity to its surroundings,” Loukaitou-Sideris wrote.

In addition to providing transportation to increase connectivity, Loukaitou-Sideris addressed the need to find alternate forms of transportation to access stations in order to encourage walking to attractions near the terminals. Concealing parking structures and providing bike and car sharing facilities, for instance, can encourage people to visit nearby landmarks and entertainment centers.

Loukaitou-Sideris wrote that future planning and design should consider the municipal and regional context and assets of cities in California and should connect smaller cities and larger cities.

“Smaller cities should engage in complementary planning with bigger cities…and seek to identify productive relationships with newly accessible neighboring areas,” she wrote.

With these ideas in mind, Loukaitou-Sideris argued that California has the potential to design railway stations that become city landmarks and build community in regions across California.

In addition to her work as an educator, Loukaitou-Sideris conducts research on the public environment of the city, its aesthetics and impact on residents. She focuses on seeking to integrate social and physical issues in urban planning. Loukaitou-Sideris has served as a consultant to the Transportation Research Board, Federal Highway Administration and other projects. Her published works include “Sidewalks: Conflict and Negotiation over Public Space” and numerous articles.

Students and Mentors Come Together for Evening of Conversation Senior Fellows and students discuss mentorship

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By Alejandra Reyes-Velarde
UCLA Luskin Student Writer

On Feb. 10, UCLA Luskin students and Senior Fellows were brought together for a mid-year reception focused on mentoring and networking with a presentation from John Kobara, chief operating officer of the California Community Foundation and a former vice chancellor of external affairs at UCLA.

After students and Senior Fellows enjoyed appetizers and drinks while having the time to network and share their experiences with one another, Dean Franklin D. Gilliam introduced the evening and Kobara’s presentation.

Dean Gilliam emphasized that UCLA Luskin’s goal is to encourage students to become leaders, or ‘change agents,’ and face real world problems. He concluded by testifying to the Senior Fellow program’s strength and encouraging students to take advantage of the time the fellows give as mentors.

Kobara proved to be an example of a strong mentor, sharing words of wisdom from his experience as an entrepreneur and educator. He has served as CEO of the CK12 Foundation and was the president of OnlineLearning.net, two successful start-ups. Kobara has also taught classes at the undergraduate and graduate levels and was the executive director of the UCLA Alumni Association.

His focus for the evening was to urge students to search for meaning in their work.

“The status quo is unacceptable,” he said “Ask challenging questions….How will you make a difference in the world?”

Opening his presentation with a photograph of his mother’s family during World War II, Kobara shared a phrase she would say after being thanked: “Okage sama,” which translates as “Because of you.” He drew inspiration from his mother’s desire to make change despite her adverse circumstances to motivate and advise students to build connections for their futures.

“Regardless of race, identity or socioeconomic status, we share things. Connecting with people in an authentic way is essential,” Kobara said. He reminded the audience about the importance and power of building community and sharing resources through mutual support.

Though being mentored is powerful for both personal and professional improvement, mentoring is a two-way reality chec, Kobara said. Mentors need to be able to give the truth over encouragement, and mentees need to have the courage to ask the questions that need to be asked.

“You have to show up and you have to be seen. It’s about revealing ourselves. When the student is ready, the teacher appears,” he said.

Kobara highlighted a few key points in mentoring and networking during his presentation, including the importance of listening, treating people as equals and being able to speak from a narrative.

“The worst thing you can do is say ‘I’m just a student.’ You’re story is real, it matters,” Kobara said.

After these inspiring words, Kobara moved on to give students more practical advice about introducing yourself in a memorable way, avoiding typical awkward or robotic interactions. He asked his audience, “What is your ‘BIT?”, or “brief introductory talk,” and outlined basic points such as being positive and confident, having a firm handshake, making eye contact and smiling. He added that every introduction should be customized.

“How do we make people interested in what we’re doing? We have to be specific in the way we introduce ourselves,” he said.

To practice this idea, Kobara asked the Senior Fellows and students to stand up and chose one of three powerful poses. Afterwards, they were asked to introduce themselves and their mentor/mentees to two other people, using the tips Kobara had given them.

