Archive for category: Urban Planning

Sending a Pointed Message Through Real Estate

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

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

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

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

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

Loukaitou-Sideris on How to Keep Public Transit Safe and Welcoming

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Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, interim dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, appeared on the podcast Transportopia to discuss critical issues of safety and security in public transportation.

Loukaitou-Sideris drew on her extensive body of research on the transit experience, including how to protect riders and operators while creating spaces that are open and welcoming.

Transit hubs are not innately dangerous, she said. “It is simply the fact that transit attracts hundreds of thousands of people every day in small spaces, and that increases the opportunities for crime.”

To increase safety and visibility, transit agencies can employ a number of tools, said Loukaitou-Sideris, a distinguished professor of urban planning. These include thoughtful design and new technologies, such as upgrading lighting, installing security cameras, and providing apps that give arrival and departure information in real time.

In some locations, safety audits of transit lines have become a community-wide effort, with participants from schools and other local groups. Some transit agencies also enter partnerships with social service providers to offer appropriate resources for those in need of mental health help.

Loukaitou-Sideris offered practical advice for transit agencies seeking to increase safety and decrease fear: “Don’t only rely on one strategy,” she said. “Do research, find data and match it with your resources.”

Repercussions From the U.S.’ Plummeting Birth Rate

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UCLA Luskin’s Michael Lens spoke to KCBS News’ “Ask the Expert” program about repercussions from the plummeting birth rate in the United States.

The trend is caused by several factors. Many women are more financially independent than in past generations and may choose to delay childbearing. Others, however, are deterred from starting a family due to the high cost of living.

“It’s a much more financially daunting landscape for today’s 18- to 30-year-olds starting out in the world than it was 30 years ago,” said Lens, a professor of urban planning and public policy. “It’s a really damaging thing if young people who want to have children feel financially unable to make that work.”

Advanced economies in the modern era often see declining birth rates, and the consequences include fewer people of working age who are able to hold up the social safety net for those who are retired, Lens said.

LPPI Faculty Director Amada Armenta’s Personal History Influences Her Policy Efforts Her research pushes back on the narrative that Latino communities don’t matter

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By Sophia Pu
Amada Armenta, a UCLA alumna and associate professor of urban planning, is never far from her roots. While Oct. 15 marks the end of Hispanic Heritage Month, Armenta’s pride in her heritage inspires her to empower Latino communities every day through her work.

Armenta, faculty director of the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute (LPPI) since May 2024, is the first Latina to hold the position. But her journey began 200 miles away, in El Centro, California, at the heart of the Imperial Valley.

Imperial County, which borders Mexico and Arizona, is 85% Hispanic and is California’s top producer of alfalfa and carrots. Yet the unemployment rate in the county continues to rank among the highest in the state. Growing up there taught Armenta the strength of community in the face of economic and social inequalities.

Like many other families in the area, Armenta’s great-grandmother and grandmother crossed the border from Jalisco, Mexico, without authorization to work in the fields. Immigration enforcement checkpoints, vehicles, and increasing surveillance shaped her everyday life.

“Attacks on undocumented immigrants have always felt personal to me,” Armenta said. “For many years, my family was undocumented, so these attacks make me feel like there are people in this country who wish we weren’t here. As a kid, I found that deeply painful.”

Despite Imperial County’s limited resources, Armenta’s family always reminded her to be proud of where she came from.

She recalls: “My dad used to tell me, ‘Brown, it’s beautiful!’ As a kid, I thought he was kind of insane. But now, I’m grateful he said it so often, because it stuck.”

Armenta’s family history and life experiences led her to UCLA’s sociology program for graduate school, where she found “the only institution that has truly felt like home.” Her personal research examines how and why immigration enforcement operates — and its consequences for families and communities.

Armenta’s leadership at LPPI embodies the phrase “knowledge is power.” The research and data-based recommendations provided by the institute to policymakers and advocates, she says, push back on the narrative that Latino communities don’t matter.

LPPI’s policy fellows program also advances one of the key recommendations to becoming a Hispanic-Serving Institution by improving access to graduate and professional programs, extending opportunities for engagement in research, and ensuring mentorship support.

Students have the opportunity to work hands-on alongside professional staff and researchers to gain paid experience shaping academia, policy, and media. This experience provides pathways to careers in legislative offices, government agencies, and research institutions.

