Paavo Monkkonen

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Paavo Monkkonen is Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He researches and writes on the ways policies and markets shape urbanization and social segregation in cities around the world. His scholarship ranges from studies of large-scale national housing finance programs to analysis of local land use regulations. Past and ongoing comparative research on socioeconomic segregation and land markets spans several countries including Argentina, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and the United States.

Professor Monkkonen’s research has been published in outlets such as the Journal of the American Planning Association, the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, the Journal of Urban Economics, Urban Studies, World Development, and the Journal of Peasant Studies. He has received research funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Urban Land Institute, the Regional Studies Association, and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. He is currently studying the implementation of California’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing law and the social housing system in France.

At UCLA Luskin, Paavo teaches courses on housing markets and policy, applied microeconomics, research methods, and global urban segregation. He recently launched the Latin American Cities Initiative, Ciudades, an effort to develop and deepen knowledge networks among students, educators, and professionals in the arena of urban planning and policy in South, Central, and North America. One of the initiative’s core components is an international planning studio in Latin America (studio reports available here).

Paavo completed a Master of Public Policy at the School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a PhD in City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. He was previously Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at the University of Hong Kong from 2009 to 2012, visiting scholar at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in 2015, and visiting researcher at Sciences Po Paris from 2023-2024.

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SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Meaningful Action: Evaluating Local Government Plans to Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing in California. Monkkonen, Paavo, Aaron Barrall, and Aurora Echavarria. 2024. Housing Policy Debate, forthcoming.

Built out cities? A new approach to measuring land use regulation. Monkkonen, Paavo, Michael Manville, and Michael Lens. 2024. Journal of Housing Economics, forthcoming.

Do Land Use Plans Affirmatively Further Fair Housing? Measuring Progress. Monkkonen, Paavo, Michael Lens, Moira O’Neill, Christopher Elmendorf, Greg Preston and Raine Robichaud. 2023. Journal of the American Planning Association, forthcoming.

The Heterogeneous Impacts of Widespread Upzoning: Lessons from Auckland, New Zealand. Cheung, William, and Edward Yiu. 2023. Urban Studies, forthcoming.

Does Discretion Delay Development? Manville, Michael, Paavo Monkkonen, Shane Phillips, and Nolan Gray. 2022. The Impact of Approval Pathways on Multifamily Housing’s Time to Permit. Journal of the American Planning Association, forthcoming.

Unwanted Housing: Localism and Politics of Housing Development. Manville, Michael, and Paavo Monkkonen. 2021. Journal of Planning Education and Research, forthcoming.

Opposition to Development or Opposition to Developers? Experimental Evidence on Attitudes towards New Housing. Monkkonen, Paavo, and Michael Manville. 2019. Journal of Urban Affairs, 41(8): 1123-1141.

Empty Houses across North America: Housing Finance and Mexico’s Vacancy Crisis. Monkkonen, Paavo. 2019. Urban Studies, 57(10): 2080-2097.

Where are property rights worth more? Assessing variation in the value of deeds across cities in Mexico Monkkonen, Paavo. 2016. World Development, 88, 67-78.

Do Strict Land Use Regulations make Metropolitan Areas more Segregated by Income? Michael Lens and Paavo Monkkonen. 2016. Journal of the American Planning Association, 82(1): 6-21.

Land Use Regulations and the Value of Land and Housing: An Intra-Metropolitan Analysis Kok, Nils, Paavo Monkkonen and John M. Quigley. 2014. Journal of Urban Economics, 81(3): 136–148.

Innovative Measurement of Spatial Segregation: Comparative Evidence from Hong Kong and San Francisco. Monkkonen, Paavo and Xiaohu Zhang. 2014. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 47(3): 99-11.

Land Use Regulations, Compliance, and Land Markets in Argentina Monkkonen, Paavo and Lucas Roconi. 2013. Urban Studies, 50(10): 1951-1969.

Housing Finance Reform and Increasing Socioeconomic Segregation in Mexico Monkkonen, Paavo. 2012. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 36(4): 757-772.

