There’s a Brand New Vocabulary on the Streets, Says NYC Planning Rock Star UCLA Regents’ Lecturer Janette Sadik-Khan Discusses Designing the 21st-Century City.

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By Stan Paul

New York has long been known for its colorful language, distinctive regional accents and even its own definition of time: the proverbial “New York minute.”

But, while New Yorkers are still in a hurry, “There’s a brand new vocabulary on the streets,” said UCLA Regents’ lecturer and former commissioner of New York City Department of Transportation, Janette Sadik-Khan, who spoke to a full house Wednesday evening at UCLA. The event was part of the UCLA Luskin Welcome Week.

Sadik-Khan, who was appointed in 2007 by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, ran the department until 2013 and is currently a principal with Bloomberg Associates.

“You will see that there is a sea-change in what the streets of New York look like. There’s a brand new vocabulary on the street that didn’t used to be there,” she said. Throughout the evening, Sadik-Khan provided case studies and data about the many innovations and improvements that have occurred in recent years. These included transforming Times Square – “a crossroads of the world” —  into a pedestrian friendly place, expansion of bus service routes, the creation of the largest bike share program in U.S. and the addition of 400 miles of bicycle lanes, to name just a few.

“New Yorkers now talk about traffic calming. New Yorkers now talk about bike sharing. New Yorkers now talk about way-finding, said Sadik-Khan, adding, “There is just a completely different set of transportation options and designs on the streets of New York. Once known as the ‘mean streets’ I think they’ve really changed.” She noted that younger people today are looking for choices that include not taking on the burden of car ownership. This is important because “The choices we make today about how we prioritize our streets…has worldwide implications for generations to come.”

Sadik-Khan is acclaimed for her work to transform the transportation system in New York City. The crowd that filled the hall was made up of students, alumni, faculty and city and community leaders who work in the field. At the start of the evening, Sadik-Khan was introduced to the podium by Evelyn Blumenberg, chair of the UCLA Department of Urban Planning at the Luskin School of Public Affairs, who acknowledged Sadik-Khan’s renown in the transportation world.

“So often we hear about the many urban problems facing large urban areas…bankruptcy, poverty, poor urban design, traffic congestion, pollution and on,” said Blumenberg. “It’s awesome when someone in my own line of work achieves rock star status and tremendous visibility for helping to address some of these problems.”

“I’m really honored to be here with you as the Regents’ Lecturer at the Luskin School. I think the work is extraordinary, what you are doing here,” said Sadik-Khan.

During her lecture, Sadik-Khan outlined how increasing the safety and sustainability of a city is not just a single strategy, but “a panoply” that includes creating plazas and walkways and even creating places for people to just sit, putting “new life into old spaces.”

“Streets are our most valuable asset in cities and yet our street designs haven’t taken into account the ways people want to use them,” she said. “This dysfunction has somehow become accepted. We’ve become used to our streets as being out of balance.”

Sadik-Khan concluded the lecture with a word of caution and advice. Recounting the ways the media reported negatively on the changes she implemented in New York City, she explained that, “when you push the status quo, it can push back.” She added: “We are simply not going to create healthier, safer, more sustainable cities with the strategies that we followed up till now, that ignore all the other ways that a street is used.”

Her recommendation to the diverse audience of planners, academics, citizens and those who work daily in city government on these problems was this: “All sorts of new options are taking hold and planners need to adapt to these new changes and understand the way people want to get around. And we’re really just starting to glimpse what this shared economy means for transportation and cities.”

Following her presentation, transportation planning expert and Urban Planning Professor Emeritus Martin Wachs led a lively and informative question and answer session.

In addition to her Regents’ Lecture, Sadik-Khan was a guest speaker at an Urban Planning graduate course at the Luskin School on Thursday.

 

UP’s Monkkonen Challenges Media View of Mexican Housing Crisis The Urban Planning professor recently presented new research in Mexico City talk.

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In the wake of the recent US housing market crash, images of abandoned homes on the urban periphery of American cities dominated international media coverage, and when Mexico experienced its own vacant housing crisis in 2013, media outlets such as the New York Times, the Economist, and the Wall Street Journal covered the story through this same narrative lens of half-empty developments and residents stranded in sprawl.

Yet while these pictures and stories make for compelling journalism, according to research by urban planning professor Paavo Monkkonen they capture only one aspect of the Mexican housing crisis, and more crucially, they serve to distract focus away from the most urgent problems confronting housing in Mexico, such as reforming the housing finance system and addressing vacancy in urban cores.

