Joan Ling Named Urban Planning Alumna of the Year

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By Adeney Zo
UCLA Luskin Student Writer

Joan Ling MA UP ’82 has been named 2014 Alumna of the Year by the department of Urban Planning. Ling currently works as a real estate advisor and policy analyst in urban planning.

As a child, Ling developed a passion for carpentry and building that later inspired her to pursue a career in urban planning.

Ling recalls: “My father was a doctor by vocation and carpenter/cabinet maker by avocation. When I was 12, I designed and built a house for my dog from scratch . . . I love working with my hands and building things.”

“My intellectual interest in the nexus between social theory and practice led me to the UCLA Urban Planning Department,” Ling continues. “And during the two years I attended school here, my love of cities blossomed, along with a growing awareness of work opportunities that could fulfill my emotional, spiritual and creative needs. “

Following graduation, Ling used her hands-on experience to improve public policy, legislation and government regulations. Among the many issues she has affected, highlights include reforming the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to streamline affordable and urban in-fill housing production, negotiating the California Mello Act implementation in Los Angeles, running a successful voter initiative to authorize affordable housing development under Article 34 of the California Constitution, passing local ordinances giving land use incentives and protections for affordable housing development projects, and advocating for more and better targeted financial resources in California’s tax credit and bond-funded housing programs. She is currently working on promoting a range of housing choices in Los Angeles transit station areas, land use incentives for affordable housing, and a dedicated funding source in California.

Ling has taken about 60 development projects totalling 1,400 units from acquisition through entitlement, financing, construction, marketing and building operations. Her projects include the first multi-family structure in the country awarded the gold certification by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) as well as two buildings that received the National American Institute of Architect’s Design Honor Awards.

Ling served as the Executive Director of Community Corporation of Santa Monica for 20 years. She has also worked for the Los Angeles County Community Development Commission; Kotin, Regan, and Mouchly; and The Planning Group. She was the Treasurer of the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles for over six years until its dissolution in February 2012. She is a director on the Housing California board and the chair of its Land Use and Finance Committee. In addition, she serves on the MoveLA Advisory Board.

Ling holds a certificate from Harvard Kennedy School of Government after completing an 18-month program in Achieving Excellence in Community Development. Fannie Mae Foundation honored her as a National James A. Johnson Fellow. Ling also currently teaches real estate, housing and planning courses in the Urban Planning department.

“Returning to teach in the department after a 30-year professional career is one of the best choices I made in my life,” says Ling. “The students’ energy, enthusiasm and commitment make me feel alive and hopeful for the future.”

Urban Planning Ph.D. Student Receives Grant To Study Brazil’s Agro-Industry

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Lee Mackey, a doctoral candidate in Urban Planning, has been awarded a research grant from the BRICS Initiative for Critical Agrarian Studies (BICAS) for his research on the rise of Brazilian agro-industrial firms in Latin America. BICAS is a new global research initiative composed of researchers hailing from the ‘BRICS’ countries of Brazil, China and South Africa that works across the fields of political economy, political ecology and political sociology to understand the ‘BRICS‘ and their implications for global agrarian transformations at a variety of emerging scales. Over the last decade, booming agricultural production and the spotlight of global media has fueled claims that Brazil’s tropical agroindustry will reshape production, technology and hunger across Latin America and Africa. Mackey’s research seeks to ground these claims of ‘BRICS boom’ or, alternatively, ‘BRICs bust’ by exploring the sectoral and locations patterns of Brazilian agroindustry in Latin America. This research holds significance for our understanding of the emerging ‘South-South’ geographies of production in the global economy but it also signals that these processes will be interpreted through the new spaces of intellectual production emerging across the ‘global South.’

Rep. Karen Bass to Deliver Commencement Address

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Congresswoman Karen Bass (D-Calif.), who represents the 37th Congressional District, will be the keynote speaker at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs’ commencement ceremony on Friday, June 13.

Rep. Bass is a long-time public servant and community leader, and a member of the inaugural class of the UCLA Luskin Senior Fellows Program. She serves on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs where she is a ranking member of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations. She is also a member of the House Judiciary Committee where she is working to craft sound criminal justice reforms. She was selected by Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to serve on the Steering and Policy Committee, which sets the policy direction of the Democratic Caucus.