Economic Restructuring, Urban Growth, and Short-term Trades: The Spatial Dynamics of the Hong Kong Housing Market, 1992-2008 Monkkonen, Paavo, Kelvin SK Wong, and Jaclene Begley. 2012. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 42(3): 396-406.

The Demand for Land Regularization: Theory and Evidence from Tijuana, Mexico Monkkonen, Paavo. 2012. Urban Studies, 49(2): 270-287.

The Housing Transition in Mexico: Expanding Access to Housing Finance Monkkonen, Paavo. 2011. Urban Affairs Review, 47(5): 672-695.

Michael Storper

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I am an economic geographer and my research is about the geography of economic development. The world economy entered a new period around 1980, characterized by the main forces of technological change and globalization.  In this New Economy (now growing old), many patterns of economic development changed: the economy became more urban; people began returning to the inner parts of metropolitan areas; regional inequality increased in most countries; some regions gained in income and employment, others lost people or had declines in their economic success; inequalities between persons increased in many countries; successful people migrated to certain regions and left others; a major wave of globalization occurred, increasing the economic specialization of city-regions all over the world; this made some regions very multi-cultural, but not all; some city-regions were successful in this new economy, and others declined; development spread around the globe.

The economics of these inter-related changes are my main subject. In my different research projects, I address aspects of this big picture.

In one major recent project, I examined why cities and metropolitan regions grow and decline.  My latest big project on this subject was published in 2015 in a book entitled The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies: Lessons from San Francisco and Los Angeles (Stanford University Press).    I also published a closely-related theory book on how to understand divergent regional and urban development:  Keys to the City (Princeton University Press, 2013).

New technologies have altered the nature of employment and its geography radically in the past few decades: what kind of work we do, who does it, where it is done.  This is a principal reason for the changing geography of economic well-being.  There are winner and loser people and regions in this ongoing tumultuous change in our economies. The next wave of technological change will most likely be even more tumultuous, and it will reshuffle the cards of economic development once again.

The changes I have examined are now giving rise to very strong political reactions, in debates over trade and employment.  Much of this comes from the strong geographical differences in development I have studied over the years, with certain regions picking a return to national border and a rejection of globalization and multiculturalism, and others endorsing its continuation.   The split in development between successful and unsuccessful places makes it more urgent than ever to understand what can be done to spread prosperity to more places and more groups of people, and yet to continue the success of the places that are doing well.  This is a thorny problem for research and policy.   My research in the next few years will concentrate on the sources of unequal regional development and to understanding the politics and policy debates it generates.

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Beyond his core disciplinary skills in economic geography, his work on occasion draws on, and has links to, economics, sociology. and urban studies. Storper holds concurrent appointments in Europe, where he is Professor of Economic Sociology at the Institute of Political Studies (“Sciences Po”) in Paris, and a member of its research Center for the Sociology of Organizations (CS0), and at the London School of Economics, where he is Professor of Economic Geography.

Storper is currently completing a five-year research project on the divergent economic development of the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay Area economies since 1970, which is the subject of his next book “The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies: Lessons from San Francisco and Los Angeles.” SFGate calls it “a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of California and cities more broadly.”

His Op-Ed Why San Francisco’s way of doing business beat Los Angeles’ was featured in the Los Angeles Times.

Storper received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands in 2008. He was elected to the British Academy in 2012 and received the Regional Studies Association’s award for overall achievement as well as the Sir Peter Hall Award in the House of Commons in 2012.

In 2014 Storper was named one of the “World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” by Thomson Reuters.

 

RESEARCH AND BIOGRAPHICAL LINKS

Amazon Author Page

ResearchGate

 

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

The Economic Development Clubs of European Cities
Author: Michael Storper
Download file: PDF

The Neo-liberal City as Idea and Reality
Author: Michael Storper
Download file: PDF

Regional Innovation Transitions
Author: Michael Storper
Download file: PDF

Current debates in urban theory: A critical assessment
Author: Michael Storper and Allen J Scott
Download file: PDF

RGS acceptance speech
Author: Michael Stroper
Download file: PDF

Economic Growth and Economic Development: Gepgraphic Dimensions, Definitions & Disparities
Author: Maryann Feldman and Michael Storper
Download file: PDF