Monkkonen discussed his research and ideas in a recent presentation at the Institute of Social Research of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City on September 8. The talk, entitled “Housing Finance is Urban Policy: INFONAVIT, Vacant Housing, and Urban Growth” in Mexico, was based on two ongoing research projects Monkkonen is conducting in collaboration with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank. Both projects are motivated by the housing vacancy crisis in Mexico caused by a finance system that hinders both the construction of new homes and the improvement of existing units in city centers.

As part of a series called the Ciclo La coyuntura nacional a debate, Monkkonen presented a vision of how the Mexican government could shift its approach to housing finance. He submitted four general areas for reforming urban policy in Mexico, including reforming the housing loan allocation system, increasing investment in the institutional infrastructure of the primary housing market (for example, property registries and cadastres), raising property taxes and placing more effort into collecting them, and encouraging urban density by promoting public transportation, eliminating parking requirements for new buildings and increasing the cost of operating private automobiles.

Monkkonen’s talk and research was picked up by several Mexican blogs and media outlets, such as Entrelineas and Impulso Informativo (in Spanish). Coverage in English can be found at the Mexico Daily Review.

Dr. Monkkonen first examined Mexican housing in his doctoral dissertation. According to Monkkonen, the Mexican housing vacancy crisis stems in part from housing finance policies that began in the 1990s, and the first of his current research projects focuses on vacant housing through analysis of rates of vacancy in the center and periphery of the 100 largest cities in Mexico, as well as their determinants. Findings show that although the high rates of peri-urban vacancy are a problem, there are a greater number of vacant units in the centers of Mexican cities. Additionally, there is a strong association between central city vacancy and housing finance, suggesting that the country’s housing policies have facilitated a suburbanization of urban populations.

Monkkonen’s second project focuses on urban growth patterns in Mexico and changes in the distribution of people and jobs within cities. Preliminary results reinforce the findings of the vacancy study, showing a loss of population in the center of 70 of the 100 largest cities in Mexico, concurrent with robust urban expansion.

Both of these research projects reinforce the Mexican government’s current shift towards the support of urban infill and higher density development. However, Monkkonen argues that the goal of urban infill will only be achieved with larger and more comprehensive reforms of the Mexican housing finance system than those currently proposed.

UCLA Luskin Welcomes New Diplomat in Residence Michelle G. Los Banos represents the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Foreign Service.

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Foreign Service Officer Michelle G. Los Banos will serve as UCLA’s new Diplomat in Residence for the 2014 – 2016 academic years. She was appointed by the U.S. Department of State to serve as Diplomat in Residence for Southern California and Hawaii and will be housed in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Los Banos will serve as a resource to students and graduates interested in working in the Foreign Service and at the Department of State.  She will be attending career fairs and conferences, as well as holding informational sessions and meetings with students by appointment.

In addition to her duties as Diplomat in Residence, Los Banos will also serve the Luskin School of Public Affairs as a Senior Fellow mentoring students from across all three departments.

“I am extremely excited to support my organization and help strengthen our future diplomatic corps by recruiting talented and diverse individuals to work for the State Department,” Los Banos said. “Being a Senior Fellow and getting to work with students who might share similar interests is also very exciting. It will give me a chance to share the experience and knowledge that I’ve gained in the world of diplomacy with someone who might be passionate about public service.”

Los Banos holds a Master in Public Policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. Her 12-year career in the Foreign Service has taken her to Ankara, Turkey; Managua, Nicaragua; Rome, Italy; as well as State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C, where she most recently served as Deputy Division Chief in the Cultural Programs Division of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Banos is also excited to be back in her home state.

“We are honored to have Ms. Los Banos join us here at Luskin,” said Dean Franklin D. Gilliam. “It has been our privilege to host Diplomats in Residence since 1998. Ms. Los Banos’ unique skills and experiences will be a valuable resource to our students who are dedicated to making an impact both locally and globally.”

For information about all upcoming events Los Banos will hold at UCLA and in the greater Los Angeles area, follow her on Facebook – DOS Diplomat in Residence Southern California. For individual or group appointments, you can email her at DIRSouthernCalifornia@state.gov.

Paul Ong’s Research Reveals Los Angeles’ Rent Burden Crisis

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Urban Planning professor Paul Ong’s latest research on the L.A. housing market has been highlighted in the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate’s monthly analyses of crucial real estate and economic issues.