As the evening came to a close, Kobara reminded students to SWIVEL, or to “Strengthen What I Value, Enjoy and Love,” and to focus their path on passion, courage, compassion and connection.

Urban Planning Alumna Aims to Help Cities in World Bank Report Beth Tamayose ('11) co-authors World Bank Report on transportation

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By Alejandra Reyes-Velarde
UCLA Luskin Student Writer

Urban Planning alumna Beth Tamayose UP PhD ‘11 co-authored a recent World Bank Report, which aims to help cities create and capture the benefits of higher land values around urban transit stations and corridors.

The report offers cities methods beyond taxes and fees that will help them to reap the benefits of increases in land value attributable to land use regulations and investments in infrastructure.

In order to overcome financial difficulties of transit infrastructure that accompanies growing developing communities, the report, Financing Transit Oriented Development with Land Values, suggests using development based land value capture. Based on case studies of Hong Kong, Tokyo, London, Delhi and Sao Paulo, Tamayose and co-authors Hiroaki Suzuki, Jin Murakami and Yu-Hung Hong, reported that development based land value capture will generate funds for transit infrastructure, operation and maintenance and promote sustainable urban development.

Tamayose contributed in particular to demonstrating how development based land value capture practices in North America in Europe can “provide analogies and lessons for practitioners in developing countries.” This section of the report notes that urban railways, for example, have helped with mobility and developed “ world-class service and knowledge based business clusters by enhancing economic competitiveness, environmental sustainability, and social equity.”

Tamayose and Murakami focus on several case studies including New York City’s transferable development rights program, which has preserved landmarks and densified commercial activity around Grand Central Terminal.

Case studies also included the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and the King’s Cross rail yard in London, stressing the importance of sharing benefits around newly integrated transit.

Tamayose is currently focusing on similar research involving urban planning, governance structures and resource access and allocation, particularly for Indigenous Pacific Islander populations. She has also served as a lecturer in the Department of Urban Planning.

 

Repeating History But Innovating: Social Housing and Urban Policy in Latin America Blog post from Professor Paavo Monkkonen via Global Public Affairs @ Luskin

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By Paavo Monkkonen, Faculty Cluster Leader of Global Urbanization and Regional Development; Professor of Urban Planning

Although the major urbanization boom in Latin America occurred many decades ago, cities across the continent continue to grow rapidly and problems associated with adequate, affordable, and well-located housing are widespread. Housing policies designed to provide new, subsidized housing to low-income households still dominate (though the state no longer builds housing, providing assistance through the housing finance system instead), in spite of agreement among most experts that they are not the best way to ameliorate urban housing problems.

Unlike the inner-city public housing projects of the United States, public housing projects in Latin America are generally composed of small single-family homes located in far-flung outskirts of cities. They therefore suffer not only from problems associated with concentrated poverty, but more importantly a lack of urban amenities, poor public services, and a large distance from employment opportunities. Brazil’s most infamous peri-urban public housing development Cidade de Deus, portrayed in a film of the same name, was built in 1964 yet the new housing policy Minha Casa, Minha Vida is criticized for many of the same problems. Mexico has the largest finance driven social housing program in Latin America, and as a recent OECD report documents, faces major problems in new housing developments that lack public services, access to jobs, and as a result, among the highest vacancy rates in the world. In fact, scholars are framing the Mexican housing policy as a social interest housing planning disaster. Social housing programs in Chile and in Colombia face surprisingly similar criticism.

The philosopher George Santayana famously stated, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Kurt Vonnegut’s more prescient and useful retort is that “we’re doomed to repeat the past no matter what.” Thus, perhaps the challenge to policymakers (and scholars) is simply to make sure our iterations of past approaches are innovative in some aspects. And there are innovations. Two notable areas are first, the application of inclusionary housing ideas in the design of public housing programs, and second, policies to promote densification of more accessible parts of cities with services.