The digital skin of cities: urban theory and research inthe age of the sensored and metered city, ubiquitouscomputing and big data
Author: Chirag Rabari and Michel Storper
Download file: PDF

The Rise and Decline of Urban Economies: Lessons from Los Angeles and San Francisco
Author: Michael Storper, Tom Kemeny, Naji Makarem and Taner Osman
Publisher: Stanford University Press, August 2015

Cohesion Policy in the European Union: Growth, Geography, Institutions
Author: Michael Storper, Thomas Farole, Andres Rodriguez-Pose
Download file: PDF

Governing the Large Metropolis
Author: Michael Storper
Download file: PDF

Is Specialization Good for Regional Economic Development?
Author: Michael Storper, Thomas Kemeny
Download file: PDF

The Nature of Cities: The Scope and Limits of Urban Theory
Author: Michael Storper, Allen J. Scott
Download file: PDF

Keys to the City: How economics, institutions, social interactions and politics affect regional development
2013 (June).  Princeton: Princeton University Press
Q&A

Speech accepting the Sir Peter Hall Award in the House of Commons, 2012
Download file: PDF

Book Review, Glaeser’s Triumph of the City
Author: Michael Storper
Journal of Economic Geography

Rising Trade Costs? Agglomeration and trade with endogenous transaction costs
2008. co- authored with Gilles Duranton. Canadian Journal of Economics 41,1: 292-319

Rethinking Human Capital, Creativity, and Urban Growth
2009  Co-authored with Allen J. Scott, Journal of Economic Geography :147-167, January

Why Does a City Grow? Specialization, Human Capital, or Institutions?
2010 Michael Storper,  Urban Studies v.47, 10: 2027-2050
Download file: PDF

Cohesion Policy in the European Union: Growth, Geography, Institutions
2011  TC Farole, A Rodriguez Pose, M. Storper, Journal of Common Market Studies 49,5: 1089-1111

Should Places Help One Another? Justice, Efficiency and Economic Geography
Author: Michael Storper. 2011  European Urban and Regional Studies 18,1: 3-21

The Sources of Urban Development: Wages, Housing and Amenity Gaps across American Cities
2012  Tom Kemeny and Michael Storper, Journal of Regional Science 52,1: 85-108

The Territorial Dynamics of Innovation in China and India
2012  Journal of Economic Geography, 12: 105-1085 (with Riccardo Crescenzi and Andres Rodriguez-Pose).

 

Tam J. Guy

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Tam J. Guy is a doctoral student in Urban Planning at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. Previously, Tam explored how planners can and should create sustainable places for everyone by researching equity impacts at the intersection of transportation, housing, and green infrastructure. Currently, Tam researches the public transit experiences of people who are transgender as part of a larger effort to understand the interactions between gender, public space, and public transportation.

Tam earned a BSBA in management and leadership from Portland State University while working as an analyst at a securities litigation firm and then completed dual masters degrees, MBA and MCMP, at the University of Utah in Business Administration (with emphases in strategy and innovation) and City + Metropolitan Planning (focused on smart growth, transportation, and urban design).

V. Kelly Turner

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Kelly Turner (she/her) is an associate professor of urban planning and geography and serves as associate director of the Luskin Center for Innovation (LCI). She leads LCI’s research on heat equity which provides evidence-based approaches to protect people, especially vulnerable populations, where they live and work.

Dr. Turner’s current research encompasses heat governance and policy, planning for climate resilient communities, and producing actionable data for heat-health equity. Her work has been published in Nature, Environmental Research Letters, and the Journal of the American Planning Association and funded by the National Science Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Strategic Growth Council of California. She has served as a panelist for the National Academy of Sciences and as a Science Advisor to the Arsht-Rockefeller Extreme Heat Resilience Alliance.

Dr. Turner prioritizes science communication to broad audiences. She is co-author on LCI’s Heat Policy Brief Series and regularly advises local and state officials on heat policy. She is an Association of American Geographers Elevate the Discipline Climate and Society Communications Fellow and serves on the executive committee for the Environment and Climate Change Literacy Projects. She regularly appears on television, radio, and print media including CNN, NPR, and NBC. She has published an OpEd in the LA Times and produced several murals with local artists using Cool Paint.

