Lois Takahashi

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UCLA Luskin professor emeritus Takahashi’s research focuses on public and social service delivery to vulnerable populations in the U.S. and in Southeast Asian cities. Her expertise spans several issues, including homelessness and HIV/AIDS in Los Angeles, community opposition directed at social services (the NIMBY syndrome) in the U.S., social capital and health for vulnerable populations, and environmental governance in the U.S. and Southeast Asian cities.

She has been investigating the dynamics of social capital, especially related to health in impoverished and marginalized communities. Her environmental governance research (with her collaborators Amrita Daniere and Jeffrey Carpenter) has investigated the role of low-income residents and non-governmental organizations in environmental management and policy making in Bangkok, Thailand and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

She is a past Director of the University of California Asian American and Pacific Islander Policy Multicampus Research Program (UC AAPI Policy MRP), where she worked with state elected officials and community organizations to develop policy relevant studies that highlight areas of importance for California’s AAPI population. Recent reports have focused on educational disparities and victimization/incarceration patterns.

She has served as president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning.

She taught courses on Planning Theory and History, Locational Conflict; Homelessness: Housing and Social Service Issues and Urban Policy and Planning.

Takahashi served as interim dean during the time that a search was underway for a permanent successor to Frank D. Gilliam, Jr.

Brian D. Taylor

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Brian Taylor is Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy and a Research Fellow in the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA.

Professor Taylor’s research centers on transportation policy and planning – most of it conducted in close collaboration with his many exceptional students. His students have won dozens of national awards for their work, and today hold positions at the highest levels of planning analysis, teaching, and practice.

Professor Taylor explores how society pays for transportation systems and how these systems in turn serve the needs of people who – because of low income, disability, location, or age – have lower levels of mobility. Topically, his research examines travel behavior, transportation economics & finance, and politics & planning.

His research on travel behavior has examined (1) the social, economic, and spatial factors explaining public transit use, (2) ways to cost-effectively increase public transit use, (3) how and why travel patterns vary by race/ethnicity, sex, age, and income, (4) the emerging travel patterns teens and young adults, (5) gender divisions of household labor and travel, (6) the effect of travel experience on how people perceive opportunities, (7) the role of walking, waiting, and transferring on travel choices, and (8) the equity implications of new shared mobility systems.

A principal focus of his research is the politics of transportation economics & finance, including (1) alternative ways to evaluate the access and economic effects of traffic congestion on people, firms, and regional economies, (2) the history of freeway planning and finance, (3) emerging trends in pricing road use, (4) the equity of alternative forms of transportation pricing and finance, (5) linking of subsidies to public transit performance, and (6) measuring equity in public transit pricing and finance.

The politics of planning practice inform Professor Taylor’s teaching, which regularly includes courses on Transportation and Land Use: Urban Form, Public Transit and Shared Mobility, Transportation Economics, Finance, and Policy, courses in research design for planners, and, occasionally, the Comparative International Transportation Workshop. Prior to joining the UCLA faculty, Professor Taylor was a planning faculty member at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and before that he was a planner with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Some recent publications (current and former student co-authors listed in italics)

Cities, Roads, & Congestion

Taylor, Brian D., Eric A. Morris, and Jeffrey R. Brown. 2023. The Drive for Dollars: How Fiscal Politics Shaped Urban Freeways and Transformed American Cities. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 360 pages.

Venegas, Kimberly, Brian D. Taylor, Severin Martinez, and Yu Hong Hwang. 2023. “Take the High (Volume) Road: Analyzing the Safety and Speed Effects of High Traffic Volume Road Diets,” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, published online.

Ding, Hao and Brian D. Taylor. 2021. “Traffic Trumps All: Examining the Effect of Traffic Impact Analyses on Urban Housing,” Journal of Planning Literature, published online.

Taylor, Brian D. and Yu Hong Hwang.  2020.  “The Eighty-Five Percent Solution: A Historical Look at Crowdsourcing Speed Limits and the Question of Safety” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board,2674(9):  346-357.

Osman, Taner, Trevor Thomas, Andrew Mondschein, and Brian D. Taylor.  2018.  “Does Traffic Congestion Influence the Location of New Business Establishments? An Analysis of the San Francisco Bay Area,” Urban Studies, 56(5):  1026-1041.

Thomas, Trevor, Andrew Mondschein, Taner Osman, and Brian D. Taylor.  2018.  “Not so fast? Examining neighborhood level effects of traffic congestion on job access,” Transportation Research, Part A: Policy and Practice, 113:  529-541.

Mondschein, Andrew and Brian D. Taylor.  2017.  “Is traffic congestion overrated? Examining the highly variable effects of congestion on travel and accessibility,” Journal of Transport Geography, 64: 65-76.