Chile is the farthest along in taking seriously the idea of inclusionary zoning/housing – regulations that promote the integration of market-priced properties and subsidized properties in the same multi-unit buildings or within neighborhoods – in public dialogue and action. A notable example is the Project of La Chimba in the city of Antofagasta in northern Chile built from 2003 to 2005. In spite of shifting to demand-side housing subsidies in the 1990s, low-income homebuyers continued to be pushed into certain types of new housing developments that shared the same problems as those previously built by the public sector, including social segregation. To address this problem, a project was developed in Antofagasta that purposely had a range of housing types in the same neighborhood, including some market rate and some affordable to voucher holders. A case study of this project by Hector Vasquez Gaete will be available shortly from Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

New policies to promote housing construction in central cities are also being implemented in Latin America, with the goal of adding housing where there are already services, amenities, and access to employment. For example, property tax rates on vacant land in Brazil are on average five times higher than on land that has been developed. More aggressively, Bogota (which also has higher tax rates for vacant land) implemented a policy that forces the sale of vacant land that is not developed within two years of being identified. Land is then developed for social housing.

In order to make progress in the design of housing policies so that they do not repeat past mistakes and improve the lives of those living in Latin American cities, comparative research on what works, what does not, and why, is necessary. Fortunately, this type of investigation is ongoing and several notable examples have been recently completed; for example an overview book from the Inter-American Development Bank, a paper by Eduardo Rojas, and an edited volume on the inner-suburban neighborhoods of Latin American cities by Peter Ward, Edith R. Jimenez Huerta, and Mercedes Di Virgilio.

Original post at http://global.luskin.ucla.edu/

Urban Planning alumna appointed as Executive Director of California Debt Limit Allocation Committee

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31c6080By Alejandra Reyes-Velarde
UCLA Luskin student writer 

Urban Planning alumna Jeree Glasser-Hedrick (MAUP ‘00) has recently been appointed as Executive Director of the California Debt Limit Allocation Committee by the California State Treasurer, John Chiang. Glasser-Hedrick will be responsible for programs that assist first-time homebuyers and for encouraging the development of affordable rental properties.

Currently, more than 34 percent of working renters pay more than 50 percent of their income toward housing, and the state’s Department of Housing estimates that California needs to build 220,000 new homes a year to keep up with population growth, a statement from the California State Treasurer’s Office said. Chiang is responding to this affordable housing crisis by leading a six-month engagement with housing leaders and stakeholders. Glasser-Hedrick is one of two key members who will aid Chiang in his plan and lead efforts to expand affordable housing in California.

“California has under-produced housing every single year since 1989,” Chiang said in the news release. “This shortage hinders companies’ ability to attract and retain employees, but also has repercussions for the health and education of our children, the environment, and our overall quality of life. The new housing team will help me tackle these issues and I’m looking forward to working with them.”

Glasser-Hedrick worked as a principal at JLG consulting for nearly two years. Prior to that, she served as program manager for Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency, and held the position of finance analyst at US Property Fund. In addition, she was a Presidential Management Fellow at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Glasser-Hedrick and the rest of Chiang’s housing team will begin meeting with local government officials, developers, financing experts and other stakeholders and leaders, including business sectors that have been impacted by California’s housing shortage, according to the news release.

Equipping Students for Life After Luskin

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This winter and spring quarter, UCLA Luskin will host a series of skill-building workshops, career talks and networking events to prepare students for success in the working world.

Some of the main highlights in the series of events include “LA County: Challenges and Opportunities,” featuring high-level speakers like Governor Brown’s director of economic development, and a career fair for students to “speed network” with alumni and professionals.

“Sometimes students forget about the resources available to them, but UCLA Luskin has great leadership events and career services like this to help prepare students to be the best they can be,” says Career Services director Michelle Anderson. “This series of events will help make them as competitive as possible for summer internships or full-time careers after graduation.”

The event calendar includes:

UCLA Luskin’s Annual Career Fair
Tuesday, April 7
4-7 p.m., Ackerman Grand Ballroom

 

Skill-Building Workshops

Professional Etiquette
Thursday, January 15
12:15 p.m., Public Affairs Room 2343

LinkedIn & Social Networking
Thursday, January 22
12:15 p.m., Public Affairs Room 2355

Interviewing Tips & Tricks
Thursday, February 5
12:15 p.m., Public Affairs Room 2355

Global Public Affairs: Guide to Site Visits
Friday, February 6
10 a.m., Public Affairs Room 2343