She received a doctoral degree in geography from the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University and a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Wellesley College.

Publications

Ye, X., Turner, VK., and She, B. 2018. Automating land subdivision database cleaning and merging for neighborhood-scale urban analysis. International Journal of Digital Earth: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17538947.2018.1502370

Turner, V.K. and Kaplan, DH. 2018. Geographic Perspectives on Urban Sustainability: Past, Current, and Future Research Trajectories. Urban Geography. Online: https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2018.1475545

Mapes, J., Kaplan, D., Turner, VK., and Willer, C. 2017. Building ‘College Town’: Economic Redevelopment and the Construction of Community. Local Economy, 32(7).

Turner, V.K. and Galletti, C. May 24, 2017. Addressing Climate Change through Design: A Land Systems Science Approach to Assessing Microclimate Regulation in New Urbanist Developments. Public Square: A CNU Journal. Available Online: https://www.cnu.org/sites/default/files/2017_NewUrbanResearch_AddressingClimateChangeThroughDesign_TurnerGalletti.pdf

Turner, V.K. 2017. Developing Sustainable Cities: The Real Estate Rigidity Trap. Ecology and Society, 22(2):1.

Turner, V.K., Jarden, K.*, and Jefferson, A. 2016. Resident perspectives on green infrastructure in an experimental suburban stormwater management program. Cities & the Environment, 9(1): 4.

Turner, V.K. 2016. How do conventional master planning processes facilitate or constrain sustainable urbanism? An environmental management perspective. Society & Natural Resources, 29(12):1483-1500.

Shook, E. and Turner, V.K. 2016. The Socio-Environmental Data Explorer (SEDE): A Social Media Enhanced Decision Support System to Explore Risk Perception to Hazard Events. 2016. Cartography and GIS. DOI:10.1080/15230406.2015.1131627

Minn, M., Cutts, BB., Greenberg, JA., Fraterrigo, JM., and Turner, VK. 2015. Detection of Foreclosure-related Landscape Management Changes Using Landsat. Applied Geography, 62: 217-224.

Turner, V.K. and C.S. Galletti. 2015. Do sustainable urban designs generate more ecosystem services? A Case Study of Civano, Tucson, Arizona, USA. The Professional Geographer, 67(2):204-217.

Turner, V.K., K. Benessaiah, S. Warren, and D. Iwaneic. 2015. Essential Tensions in Interdisciplinary Environment-Society Research Centers. Higher Education, 70 (4):649-665.

Turner, V.K. 2014. Institutional Barriers to Sustainable Urban Development: A Case Study of Civano in Tucson, Arizona. Cities and the Environment, 7(2): 5.

Lerman, S.B., V.K. Turner, and C. Bang. 2012. Biodiversity in suburban developments: Homeowners Associations as a vehicle for promoting urban biodiversity. Ecology and Society, 17(4):45.

Turner, V.K. and D.C. Ibes. 2011. The Impact of Homeowners Associations on Residential Water Demand Management in Phoenix, AZ. Urban Geography, 32(8):1167-1188.

Elin, N. and V.K. Turner. 2010. Recycling the City: Darning Downtown Phoenix. Critical Planning, 17:155-173.

 

Liz Koslov

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Liz Koslov is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, where she studies the social dimensions of climate change, questions of environmental and climate justice, and how cities are adapting to effects such as extreme weather and sea-level rise.

Recent publications include pieces on sociology and the climate crisis, flood maps, and the possibilities for collective climate adaptation amidst denial and public silence. Her current book project, Retreat: Moving to Higher Ground in a Climate-Changed City, offers an ethnographic account of “managed retreat” from the coast in New York City after Hurricane Sandy. Koslov’s research on this topic has been cited in outlets such as Scientific American,The New Yorker, and WWNO New Orleans Public Radio.

Prior to joining UCLA, Koslov was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at MIT.

Amada Armenta

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Amada Armenta’s research examines the connections between the immigration enforcement system and the criminal justice system, and the implications of this connection for immigrants, bureaucracies, and cities.