Throughout her career, Bass has maintained a focus on the nation’s foster care system. In her first term, she created the bipartisan Congressional Foster Youth Caucus along with co-chair U.S. Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.). Now in her second term, Bass plans to examine national standards of care in the child welfare system.

As a child, Bass became interested in community activism while watching the Civil Rights Movement unfold. It was then that she made a lifetime commitment to effecting social change in her community and abroad. Prior to serving in Congress, Bass worked for nearly a decade as a physical assistant and served as a clinical instructor at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine Physician Assistant Program. Bass also founded and ran the Community Coalition, a community-based social justice organization in South Los Angeles that empowers residents to become involved in making a difference. It was in this position as executive director of the Community Coalition that she became a UCLA Luskin Senior Fellow.

Bass later made history when the California Assembly elected her to be its 67th Speaker, making her the first African American woman in U.S. history to serve in this state legislative role. While in this role, she helped the State of California to recover from the 2008 economic crisis.

Urban Planning Student Accepted into First-Ever Levine Distinguished Fellowship

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By Adeney Zo
UCLA Luskin Student Writer

Urban Planning student Jadie Wasilco’s passion for affordable housing issues has earned her a Howard and Irene Levine Distinguished Fellowship, a new program offered through the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate.

Prior to studying at UCLA Luskin, Wasilco began her work in affordable housing at a nonprofit legal firm in San Francisco called “Home Base,” which offered technical legal assistance to local counties working to combat homelessness. Her interest in urban planning and community development  as well as the performing arts led her to move to New York, where she got a position at the renowned Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts as Coordinator of Government & Community Relations. “They were undergoing a large-scale redevelopment at the time, so there was tremendous involvement with community groups, art organizations and government agencies. I acted as the liaison between Lincoln Center and these particular stakeholders,” Wasilco relates. “That position kept me interested in redevelopment and working with the government, even though it wasn’t directly related to housing issues.”

After working in New York for a few years, Wasilco made the decision to enter graduate school to further her studies in the field of community development and housing. In her first year of graduate school, Wasilco also interned for the LA County Housing Department, which she describes as an experience that “really helped refuel my interest in affordable housing during my first year.”

Wasilco, now a second-year student, was recently selected as one of three students to become part of the first-ever Levine Distinguished Fellowship. The program is structured to support students interested in real estate and housing issues through an annual stipend, mentorship component with a UCLA Ziman Center board member, access to real estate events and professional networking opportunities.

Howard Levine, member of the founding board for the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate, and his wife, Irene, also sponsor an MBA real estate and social entrepreneurship course (meant to be taken in conjunction with the fellowship), along with a speaker series as part of their Howard and Irene Levine Program in Housing and Social Responsibility. Wasilco explains, “The Levines wanted this fellowship  to be part of a broader initiative focused on the intersection of social responsibility and real estate.”

The fellowship is still in its beginning stages, but Wasilco looks forward to witnessing the fruits of the program in the form of a final project each fellow will present at the end of the year. “The program requires a deliverable at the end of the year of the fellowship, so it will be interesting to see what projects will come out of it,” she explains. “Since this is a collaborative between students from the law, public affairs and business schools, the program will mean different things for people from different backgrounds. The goal is to see how you take advantage of this fellowship and run with it.”

Though her graduation is also fast approaching, Wasilco plans to explore a variety of career options as she completes her year in the fellowship. “I’m definitely interested in going into housing – anything from nonprofit housing development to real estate consulting,” she says. “I’ve always been interested in urban planning, as it connects a variety of issues cities face and puts them together on common ground. These are the kind of issues that I’m interested in pursuing in the future.”

Learn more about Jadie Wasilco.

Study Shows Access to Cars Important for the Poor

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A new study co-authored by professor and chair of Urban Planning Evelyn Blumenberg is getting some play in the media for its unique, and possibly controversial, findings concerning automobile access for low-income households.