Public Transit & Shared Mobility

Schouten, Andrew, Evelyn Blumenberg, Brian D. Taylor. 2024. “Are immigrants migrating away from transit? Immigrant transit use trends in California.“ Travel Behaviour and Society 36, 100817

Wasserman, Jacob, John Gahbauer, Fariba Siddiq, Hannah King, Hao Ding, and Brian D. Taylor.  2023.  Financing the Future: Examining the Fiscal Landscape of California Public Transit in the Wake of the Pandemic, Research Report.  Los Angeles:  UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies.  98 pages

Gahbauer, John, Jacob L. Wasserman, Juan Matute, Alejandra Rios, and Brian D. Taylor.  2024. “Using a Modified Delphi Approach to Explore California’s Possible Transportation and Land Use Futures,” Transportation Research Record:  Journal of the Transportation Research Board

Wasserman, Jacob and Brian D. Taylor.  2023.  “State of the BART:  Analyzing the Determinants of Bay Area Rapid Transit Use in the 2010s,” Transportation Research, Part A:  Policy and Practice, 172: 103663.

King, Hannah, Jacob Wasserman, and Brian D. Taylor. 2023. “Terra Incognita:  Transit Agency Perspectives on Demand, Service, and Finance in the Age of COVID-19,” Transportation Research Record:  Journal of the Transportation Research Board.

Dai, Tianxing and Brian D. Taylor.  2022.  “Three’s a Crowd? Examining Evolving Public Transit Crowding Standards Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic Public Transport” Public Transport, Published online.

Speroni, Samuel, Brian D. Taylor, and Yu Hong Hwang.  2022.  “Pandemic Transit:  A National Look at the Shock, Adaptation, and Prospects for Recovery,” in Pandemic in The Metropolis: Transportation Impacts and Recovery. Basingstoke, United Kingdom:  Springer Nature.

Transportation Equity

Siddiq, Fariba and Brian D. Taylor. Forthcoming.  “A Gendered Perspective on Ride-Hail Use in Los Angeles, USA,” Transportation Research, Interdisciplinary Perspectives.

Dasmalchi, Eric and Brian D. Taylor.  2022.  “Examining Shifts in the Balance of Riders and Bus Service Before and During the Pandemic in Boston, Houston, and Los Angeles,” Findings, April.

Paul, Julene and Brian D. Taylor.  2022.  “Pandemic transit: Examining transit use changes and equity implications in Boston, Houston, and Los Angeles,” Transportation, published online.

Lederman, Jaimee, Anne Brown, Brian D. Taylor, and Martin Wachs.  2018.  “Arguing over Transportation Sales Taxes: An Analysis of Equity Debates in Transportation Ballot Measures,” Urban Affairs Review, 56(2):  640-670.

Smart, Michael J., Anne Brown, and Brian D. Taylor.  2017.  “Sex or Sexuality? Analyzing the Division of Labor and Travel in Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Households,” Travel Behaviour and Society, 6(2017): 75-82.

Taylor, Brian D. and Eric A. Morris. 2015. “Public transportation objectives and rider demographics: Are transit’s priorities poor public policy?” Transportation, 42(2): 347-367.

Transportation, Land Use, & Urban Form

Gahbauer, John, Jacob L. Wasserman, Juan Matute, Alejandra Rios, and Brian D. Taylor.  Forthcoming.  “Using a Modified Delphi Approach to Explore California’s Possible Transportation and Land Use Futures,” Transportation Research Record:  Journal of the Transportation Research Board.

Siddiq, Fariba and Brian D. Taylor.  2021.  “Tools of the Trade? Assessing the Progress of Accessibility Measures for Planning Practice,” Journal of the American Planning Association, 87(4):  497-511.

Paul, Julene and Brian D. Taylor.  2021. “Who Lives in Transit-friendly Neighborhoods?  An Analysis of California Neighborhoods over Time,” Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 10:  100341.

Blumenberg, Evelyn, Anne Brown, Kelcie Ralph, Brian D. Taylor, and Carole Turley Voulgaris.  2019.  “A resurgence in urban living? Trends in residential location patterns of young and older adults since 2000,” Urban Geography, 40(9):  1375-1397.

Voulgaris, Carole Turley, Brian D. Taylor, Evelyn Blumenberg, Anne Brown, and Kelcie Ralph.  2017.  “Synergistic Neighborhood Relationships with Travel Behavior: An Analysis of Travel in 30,000 U.S.  Neighborhoods,” , 10(1):  437-461.

Ralph, Kelcie, Carole Turley Voulgaris, Anne Brown, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Brian D. Taylor.  2016.  “Millennials, built form, and travel: Insights from a nationwide typology of U.S. neighborhoods,” Journal of Transport Geography, 57: 218–226.

Transportation Policy & Finance

King, Hannah, Jacob Wasserman, and Brian D. Taylor.  2023.  “Terra Incognita: Transit Agency Perspectives on Demand, Service, and Finance in the Age of COVID-19,” Transportation Research Record:  Journal of the Transportation Research Board, published online.

Siddiq, Fariba, Jacob Wasserman, Brian D. Taylor, and Samuel Speroni. 2023. “Transit’s Financial Prognosis: Findings from a Survey of U.S. Transit Systems during the COVID-19 Pandemic” Public Works Management & Policy, 28(4): 393-415.

Siddiq, Fariba, Jacob Wasserman, Brian D. Taylor, and Samuel Speroni.  2023.  “Transit’s Financial Prognosis:  Findings from a Survey of U.S. Transit Systems during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Public Works Management & Policy.