The article, which is a condensed review of Ong’s paper titled “Impacts of the Widening Divide: Los Angeles at the Forefront of the Rent Burden Crisis,” delivers troubling news about the L.A. rental market – that it is the most unaffordable in the country and is the metro area with the largest share of renters vs. homeowners.

Ong writes:

“This affordability crisis has deep roots. Los Angeles has been a majority renter city since 1970. And the disparity between renters and owners reflects an economic divide that has widened over decades.

Our studies show severe housing burden among poor renters has existed since 1970, and that during periods of increasing inequality the burden has grown even more severe. Vacancy rates have risen only slightly – even dipping at times when housing burden has increased. And renters are paying more for the same quality housing, suggesting that neither market forces nor changing housing quality fully explain the increasing rents.

Altogether, the data show that the solution to this long-term crisis is to address its root causes – low incomes and high rents – by increasing both renter earnings and affordable housing.”

Ong and his co-authors Silvia Jimenez and Rosalie Ray also contributed an op-ed piece that was published in the Los Angeles Business Journal (subscription required).

UCLA Pays Tribute to Andrea Rich Professor Andrea Rich dies at 71.

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The UCLA community is remembering longtime professor and administrator Andrea Rich, who passed away July 28.

Rich played a key role in the university’s 1994 Professional Schools Restructuring Initiative, which led to the creation of the Department of Public Policy and the unit that would become the Luskin School of Public Affairs.

“She was a person of great integrity, strength, leadership and resilience,” founding dean Archie Kleingartner told the UCLA Newsroom. “She provided a very high level of leadership.” Read the UCLA Newsroom post here.

 

Pre-Doctoral Workshop for Students of Color Draws 26 Participants

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“All of the recent research demonstrates that you get better education, teaching and research with diverse working groups,” said Christine Littleton, UCLA’s Vice Provost for Faculty & Diversity Development.

She was addressing a group of recent graduates and young professionals who expressed interest in earning higher degrees in the field of urban planning. This year’s Association of Collegiate Scholars of Planning (ACSP) Pre-Doctoral Workshop for Students of Color was hosted jointly by UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs Department of Urban Planning and the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy’s Urban Planning and Development graduate program. Twenty-six people from diverse backgrounds participated.

The four-day workshop was robust with panels on urban planning, the basics of PhD study, what it means to earn a PhD in urban planning, and research. The group also went on a tour of Los Angeles that went from MacArthur Park through the Los Angeles Fashion and Produce Districts, and to the Pico Aliso public housing project and Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights. Peppered throughout the workshop was time to network with current doctoral students and faculty.

“This workshop has been a great opportunity,” said Natalie Hernandez, who earned her BA in Urban Studies focusing on environmental sustainability and currently works for the state of California in Sacramento. “I’ve met really cool people who are in the field already, and I don’t know if I would have been able to meet all of them in one place if it wasn’t for this workshop.”

Hernandez says she is certain she wants to earn a masters degree, but is on the fence about doctoral studies. Being able to sit down with faculty members like Evelyn Blumenberg, chair of the Urban Planning department at UCLA, and Manuel Pastor of USC, was meaningful quality time, Hernandez said.

Kimberly Arnold, who works as a research assistant at Drexel University and is interested in public health and how the built environment impacts the health of lower income communities, said the workshop was eye opening for her in many ways.

“I initially didn’t know a lot about urban planning prior to coming and it seemed a bit abstract to me,” Arnold said. “But after coming here and speaking with faculty, staff members and researchers in the field, it really opened my eyes to the fact that there’s a lot of overlap between public health and urban planning.”

The workshop helped Arnold to better define her research interest, and figure out that she can apply to urban planning programs and still have research help from public health faculty.

The most meaningful part for Arnold, however, was talking with faculty and current students about the process of applying to PhD programs, what to expect once in the program, and discussing different sources of funding.

“My undergraduate career was very difficult because they didn’t really value diversity and there weren’t a lot of support systems in place,” Arnold noted. “My graduate school had many more support systems and I was able to thrive there.”

UCLA has a strong commitment to diversity both on and off campus. During her lunchtime talk, Littleton explained that UCLA has demonstrated this by starting a search for a new Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion to centralize and enhance diversity efforts on campus. Similarly, Luskin’s Department of Urban Planning has a stellar track record related to diversity with 48 percent of its students identifying as non-white.