The Washington Post’s Emily Badger writes: “In many circles – among advocates for cleaner air, safer streets, less congestion and public transit – it’s a major policy goal to get people out of cars. Reduce car use, and you reduce pollution. Reduce car use, and we’ll need fewer costly roads and parking garages. Reduce car use and shift more people onto bikes and trains, and maybe we’ll all spend less of our lives idling in traffic.”

“This line of thinking, however, seldom considers a group of people for whom more car use might actually be a very good thing: the poor.”

The study, titled “Driving to Opportunity: Understanding the Links among Transportation Access, Residential Outcomes, and Economic Opportunity for Housing Voucher Recipients” examined low-income families in 10 cities who participated in two federal housing voucher programs. According to the study, housing voucher recipients with cars lived and remained in higher-opportunity neighborhoods. Data from participants in the Moving to Opportunity housing voucher program showed that those with cars were twice as likely to find a job and four times as likely to stay employed. The study notes that this is not necessarily because cars are better than mass transit, but because public transit systems are usually slower or insufficient in metropolitan areas.

In a blog post reprinted in Atlantic Cities, the study’s co-author Rolf Pendall of the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center explains that more research is needed to determine if the relationship between cars and improved neighborhood and employment outcomes is causal or associative. However, he notes that the current findings are “enough to raise important questions.”

Badger says: “All of these findings are as much a reflection on the value of cars as the relatively poor state of public transit. The underlying issue also isn’t so much that cars create opportunity. Rather, it’s that we’ve created many places where you can’t access opportunity without a car. Which also means that we’ve created places that punish people who don’t have one (or can’t afford to get one). That’s a much larger critique.”

 

Journalist Sasha Issenberg to be Civil Society Fellow

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Political journalist Sasha Issenberg will be in residence as a Fellow in the Center for Civil Society in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and the UCLA Department of Political Science for spring quarter 2014.

Mr. Issenberg is currently Washington correspondent for The Monocle, a magazine covering global affairs, business culture and design. He is the Author of The Victory Lab: the Secret Science of Winning Elections (Crown, 2012), which shows how political campaigns have been transformed by innovations in data, analytics, and behavioral psychology. He is also the author of The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of Modern Delicacy (Gotham/Penguin, 2007), which describes how sushi went from a street snack to a major global commodity in less than a decade.

He is currently writing a book on marriage equality to be published by Crown/Random House, The Engagement: A Quarter-Century of Defending, Defining, and expanding Marriage in America. The Engagement will document the political, legal, and social history of the battles over gay marriage in the United States. Mr. Issenberg’s UCLA Fellowship is supported in part by a generous contribution from the David Bohnett Foundation.

Mr. Issenberg will co-teach a Fiat Lux undergraduate course, Victory Lab, Exploring the Mechanics of Modern Campaigns with Lynn Vavreck of the Political Science Department, who was instrumental in bringing Mr. Issenberg to UCLA. The Fiat Lux Course will meet every other Tuesday from 3:30 to 4:50 in room 1284 of the Public Affairs building. Luskin students are welcome to sit in on the class, which will also feature a number of prominent guest speakers from the political arena.

In addition he will lead brown bag lunch discussions for the Luskin community: Thursday, May 1, 12 pm “Why We Stopped Fighting over Gay Marriage” in 3333, and Wednesday, May 14, 12 pm for “Why the Democrats Are Better with Data” in Room 3343. He will also lead a Dean’s Salon in May on the topics of “Sushi, Campaign Strategy, and Civil Rights.”

Mr. Issenberg has held editorial and reporting positions for George, Philadelphia Magazine, The Boston Globe, and Slate. He has also published articles in a wide range of major publications including the New York Times Magazine, New York, The Atlantic and The Washington Monthly. He was a Fellow of the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics in 2013. He is a 2002 graduate of Swarthmore College.

Most recently, he published “America Exports Democracy, Just not the Way You Think,” in the March 14 Sunday New York Times Review.  And in 2012 he held his own with Stephen Colbert.

Mr. Issenberg’s office is Rm 6273, in the Public Affairs Building, and he can be reached at sashaissenberg@gmail.com.

Soja’s ‘My Los Angeles’ Reviewed in L.A. Times

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Distinguished Urban Planning professor emeritus Edward Soja’s new book, My Los Angeles: From Urban Restructuring to Regional Urbanizations, has been reviewed in the Los Angeles Times.

