Mullin on ‘Glimmers of Possibility’ on Climate Action

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News outlets including Ethnic Media Services, The Hill, La Opinión and Peninsula 360 Press covered research by UCLA Luskin’s Megan Mullin about the entrenched political divide that has impeded action on climate change — as well as signals that the logjam is starting to break. “I am seeing glimmers of possibility that climate action may yet be underway even as American climate politics remains firmly in the grip of polarization,” said Mullin, professor of public policy and faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, at a briefing hosted by Ethnic Media Services. Not only are Republican-led states seeing growing levels of clean-energy production, she said, but many heavily Republican areas of the country are at high risk for the worst effects of climate change. Mullin also cited the climate change literacy of younger generations, which is “leaps and bounds beyond the literacy of older generations, and that translates into smaller divides, even among young Republicans.” 

Watch the Ethnic Media Services briefing
Read the Hill article
Read the La Opinión article

 

If You Want to Reform Parking, Don’t Mention the Word ‘Parking’

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The influence of UCLA Luskin’s Donald Shoup, the renowned advocate for parking reforms designed to make cities more livable, is taking hold across the country and around the world. In an extensive interview with the Hindustan Times, Shoup explained how India could build public support for eliminating free parking, the cause of gridlock and pollution, by using revenues to benefit the community. “If you want to reform parking, don’t mention the word ‘parking,’” Shoup advised. “Just ask people what public services are lacking in their neighborhood. Once you find out, tell them you don’t have money to pay for that. But one way that other cities have done it is to charge market prices for curb parking and spend that revenue to pay for services that people want. … It’s the neighborhood that decides.” Shoup added, “India is the country that will benefit most from parking reforms. One city does it right, and other cities will do it too.”

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Housing Shortage Persists Despite Population Decline

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UCLA Luskin’s Michael Lens spoke to the Los Angeles Times for an article explaining why California housing prices have defied the laws of supply and demand, with mortgages and rents remaining stubbornly high even though the state’s population has declined in recent years. One reason is that, for decades, the pace of housing production did not keep up with demand, creating a backlog made even more enormous by the surge of Millennials now seeking to enter the housing market. “The cost of living in California and Los Angeles is so high … that we know a lot of people can’t move here and we know a lot of people can’t remain here, because they are priced out,” said Lens, a professor of urban planning and public policy.

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Storper on Tug-of-War Over Senate Bill 9

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A Planetizen article on actions taken by municipalities opposed to Senate Bill 9, the California law allowing property owners to build additional units on lots zoned for single-family housing, cited research by Michael Storper, distinguished professor of urban planning at UCLA Luskin. Four Southern California cities have filed suit against the state, arguing that permitting the subdivision of single-family lots violates the California Constitution by taking away the rights of charter cities to have control over local land-use decisions. Storper issued a declaration in support of the plaintiffs that included a copy of a journal article he co-authored in 2019 that challenged the theoretical underpinnings that led to SB 9, which is intended to provide affordable housing options for Californians. “Blanket changes in zoning are unlikely to increase domestic migration or to improve affordability for lower-income households in prosperous areas,” the authors wrote. “They would, however, increase gentrification within metropolitan areas and would not appreciably decrease income inequality.”

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On the Chronic, Day-to-Day Toll of Rising Temperatures

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V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, joined the podcast America Adapts for an expansive conversation on the effects of rising temperatures on public health. While record-setting heat has received widespread media coverage over the summer, Turner stressed that governments must develop not just climate emergency plans, but long-term resiliency strategies that protect people from the chronic day-to-day experience of elevated temperatures. “We talk a lot about extreme heat and we talk a lot about mortality and we talk about heat sickness, but what we don’t really talk about is the myriad ways that heat affects well-being in our daily lives. It affects your cognitive abilities, your emotional state. You’re more likely to be angry, unable to concentrate,” Turner said. “I think these are ways that the lived experience for many Americans is going to be degraded because they don’t have access to cool communities or cool infrastructure.”