“Their opportunities — and mine — exist because of the trailblazers whose work and sacrifice opened doors for us,” Armenta said. “We’re building on their legacies every day.”

UCLA’s Master of Real Estate Development Program to Receive $2.5 Million Gift The pledge from Standard Communities’ Jeffrey Jaeger and Scott Alter will support innovative approaches to affordable housing

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By Kate Shirley

The new Master of Real Estate Development Program (MRED) at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs has received a $2.5 million commitment to support its affordable housing program. The pledge comes from Jeffrey Jaeger and Scott Alter, co-founders and principals of Standard Communities, a Los Angeles–based real estate company dedicated to building and preserving affordable and workforce housing nationwide. In recognition of the gift, the program will be known as the UCLA Jaeger Alter Standard Communities (JASC) Affordable Housing Program. Participating students would earn a Certificate in Affordable Housing.

Launched in fall 2025, the UCLA MRED is a one-year graduate program designed in collaboration with industry leaders. Students gain hands-on experience through case studies, site visits and competitions, preparing them to address pressing housing, environmental and equity challenges. The JASC Affordable Housing Program will ensure UCLA MRED graduates enter the real estate field with the skills, networks and vision to create lasting social impact.

headshots of two men in dark suits

Scott Alter, left, and Jeffrey Jaeger

“This enduring gift enables us to develop new coursework focused on innovative approaches to building affordable housing — drawing on emerging capital market solutions that can scale production far beyond what traditional public subsidies can support,” said Greg Morrow, executive director of the UCLA MRED program. “Through this effort, UCLA MRED is helping to pioneer new ways of addressing the affordable housing crisis.”

Standard Communities has built a reputation as a national leader, delivering innovative, high-impact housing solutions that expand access to safe, dignified and affordable homes. By leveraging creative financial structuring and public-private partnerships, Standard Communities preserves and develops communities that uplift residents, strengthen neighborhoods and help address the country’s urgent affordability crisis.

As part of the UCLA MRED focus on industry partnerships and collaboration, Jaeger and Alter plan to provide guest lectures, mentorships and internships with the goal of strengthening the pipeline of talent committed to addressing housing affordability.

“We’ve seen firsthand how access to safe, stable, dignified, affordable housing can transform lives,” said Alter. “This gift is an investment in the leaders who will emerge from the UCLA MRED program and will carry that mission forward — building stronger, more resilient communities for generations to come.”

Standard Communities was founded during the 2008 housing crisis, and this gift aligns with the company’s mission, which reflects a belief that affordable housing is not only central to thriving communities but also a meaningful and rewarding career path for young professionals.

“What makes the affordable housing industry so powerful is that it allows us to have a profound impact in our communities and in the world at large, while offering meaningful and financially rewarding careers,” said Jaeger. “By supporting the program, we hope to expand the pipeline of talented professionals who will bring fresh ideas, energy and commitment to this space, ultimately helping to deliver housing solutions that are sustainable, equitable and capable of transforming lives.”

The JASC program underscores UCLA MRED’s dedication to offering specialized skills through several certificate programs, including sustainable development, property technology and asset management, as well as affordable housing.

“Affordable housing is among the most urgent needs in our region and beyond,” said Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, interim dean of UCLA Luskin. “This gift enables us to train a new generation of real estate leaders who can design, develop and manage housing that is both affordable and sustainable. We are deeply grateful to Jeffrey Jaeger and Scott Alter for their foresight and generosity.”

Helping America’s Schools Adapt to the Climate Era

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As the number of extreme heat days stretches later into the fall, many of the nation’s schools are seeking ways to adapt, but they’re often hindered by aging infrastructure and cuts to federal funding for climate upgrades.

Installing air conditioning or adding shade canopies to vast expanses of asphalt are effective but may come with red tape and a high price tag, said V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation.

“A lot of our schools are older and probably in need of modernization,” Turner told Time magazine. “And climate change is casting some light on the fact that they really are underfunded to do that.”

Treating schools as community centers is one strategy that could be beneficial around the country, said Turner, an associate professor of urban planning at UCLA Luskin.

“If it’s really hot, some schools just send kids home, but what if a child is going home to a home that has no air conditioning? Now we’ve sent them to a place that’s maybe just as unsafe,” she said. “But if schools are seen as more like community centers and resource hubs, then we can provide all-day-long air conditioning to 25% of the population in one site in the community.”