“Edward Soja, a geographer at UCLA, has spent much of his long career trying to read Los Angeles,” the reviewer, journalist and UCLA academic Jon Christensen writes. “Along the way, he developed innovative and sometimes controversial theories of urbanization and became a founder of a dynamic ‘L.A. School’ of urban studies.”

In placing Soja at the creation of this school of thought, Christensen, who is the editor of Boom: A Journal of California, credits Soja with “some of the most provocative and productive ideas to our understanding of cities in recent history.”

Soja’s book primarily addresses Los Angeles’ socio-economic landscape in the wake of the 1992 civil unrest, which he sees as a consequence of decades of economic decline and racial isolation. The key factor to future growth will be networks — of employment, transportation and culture — that serve all areas of the city and empower stronger communities and individuals.

Soja’s observations are important, Christensen writes. “In the next 30 to 40 years, as the worldwide population grows from 7 billion to 9 billion and possibly more, all of that growth effectively will be absorbed in cities, doubling the urban population on Earth.”

“That means the urban built environment will double too,” he continues. “The shape of those urban spaces, as Edward Soja shows, will fundamentally shape the future.”

My Los Angeles is published by the University of California Press.

Students Journey Far Afield for Spring Break Work

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Students in Public Policy, Social Welfare and Urban Planning are taking their shows on the road this Spring Break.

In pursuit of independently organized projects, groups of students will travel to Detroit, Mexico City and Tokyo. The trips are designed to encourage a broader understanding of issues of urbanization, governance, policy and social service.

In Detroit, a group of 10 students will explore the consequences of the city’s bankruptcy on urban policy. During their time in the city they have meetings scheduled with a host of city officials, including agency heads, nonprofit leaders and Mayor Mike Duggan. In their conversations the students hope to uncover lessons of governing a city in crisis, resources available to city managers and the role citizens can play in rebuilding an iconic city’s image. “Detroit represents the most extreme versions of problems in the urban core,” the students write on their trip blog. “This trip will serve to contextualize urban planning issues in the canonical distressed city.”

The Mexico City trip will cross disciplinary lines to understand transportation access in the context of a global metropolis. With many similarities in structure and environment as Los Angeles, 28 students from all three UCLA Luskin departments will use the Mexican capital as a source for new ideas in social justice, equity and community empowerment. The sessions packed into the five-day schedule, spanning such topics as bikesharing, parking management, women’s needs, sustainable development and public space programming, will be distilled into a post-trip event at UCLA Luskin. The group will also be posting updates to a dedicated website during the trip.

Two groups of students are heading for Tokyo. The first will follow a path established in previous years as they travel to the Tohoku region of Japan’s largest island, where they will engage with civic leaders responding to the 2011 earthquake that inundated the city of Sendai. More than three years after the disaster, the region still offers vital lessons of emergency planning, critical response and community rebuilding. The second group, traveling under the auspices of UCLA’s Urban Humanities Institute, will explore the role of transportation in crafting a community through an innovative interpretation of the neighborhood surrounding Shinjuku Station, the world’s busiest transportation center.

Beyond the March pause in classes, UCLA Luskin students spend summer breaks living and working overseas through the International Practice Pathway program.

Student Postcard: Seeking Resiliency in the Pacific Rim

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Greg Pierce, a Ph.D. candidate in Urban Planning, was selected as the sole UCLA representative to attend the Second Annual Pacific Cities Sustainability Initiative Forum in Manila this month. Upon his return to the states, he shared this postcard of his experience in the city, which is still recovering from a major typhoon that struck in 2013.

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the 2nd annual Pacific Cities Sustainability Initiative (PCSI) Forum in Manila, the capital city of the Philippines. I was selected as the graduate student representative from UCLA to participate in the conference. The Urban Land Institute and the Asia Society jointly sponsored the forum, which brought together a diverse group of academics (including Professor Robert Spich from the UCLA Anderson School), officials from the Philippine government, real estate developers and other development consultants. Participants traveled from all across Asia and North America to Manila.