Listen to the podcast

 

UCLA, Hebrew University Receive $1.3 Million in Grants for Collaboration to Deter School Violence

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Grants from The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation and an anonymous donor will support a new partnership between UCLA and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem focused on developing school violence prevention strategies that ensure that campuses are safe and welcoming places for children worldwide. The UCLA-HU Collaboration for Safe Schools is a $1.3 million, two-year pilot program connecting university students, scholars and practitioners globally and across disciplines to share research and insights related to the complex underlying causes of school violence. Through exchange programs and conferences held on each campus, the partnership will bring top U.S. and Israeli scholars together with K-12 educators, administrators and social workers; policymakers and experts in law and criminology; and graduate and undergraduate students focused on fields related to social education. The first conference, to be held at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, will focus on how to ensure safety at schools in areas that are experiencing extreme strife at the political and social levels. Recruitment of partnering research teams at Hebrew University and UCLA will begin in the fall of 2023. The program will operate under the leadership of two internationally recognized experts in school safety: Ron Avi Astor, UCLA professor of social welfare and education, has worked with thousands of schools to reduce victimization of students in a career spanning three decades. Mona Khoury-Kassabri, chair of Hebrew University’s school of social work and social welfare, is also the university’s vice president of strategy and diversity. 

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Read the January 2023 Luskin Forum story about Astor’s work

 

Safety of Tap Water Discussed by Pierce on NPR Broadcast

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Gregory Pierce, director of the Human Right to Water Solutions Lab at the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, participated in a discussion about the safety of tap water in California organized by KQED, the NPR and PBS member station for Northern California. Pierce, who received his master’s and Ph.D. degrees from UCLA Luskin Urban Planning, spoke about findings in a recent study conducted in cooperation with the University of Texas at Austin that found social factors — such as low population density, high housing vacancy, disability and race — can have a stronger influence than median household income on whether a community’s municipal water supply is more likely to have health-based water-quality violations.

Listen to the discussion

 

Tilly on Labor Actions Spreading Across State and Nation

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Urban Planning Professor Chris Tilly spoke to CNBC about labor actions across California — 55 in 95 locations that commenced just since the beginning of 2023. In Los Angeles, striking Hollywood writers and actors have joined city employees and hotel and hospitality workers on the picket line in what some are calling a summer of solidarity. Union representatives in the state say they are being contacted by organizers from around the country who are seeking guidance on stepping up their own labor actions. “I think California is ahead of the country, but it’s pointing to a crisis that’s likely to happen nationwide,” Tilly said.

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Venture Capital Data Shows L.A. Struggling to Meet Diversity Goals

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The Los Angeles Business Journal shared findings from a UCLA Luskin report that analyzed the diversity of venture capital investments in the Los Angeles region in 2022. While Greater L.A. leads the country for the amount of capital funded to entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds, progress in meeting racial and gender equity goals is lagging, according to the report led by Jasmine Hill, assistant professor of public policy. Hill’s team produced the report in partnership with PledgeLA, the Annenberg Foundation’s coalition of Los Angeles-based tech and venture capital firms that have committed to prioritizing equitable access to capital. The researchers found that less than one-third of PledgeLA firms’ 2022 investments went to companies led by women, Black or Latino founders, and these companies received only 4.6% ($6.4 billion) of the $139 billion invested. “If we’re being honest, it’s still way below where any of us would want it to be,” one founding member of PledgeLA said.

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Advancing Climate Policy in an Era of Deeply Partisan Politics

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In a deeply polarized political environment, Americans are more divided on climate change than ever before. Yet three recent developments could advance climate policy, despite partisan politics, according to a new article in the journal Political Science & Politics co-authored by UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation faculty director Megan Mullin and Patrick J. Egan of New York University:

  • Partisan cohesion and Democratic initiative. The Republican and Democratic parties have become more unified internally. While Republicans are less concerned about climate change than ever before, growing cohesion among Democrats, both among elected officials and members of the public, has elevated climate change as a party priority and increased their willingness to take electoral risks to address it.
  • Clean-energy expansion in Republican states. Even though decision-makers in Republican-led states have backpedaled on support for clean energy, those states are leaders in clean-energy production. Nearly 40% of U.S. renewable energy is situated in the Republican-led states of Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, suggesting that markets can overcome politics in the transition to a clean-energy economy.
  • Partisan distribution of climate impacts. Heavily Republican areas may suffer disproportionately from the worst effects of climate change. Mullin and Egan bring together maps of climate risk with county voting records to show that Republican counties have higher percentages of properties at severe or extreme risk from flooding and fire over the next 30 years. This may inspire partisan voters to demand political action by their elected officials.

Read the full story, and find related research on the Center for Innovation’s Climate Adaptation and Resilience webpage.