Her award-winning book, “Protect Serve and Deport: The Rise of Policing as Immigration Enforcement” (University of California Press, 2017), analyzes the role of local law enforcement agencies in immigration enforcement in Nashville, Tennessee. Currently, she is working on her second book project, an examination of the legal attitudes of unauthorized Mexican immigrants in Philadelphia.

Dr. Armenta’s research has been published in journals of sociology, law and society, and policy. She has received research funding from the American Sociological Association, the National Science Foundation, the American Society of Criminology, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Prior to joining Luskin as a faculty member, she was an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Walker Wells

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Walker Wells is Executive Director of Global Green USA, a national non-profit organization headquartered in Santa Monica.   He works with cities, neighborhoods, and community development organizations across the country to further green building and sustainable development practices through technical guidance, stakeholder facilitation, and development of innovative polices and programs.

Wells is a certified urban planner, a LEED Accredited Professional and a Green Rater. He served as an appointed member of the State of California Green Building Code Advisory Committee from 2010-2014, is and a lecturer in Green Urbanism at the Claremont Colleges and the UCLA Urban Planning Program.

Wells is a 2013 Fulbright Fellow with the Royal Institute of Technology Urban Planning Program in Stockholm, a 2012 Pritzker Fellow at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, and co-author of the 2007 book Blueprint for Greening Affordable Housing.

Wells holds Bachelor’s degrees in Sociology and Environmental Studies from the University of California Santa Barbara and a Master’s of City and Regional from the California Polytechnic University San Luis Obispo. He studied at Lund University and the Lund PolyTechnic Institute School of Architecture in Sweden. Prior to joining Global Green Mr. Wells was a Senior Urban Designer with Gruen Associates in Los Angeles, a Planner with the City of Santa Monica, and an Urban Planner for the City of Malmo, Sweden.

Hannah King

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Hannah is a doctoral student of transportation planning at UCLA. Prior to coming to UCLA, she spent several years in sea level rise and economic development planning at the state of Florida. Her current research interests center on active transportation, GIS, and transportation financing. She is being advised by Dr. Brian Taylor.

Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannahrking

 

Taner Osman

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Taner Osman is a postdoctoral researcher at the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and an instructor in the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA.

He researches how local economic development and land use policies affect the performance of industries and regional economies, and also specializes in the impact of high-technology industries on local economies.

He is a co-author of the book, “The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies,” a comparative study of the Bay Area and Los Angeles economies.

Silvia R. Gonzalez

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Silvia Gonzalez (Jimenez) is a doctoral student in Urban Planning and the Assistant Director at the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her research interests focus on the implications of place and the urban spatial structure on socioeconomic inequality. Previously, Silvia worked with the Center for the Study of Inequality at UCLA. She has worked extensively, as a researcher and consultant with nonprofit, community based, and government organizations. She holds a BA in Geography/Environmental Studies from UCLA and a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning with a focus on Economic Development also from UCLA.

Selected Publications:

Loukaitou-Sideris, A., Gonzalez, S., & Ong, P. (2017). Triangulating Neighborhood Knowledge to Understand Neighborhood Change: Methods to Study Gentrification. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 0739456X17730890.

Pierce, G., & Gonzalez, S. R. (2017). Public Drinking Water System Coverage and Its Discontents: The Prevalence and Severity of Water Access Problems in California’s Mobile Home Parks. Environmental Justice.

Pierce, Gregory, and Silvia Gonzalez. “Mistrust at the tap? Factors contributing to public drinking water (mis) perception across US households.” Water Policy 19, no. 1 (2017): 1-12.

Pierce, Gregory, and Silvia Jimenez. “Unreliable water access in US mobile homes: evidence from the American Housing Survey.” Housing Policy Debate 25.4 (2015): 739-753.

Jimenez, Silvia, and Gregory Pierce. “Inequality at the Tap: Explaining Shortcomings in Safe Water Access in Los Angeles’ Mobile Home Communities.” UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Social Justice Fellowship Publication. (2013). Online at: http://luskin.ucla.edu/sites/default/files/Jimenez_Pierce.pdf