The pre-doctoral workshop ended with a campus tour of UCLA and a closing reception with pre-doctoral workshop alumnus Matt Miller giving the closing address.

Miller told the group that he overcame the adversity of growing up in East Palo Alto, cited as the murder capital of California in the 1990s, and went on to earn degrees at Stanford and MIT. He is currently pursuing his PhD at USC.

“Planning is about making communities better – where we live, where we work, where we play, where we worship, and where we learn,” Miller said. He added that he still relies on the friendships and connections he made at the workshop last year for support.

Michael Storper Makes List of World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds

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Urban Planning professor Michael Storper has made Thomson Reuters’ list of the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds of 2014.

Each year, Thomson Reuters analyzes data from its Web of Science and InCites platforms to determine the researchers who have produced work that is most frequently acknowledged by their peers. Researchers who published numerous articles that ranked in the top one percent of the most cited in their respective fields in the given year of publication made the list.

Storper, who teaches globalization, economic geography, and regional and international development at the Luskin School of Public Affairs, was recognized in the general Social Sciences category.

“”I’m very happy that my publications are having an impact,” Storper said. “As a scholar, I believe that scientific research is the basis for understanding the world around us and how it may be improved.”

Storper’s latest book, “Keys to the City,” examines economic, institutional, innovational and interactional, and political contexts that shape urban economic development. You can see more of his publications here.

To search the Thomson Reuters database of 2014 influential scientific minds by name, category or university affiliation, you can go here.

 

Urban Planning Students Earn Levine Distinguished Fellowship

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Urban Planning students Valerie Coleman and Aaron Ordower have been named Howard and Irene Levine Distinguished Fellows, a program offered through the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate. UCLA Anderson School of Business MBA student Neil Doshi is the third recipient of the award.

The fellowship is given to UCLA Anderson, UCLA Law or UCLA Luskin Urban Planning or Public Policy students who are entering their last year of graduate studies. Students demonstrating an interest and gift in real estate and social responsibility, academic accomplishment, leadership, and service to the real estate program at UCLA are chosen.

Coleman and Ordower both have experience working in the affordable housing and sustainability sector prior to entering their studies at UCLA. Coleman was a project manager at Rebuilding Together SF, which focuses on preserving affordable home ownership in San Francisco. Ordower spent time at World Bank working on projects focused on sustainable development investment lending in Latin America.

They also both have big goals for the future.

“While I still have some time to really dream big about my career, most likely I’ll want to work around issues of affordable housing and/or cities preparing for the tremendous increase in aging residents,” Coleman says. Though it was her work in community development that led her back to school, she discovered an interest learning about how cities can support the growing senior population through research work with Professor Fernando Torres-Gil at UCLA’s Center for Policy Research on Aging.

Ordower, who is currently in New York City doing two internships over the summer, says he aims to make meaningful economic changes in underinvested neighborhoods.

“I am passionate about creating affordable housing that is environmentally sustainable: both by constructing efficient buildings but also by creating affordable units close to the city center and close to jobs,” he says. “That could mean a role in local government or with a private sector developer working on projects that revitalize these neighborhoods.

Along with an annual stipend award and a chance to work with UCLA faculty and industry leaders in developing future case studies for real estate courses, Levine fellows are assigned a Ziman Center board member as a mentor and will have opportunities to attend social entrepreneurial real estate leadership training and engage in select internships.

Ordower says he’s confident that the fellowship will help him to develop skills he may be lacking by exposing him to private sector professionals.

“I hope they will help me identify the skills I need to develop, and expose me to practical advice,” he says.

“I’m excited to network with real estate professionals and to grow my understanding of real estate development,” says Coleman. “I’m excited to find where and how my interests overlap and hope to have the opportunity to do a research-based project as well.”

Luskin Assistant Professors Awarded UCLA Hellman Fellowship

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Urban Planning assistant professor Paavo Monkkonen and Public Policy assistant professor Randall Akee have been named 2014-15 Hellman Fellows for demonstrating a capacity for great distinction in their research. There are eleven recipients of the award in total.

The UCLA Hellman Fellows Program established in 2011 was created to help junior faculty pursue their research passions. The grant will act as seed money for assistant professors to fund their research and other creative activities that promote and enhance their career advancement.