The theme of this year’s forum was ‘Creating Livable and Resilient Cities.’ This theme was particularly appropriate in the context of Manila, which experiences serious flooding several times a year, especially in lower-income areas. Moreover, the country as a whole is still recovering from Typhoon Haiyan. The typhoon struck in November 2013, devastating cities and towns throughout the islands of Leyte and ranking as the deadliest typhoon in the country’s history. Outsized, adverse weather events in the Philippines and throughout the Pacific Rim are only expected to increase in light of climate change.

The day before the forum began, I had the opportunity to visit Fort Santiago in Old Manila. Much of this area of the city was built in the 16th century by the Spanish. This area is rich in colonial and post-colonial history and featured a range of diverse architecture, including Manila’s city hall building. While in this part of town, I was also able to visit some neighborhoods nearby that provided a taste of the typical day-to-day experience of the city’s residents.

The first day of the forum consisted of ‘mobile workshops’ to different areas of the city to see urban resiliency in action. The mobile workshop I attended served as quite a contrast from Old Manila. I visited both Makati, the central business district and financial hub of the city, and Bonifacio Global City, a relatively new master planned development. Both areas have taken urban resiliency to heart by implementing advanced storm water management techniques and constructing earthquake-resistant buildings with the most flexible materials. However, Makati and Bonifacio are largely designed for wealthy Filipinos and foreigners, and do not facilitate the inclusion of the city’s lower and middle income residents. Another poignant portion of the tour included a visit to the memorial cemetery for the Americans and Filipinos who perished in World War II.

An explanation of the storm water management system in Bonifacio Global City

The World War II memorial cemetery with Bonifacio Global City in background

The subsequent days of the conference were held at the eclectic Mind Museum in Bonifacio Global City. The forum featured keynote addresses by Sir Robert Parker — the mayor of Christchurch, New Zealand when the major 2011 earthquake struck the city — and Dr. Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, the director of disaster relief in Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami devastated Aceh province. These experts provided both practical advice for urban resiliency in future disasters as well as a welcome people-oriented approach to handling such crises. I was also able to attend a number of lively panel discussions and small-group breakouts on more specific topics in urban resiliency, such as public private partnerships and sustainable urban design. The conference also included numerous opportunities for knowledge-sharing and networking.

In addition to taking in knowledge, I contributed to the range of policies which can enhance urban resiliency. Along with other graduate students, I presented a poster at the forum. My proposal, ‘Performance-Based Pricing for City Parking in the Pacific Rim,’ outlined how large cities, both in the United States as well as in Asia and Latin America, can implement market-based pricing for their public on-street parking supply. Implementing dynamic pricing addresses past urban planning urban mistakes, improves livability by reducing congestion and pollution, and increases cities’ financial resiliency. Enhanced revenue from parking can also be diverted to urban residents without cars, the vast majority of those living in Asia and Latin America.

Overall, visiting Manila and attending the forum was a great experience but also served as a reminder of ongoing challenges for urban resiliency in countries such as the Philippines. While we know much about best practices and can see how well-off residents can ensure resilience in light of climate change and disasters, mainstreaming disaster risk reduction and everyday livability for the average resident of a low or middle income city remains a challenge.

Student Report Reflects on Japanese Disaster Preparation

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Three years after a massive earthquake and tsunami struck Tohoku, Japan, students from all three departments have produced an anthology of personal reflection and academic analysis of the disaster’s impact on the community.

“Telling our Story: UCLA Luskin Japan Trip 2013” collects writing from 22 students in Public Policy, Social Welfare and Urban Planning that traveled to the region last year. In a weeklong trip over Spring Break, the students toured disaster sites, examined official and community responses to the tragedy, and documented the country’s progress toward recovery.

“We, the authors, made promises to our sponsors and hosts to never forget Tohoku, and sharing our academic observations and personal experiences here not only immortalizes them but makes them accessible to those who cannot travel to the region themselves,” write the editors — Urban Planning student Vicente Romero, Social Welfare student Elizabeth Schaper and Public Policy student Keitaro Tsuji. “It is our hope that this body of work will help us achieve our promise to increase this region’s global visibility.”

The students also documented their trip in a video piece produced by Public Policy student Dustin Foster.