Manville on the End of an Era for Carpool-Lane Access

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Michael Manville, chair and professor of urban planning at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about new rules that are kicking solo drivers of clean-air vehicles out of California’s carpool lanes, raising questions about how commute times and traffic will be affected.

The carpool lane perk was used to promote the adoption of clean and zero-emission vehicles. As of Aug. 14, more than half a million motorists statewide had an active decal on their vehicle to access the lanes.

That privilege ended Oct. 1, and experts say it will take time to see how clean-air vehicle drivers might adapt.

“Will they just throw up their hands and get in traffic with the rest of us in the three [other] lanes, or will they actually do something else, because they really do value not being in traffic?” Manville asked.

He added that, on an already gridlocked freeway during peak drive times, commuters might not even notice one more car that merges in.

Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris on How Hostile Architecture Shapes Our Cities How public spaces are designed to exclude certain groups—and what that says about our cities.

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Hostile architecture, sometimes called defensive design, is becoming increasingly common in cities and public spaces. At its core, it’s an urban design strategy meant to discourage certain behaviors, subtly shaping who gets to use spaces and how. Sometimes it’s as discreet as a bench split by armrests to prevent lying down, other times it’s as blatant as rows of metal spikes installed beneath an awning to keep people from sitting.

“Through design you are making them uncomfortable so that they leave, or you’re making particular activities that they tend to do uncomfortable,” explained Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Interim Dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and a Distinguished Professor of urban planning and urban design at UCLA.

These design strategies may deter unhoused people, but they also affect everyone. For example, planters or boulders placed to block tents also make sidewalks harder to navigate for parents with strollers or people with disabilities.

Hostile design is not as obvious sometimes either, says Loukaitou-Sideris. “Another example is there was a Skid Row park in Los Angeles where the authorities would start the sprinklers at night so people could not sleep in the park,” Loukaitou-Sideris said.

The controversy is especially sharp when public transit spaces are involved. “You can consider bus stops public spaces because everybody can sit there and they should be open and accessible to the public, right? And unhoused people often use the bus — sometimes they use it as shelter but sometimes they use it to go to work, or reach a destination. So by excluding them from these spaces, does it retain the publicness of the bench?” she asked.

But on the other hand, Loukaitou-Sideris acknowledges competing pressures: “Local governments would say that if the space is occupied constantly by an unhoused person, then other legitimate riders will not be able to use it.”

To read the full article about hostile architecture, please visit here.

After January wildfires, Luskin students help one vulnerable community build resilience

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by Joey Waldinger

This spring, as Los Angeles recovered from wildfires that devastated Altadena and Pacific Palisades, a class of UCLA urban planning graduate students was learning how to help vulnerable neighborhoods prepare for the next one.

In assistant professor Minjee Kim’s Site Planning Studio, students spent the quarter immersed in Solano Canyon, repeatedly visiting the hillside community neighboring Dodger Stadium and meeting with residents to develop practical strategies for wildfire resilience.

The class was a crash-course in the realities of urban planning — unexpected challenges, stakeholder relationships and tight deadlines. But these challenges, Kim said, pushed everyone to grow, creating a deeply fulfilling educational experience and laying the foundation for further research on regional wildfire resilience.

“Working with actual stakeholders who had land ownership, resources or authority over the areas we were proposing ideas for — that level of real-worldness wasn’t something I envisioned,” Kim said. “It made the class really challenging but at the same time really rewarding. I’m so grateful to the entire class for being extremely passionate and dedicated about the project, and to the people of Solano Canyon.”

A service to Los Angeles

Kim was still planning her studio curriculum when the fires broke out in January.

“It seemed like a disservice to the community and the broader L.A. region if I didn’t address the wildfires in some way,” she said.

Not wanting to burden recently affected communities, Kim began researching other communities vulnerable to potential fire events. Through the city of L.A.’s Urban Design Studio, she connected with community organizers in Solano Canyon who were already working to reduce wildfire risks.

Sara Harris Ben-Ari, a co-founder of community group 1866 in Historic Solano Canyon, has lived in Solano Canyon since 2000. Fires have sparked in the neighborhood almost monthly for at least a decade, and Harris Ben-Ari and her neighbors have been working to reduce fire risks for nearly as long. But after the Eaton Fire — when burning embers flew into her yard— she pursued solutions with more urgency.

When Kim reached out to discuss a collaboration, Harris Ben-Ari said it felt like a perfect match.