Leadership Initiative: Public Speaking
Thursday, February 12
12:15 p.m., Public Affairs Room 2343

Leadership Initiative: Framing the Message with Dean Gilliam
Thursday, February 26
12:15 p.m., Public Affairs Room 2355

Exercising Natural Leadership
Thursday, March 5
12:15 p.m., Public Affairs Room 2343

Resume Writing
Tuesday, March 31
12:15 p.m., Public Affairs Room 2355

Leadership Initiative: Working the Room with Barbara Osborn and Kafi Blumenfield
Thursday, April 23
12:30 p.m., Public Affairs Room 2355

Salary Negotiation
Thursday, May 7
12:15 p.m., Public Affairs Room 2355

 

Career Talks & Networking
Student/Alumni Networking Night
Tuesday, January 27
6 p.m., Faculty Center California Room

Careers in Global Public Affairs
Thursday, February 5
12:30 p.m., Public Affairs Room 2343

L.A. County: Challenges & Opportunities
Presented with L.A. County Business Federation
Thursday, February 5
5 p.m., Faculty Center California Room

Public Service Jobs at the Local Level
Thursday, February 21
12:15 p.m., Public Affairs Room 3343

Diversity in Leadership Conference
Saturday, April 25
All Day

What is ‘Post” About “Post-Conflict’?

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By Steve Commins, Associate Director of GPA@UCLA Luskin, and Urban Planning Lecturer

Nepal is a country that is currently labeled ‘post-conflict’. But after two civil wars, one driven by an armed insurgency which later allied with a non-violent democratic movement, and the second spurred on by ethnic tensions in communities bordering India, the Nepalese still struggle with the daily tasks of building a new political system. The label ‘post-conflict’ is a designation that belies the complexities of the country’s status and what is required for a long term, peaceful, political settlement.

Nepal currently faces both deeply rooted forms of poverty and economic exclusion. India, which borders the country, has had a major hand in its economic options, and the country receives a significant amount of international ‘aid.’

Nepal occupies a particular niche in the “aid business”, as it is not a ‘strategic’ conflict like Afghanistan, it is not an aid orphan like the Central African Republic nor is it an aid darling like South Sudan recently. As a result, Nepal exists within the broad sweep of countries that have been labeled ‘post-conflict’ by the United Nations and other agencies, and, in the current jargon, a ‘Fragile and Conflict Affected State’.

In the late 1990s, chastened by the failure of the UN and major political powers to effectively address the human catastrophes of the civil wars in Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia, as well as the limits of ‘democratization’ and ‘good governance’, a number of international agencies began to give more serious attention to what eventually became labeled ‘Fragile and Conflict Affected States’.

The premise of this approach is that there are complex, historic reasons why states have different forms of violent political conflict and political fragmentation, and there are also situations where states may experience the decay of public institutions even without overt violent conflict. This means that the UN and donor agencies have to address the underlying causes of ‘fragility’ rather than just provide humanitarian (neutral) aid – or as one observer put it, a ‘humanitarian fig leaf’.

Much literature has been devoted to debating ‘fragile’, ‘failed’ and ‘failing states’.  Frequently it misses the mark by not delving into the historic specifics of a country or region, or descending into superficial explanations like ‘these communities never got along’ or the government was doomed from the start’ – explanations that lack depth or insight into the nuances of the specific reasons and dynamics of fragility.

At the same time, the role of international agencies, which sometimes (but not always, hence the term ‘aid orphans’) provide large amounts of finance for both short-term ‘humanitarian’ assistance and longer-term ‘post-conflict’ reconstruction, poses another challenge. The problem with this approach is that donor agencies are making decisions on what to label a specific situation rather than the messy realities of politics (again, sadly, South Sudan’s collapsed political settlement comes to mind). Donor time frames and real politics rarely cohere.

As part of a four-country study on the impact of Community Driven Development projects on livelihoods in FCAS (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal), I worked with the lead Nepalese researcher on the initial interviews and inception for the country study.

Landing in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu provides no haunting images of war or political turmoil. On appearance the country is back in business. Indeed, fortunately for the country, the Maoists involved in the first civil war did not engage in the level of violence or social destruction found in some other countries (up to 20,000 people died, so ‘level’ is a sadly relative term). The Maoists currently function as a political party similar to the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) in El Salvador or FRELIMO (Mozambique Liberation Front), which moved into the political process after the peace agreements in their countries.