Monkkonen, who teaches courses at UCLA Luskin in housing markets and policy and global urban segregation, was chosen as a fellow for his project “The Half-life of Childhood: How Economic Development Shapes Young Adults’ Household Position.” The half-life of childhood refers to the age at which half of the population is no longer a child. The goal of his project is to better understand how economic development affects household structure, especially the age at which children leave their parents’ home and form a new household. Monkkonen notes that household formation has a major impact on housing markets, and this information will be important to future projections of the number of households which influences housing policy.

“I am honored to have been selected as a Hellman Scholar,”he said. “The generous research grant will enable me to hire graduate student researchers to assist me with data manipulation and analysis, which for this project is very time-consuming. The study uses individual census records from over 70 countries in multiple time periods, which translates into hundreds of millions of observations! I have been trying to get this project going for a number of years but have not had the resources, so it is very exciting that I can get this research underway.”

Akee was awarded the fellowship for his project “How Do Changes in Unearned Income Affect American Indian Infant and Children? The Case of American Indian Casino Revenue Transfers.” The purpose of his research is to determine how the advent of casino operations and other large changes in household income of American Indians affects American Indian infants and children. According to Akee, preliminary data has shown that increased incomes have led to a reduction in behavioral disorders and substance abuse for American Indian adolescents. However, there has been no determination into what degree revenue changes have affected infants and younger children. Akee’s study will look at the effects of increases in unearned income on AI maternal behavior as well as educational outcomes for infants and children.

“I’m very excited and grateful for the award. It allows me to hire an MPP student over the course of the summer at full-time in order to work on the data,” Akee said. “It allows the research to get completed at a much quicker pace than I would otherwise be able to do it. Also, it trains one of our MPP students in data analysis. I’m very eager to see the research outputs that will come as a result of this fellowship.”

In Memoriam: Public Policy Professor Michael Intriligator

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Professor Michael Intriligator, a professor of economics, political science and public policy at UCLA who played an influential role in the establishment of the School of Public Affairs, died on June 23 after a three-year battle with melanoma.

“All of us at UCLA Luskin are saddened by Mike’s passing,” Dean Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., said. “He was the kind of faculty colleague every dean hopes for: thoughtful, courteous, inquisitive, and immensely dedicated to his field of inquiry. My colleagues and I will miss him deeply.”

Intriligator came to UCLA in 1963 as an assistant professor of economics after earning his M.A. from Yale and his Ph.D. at MIT. A tremendous scholar, he left an indelible mark on his colleagues across campus as he later joined the political science and public policy departments, where he taught courses on international relations, econometrics and economic theory.

Ever an active figure, Intriligator also served as director of the UCLA Center for International and Strategic Affairs, the predecessor of the current Burkle Center for International Relations. In addition, he was a Senior Fellow of the Milken Institute and the Gorbachev Foundation of North America; authored more than 300 journal articles and other publications in economics; served as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the Russian Academy of Sciences; and was vice chair and board member of Economists for Peace and Security.

Closer to home, Professor Intriligator was central to establishing the UCLA School of Public Affairs, the development of the Public Policy curriculum and initial recruitment of the Public Policy faculty (then Policy Studies). After his retirement in 1994, he continued to be a prominent figure in the lives of many faculty members and students, as the long-time organizer of the Marschak Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Mathematics in the Behavior Sciences at UCLA.

“Mike was a valued colleague and a dear friend to the Department of Public Policy,” Public Policy department chair Michael Stoll said. “He played a very influential role in the development of the Department and in recruiting leading scholars from around the country to join the Department as founding members. Even after his formal service as a UCLA faculty member he remained involved in life on campus, and was a key advisor to many.”

Mike is survived by his wife Devrie (a research physicist at Carmel Research Center and a world renowned expert on space plasma physics) and four sons: Kenneth (professor of physics at UC San Diego), William (conductor of the Dubuque, Iowa, and Cheyenne, Montana, symphony orchestras), James (professor of psychology, Bangor University in Wales), and Robert (a Los Angeles-based composer).

The Intriligator family is holding a memorial service on Thursday, July 3, 11 a.m., at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, 3663 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles. A reception at the temple will immediately follow the service; RSVP is not necessary, but, if possible, please email Robert Intriligator or call him at 310-922-7765 for a guest count. The family will invite guests at the reception to share their impressions of and anecdotes about Intriligator. Information regarding donations in lieu of flowers will be provided at the memorial service.

UCLA’s Department of Economics has published a memorial written by Distinguished Professor of Economics John Riley. You can read that here.