“It was a godsend to have a group of really smart young students who are working at that level and have that level of training, attention … who really want to learn about landscape design and resiliency and geography as it applies to public planning and policy,” she said.

Planning for equitable fire resilience

Nestled within Elysian Park, vibrant Solano Canyon is the last remaining part of Chavez Ravine, a historic neighborhood razed in 1959 to clear space for a massive public housing project known as Elysian Park Heights, which never materialized, and later Dodger Stadium. Solano Canyon is located in one of the state’s highest fire severity zones, though its density and relative affordability are unique among most communities included in fire resilience discourse.

“I thought this would be a great opportunity for the students to work in a diverse and urban environment that is very different from affluent neighborhoods that already have resources to make their communities more fire resilient,” Kim said.

Students took this opportunity head on. During the first Saturday of the quarter, Harris Ben-Ari and fellow 1866 co-founder Lydia Moreno led the class on a neighborhood tour, pointing out fire hazards such as wooden infrastructure, overgrown grasses and invasive eucalyptus trees. Kim urged the students to revisit the area individually throughout the quarter.

Micah Wilcox, a second-year master’s student, said that as the quarter progressed, the class increasingly resembled a project that professional urban planners would encounter in the field. Working in teams, students presented weekly updates on their projects, honed visual and public-speaking skills, and learned to work as a team under tight deadlines.

“To just get dropped into a group and say, ‘Hey, you have a deadline, you guys need to put this together’ — that’s a foundational skill,” Wilcox said. “That’s what we do in the real world.”

Building community ties

UCLA students present maps and findings at various stations in a room. Credit: Minjee Kim

Community engagement is another foundation of urban planning that was baked into the class. And in the real world, as Kim’s class learned, community engagement is not always easy.

For the midterm, students invited residents to a presentation analyzing the neighborhood’s wildfire risks and vulnerabilities. Presenting to community members instead of engaging with them sparked tension, while concerns about fires started by the neighborhood’s unhoused population complicated things further.

“We did not realize that [the living quarters of unhoused people] was a major source of fire events in Solano Canyon, and when the community members started bringing up this issue, we didn’t have a good answer,” Kim said.

Kim describes the midterm as a turning point in the class. By the final, the class shifted to a design charette format, where the students created interactive stations that invited participation and input from the residents. She added that students steadfastly advocated for community members to work with their unhoused neighbors in reducing fire ignitions, instead of trying to “sweep away the issue.”

“It wasn’t us presenting information to them. It was more like we are learning from you, and here are some of the ideas and thoughts we can share with you,” Kim said. “So it was very much a cooperative, positive conversation.”

Overall, though, Harris Ben-Ari said the community was impressed by the students’ professionalism and thoughtfulness. The students’ work, she said, stood in stark contrast to what Solano Canyon residents often experience from officials — just holding obligatory meetings without really considering community needs.

“Everybody really felt like they were heard,” she said. “And if they didn’t, they felt like they could explain how they would be better heard and understood.”

What’s next?

Most of Kim’s research focuses on zoning and land use, but her studio class touched off an ongoing project on wildfire resilience. Over the summer, Kim has been working with two graduate students on a report summarizing the class’s recommendations and proposals, and illustrating how Solano Canyon can serve as a model for similarly positioned communities.

“It’s going to be a case study of Solano Canyon, but framed in a way that is helpful for the broader L.A. region in making hillside communities more fire resilient,” she said.

For Harris Ben-Ari and her neighbors, the students’ maps, research and other resources will help them apply for grant funding and push for more support from the city.

“It’s one more very solid tool in the toolbox.”

Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris on Why Transit Safety Must Balance Security and Accessibility

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The fatal stabbing of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte light rail train has reignited national debate over transit safety. Security footage showed the unprovoked attack, prompting federal investigation and sparking broader questions about how to protect riders in open, accessible public transit environments.

While some argue for airport-style security measures, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, interim dean at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and a transit safety expert, cautions against solutions that could slow down the very systems meant to move people quickly.

“Transit systems have to be open and accessible. It’s very difficult to install measures that you put, for example, in airports because the public is not going to accept such delays,” Loukaitou-Sideris explained.

She suggests exploring advanced scanning technologies at major hubs that can detect weapons without lengthy lines, though such systems remain costly. Loukaitou-Sideris also noted the limits of any single measure: even with cameras and increased patrols, unpredictable incidents can still occur. The tragedy underscores the tension between maintaining accessibility and ensuring safety in public transit.