But talk for any amount of time with Nepalese and a complex picture of hopes and aspirations as well as uncertainties about a very nascent political system emerges. The politics of geography, as it were (Mountains, Hills, Terai), the debates about federalism (too much or too little depending on the individual) and the problematic aspects of nation state building and agreeing on the ‘imagined community’ that remain unresolved.

In the end, whatever label is applied by international donors, Nepal remains a country that has an evolving, contentious and sometimes fraught political process. Perhaps the label should be changed to ‘post-violent conflict’ (though different forms of violence frequently morph into criminality after the overt political violence has been reduced) as in reality all effective political settlements do not end conflict, rather they provide mechanisms that at best may achieve general acceptance for ways of addressing inevitable disagreements in non-violent, democratic and equitable ways.

This can only be seen from the ground up, as each violent conflict or manifestation of state fragility has its own history, meaning and narratives.

‘Post’ is a label of hopefulness about a better future, a short-hand for donors to change how they give aid, and, perhaps, a step towards a political settlement that works better for more people than the previous one.

Original post at http://global.luskin.ucla.edu/

Planning Professor’s Research Cited in Mexico Housing & Urban Policy Report

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Since 2012, Mexico has been working on an ambitious structural reform agenda across various sectors to boost the country’s competitiveness and economic growth. Housing and urban policy is considered a priority within this reform agenda as authorities are hoping to reduce a housing deficit that affects roughly 31% of Mexican households.

This attention to housing and urban policy, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) recent urban policy review on Mexico, is unprecedented for the country, and differs from past approaches to housing and urban policy in that it is focusing more on qualitative housing and the environment as opposed to quantitative goals. Over 200 Mexican political figures, policy makers and academics attended the launch of the report. Speakers included INFONAVIT Director General, Alejandro Murat; Governor of the State of Mexico, Eruviel Ávila Villegas; and Mayor of Mexico City, Miguel Mancera. They were accompanied by the Minister of Public Administration, Julián Alfonso Olivas Ugalde, and Mexican Ambassador to the OECD, Dionisio Pérez-Jácome Friscione.

Urban Planning Professor Paavo Monkkonen has conducted extensive research on housing vacancy in Mexico, including two projects in collaboration with OECD and the World Bank. His work was cited heavily in OECD’s urban policy review, which generated over 30 articles in the Mexican press. The policy review discusses the role of large housing lenders in housing policy for Mexico, priorities that will make the country create more competitive and sustainable cities, and various reforms to urban governance that will improve housing and development outcomes. The issue of vacant housing received particular attention in the media.

Last year, Professor Monkkonen delivered a presentation at the Institute of Social Research of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City on the topic of housing finance in urban policy, which also received a lot of attention by Mexican media outlets. Monkkonen argued that the Mexican government’s support of urban infill and higher density development would only be achieved with larger and more comprehensive reforms of the Mexican housing finance system than those currently proposed.

 

 

 

Urban Planning Student Awarded Switzer Fellowship

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By Alejandra Reyes-Velarde
UCLA Luskin student writer 

Aaron Ordower, a graduate student pursuing a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning in the Luskin School was awarded the Switzer Environmental Fellowship, a highly competitive and merit based award, by the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation.

The fellowship is awarded to 20 environmental leaders recognized by their academic institution or environmental experts. Through the fellowship, Ordower was awarded $15,000 to complete his degree and will be supported by the Switzer Foundation to continue his work facing crucial environmental challenges in Los Angeles.

Ordower has focused on urban sustainability and studies strategies for the development of transit friendly neighborhoods and urban growth to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reverse the effects of urban sprawl. He is also interested in how the different sectors of urban development, transportation, resource management and others can affect one another and work together for a more sustainable urban environment.

Urban planning students who have previously been awarded the prestigious award include Colleen Callahan who focused on transportation planning and environmental policy (2010) as well as John Scott-Railton and Miriam Torres who focused on climate change adaptation and water quality in low income communities (2011).