King, Hannah, Natalie Amberg, Jacob L. Wasserman, Brian D. Taylor, and Martin Wachs. 2022. “LOST and Found: The Fall and Rise of Local Option Sales Taxes for Transportation in California amidst the Pandemic,” Pandemic in The Metropolis: Transportation Impacts and Recovery. Basingstoke, United Kingdom:  Springer Nature.

Brown, Anne, Jaimee Lederman, Brian D. Taylor, and Martin Wachs.  2020. “Analyzing voter support for California’s local option sales taxes for transportation,” Transportation, 48:  2103-2125.

Lederman, Jaimee, Anne Brown, Brian D. Taylor, and Martin Wachs.  2018.  “Lessons Learned from 40 Years of Local Option Transportation Sales Taxes in California,” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2672(4): 13-22.

Travel Behavior

Morris, Eric, Samuel Speroni, and Brian D. Taylor. Forthcoming. “Going Nowhere Faster: Did the COVID-19 Pandemic Accelerate the Trend Toward Staying at Home?” Journal of the American Planning Association.

Morris, Eric A., Samuel Speroni, and Brian D. Taylor.  2023.  “Going Nowhere Fast:  Are Changing Activity Patterns Behind Falling Personal Travel?” Journal of Transport Geography, published online.

Manville, Michael, Brian D. Taylor, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Andrew Schouten.  2022.  “Vehicle access and falling transit ridership: evidence from Southern California,” Transportation, published online.

Schouten, Andrew, Brian D. Taylor, and Evelyn Blumenberg.  2021. “Who’s on Board?  Examining the Changing Characteristics of Transit Riders Using Latent Profile Analysis,” ,” Transportation Research Record:  Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2675(7):  1-10.

Schouten, Andrew, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Brian D. Taylor.  2021.  “Rating the Composition: Deconstructing the Demand-Side Effects on Transit Use Changes in California,” Travel Behaviour & Society, 25:  18-26.

Turley, Carole Voulgaris, Michael J. Smart, and Brian D. Taylor.  2017.  “Tired of Commuting? Relationships among Journeys to School, Sleep, and Exercise among American Teenagers,” Journal of Planning Education and Research, 39(2):  142-154.

 

Chris Tilly

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Chris Tilly studies labor markets, inequality, urban development, and public policies directed toward better jobs.

He is particularly interested in understanding how combinations of institutions and markets generate unequal labor outcomes, and in how public policy and collective action can successfully be directed toward improving and equalizing such outcomes. Within this framework, Professor Tilly has examined part-time and contingent work, gender and racial disparities, job mobility, and other issues.

While continuing to conduct research on workplace issues in the United States, Professor Tilly has increasingly undertaken comparative research on countries including Brazil, China, India, Korea, Mexico, and South Africa, along with several European countries.  His areas of greatest expertise are the United States, Mexico, and Latin America.

In addition to conducting scholarly research, he served for 20 years (1986-2006) as a coeditor of Dollars and Sense, a popular economics magazine, and frequently conducts research for advocacy groups, community organizations, and labor unions. He served on the Program Committee and later the Board of Directors of Grassroots International from 1991-2003, ending that time as the Chair of the Board.

Before becoming an academic, he spent eight years doing community and labor organizing.

For more about Tilly’s current research, view his web page.

Abel Valenzuela

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Abel Valenzuela Jr. is the dean of UCLA’s Division of Social Sciences and professor of Labor Studies, Urban Planning and Chicana/o and Central American Studies. A member of UCLA’s faculty since 1994, Valenzuela has held several administrative leadership positions including chairing Chicana/o and Central American Studies, directing the Center for the Study of Urban Poverty and most recently serving as special advisor to the chancellor on immigration policy and as director of UCLA’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE).

During his tenure as director of IRLE, Valenzuela oversaw multiple units: Labor Studies, the Labor Center, the Labor Occupational Safety and Health Program (LOSH) and the Human Resources Round Table (HARRT), which are dedicated to advancing research, teaching and service on labor and employment issues in Los Angeles and beyond.

As one of the leading national experts on day labor, he has published numerous articles and technical reports on the subject. His research interests include precarious labor markets, worker centers, immigrant workers and Los Angeles.

In addition to the topic of day labor, Valenzuela has published numerous articles on immigrant settlement, labor market outcomes, urban poverty and inequality, and he continues to frame national public and policy conversations on immigrant and low-wage workers.

Valenzuela was born and raised in Los Angeles and currently lives in Venice Beach with his wife and three sons.

 

Selected Publications

Paul Apostolidis and Abel Valenzuela Jr.  2014.  “Cosmopolitan Politics and the Migrant Day Labor Movement.”  Politics, Groups, and Identities.  Vol. 2(2):222-244.

Valenzuela Jr., A.  2014.  “Regulating Day Labor: Worker Centers and Organizing in the Informal Economy.”  In The Informal City: Settings, Strategies, Responses (Eds) Vinit Mukhija and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sidris.  Cambridge, MA:  MIT Press.  Pgs 261-276.

Bostic, R.W., A. M. Kim, and A. Valenzuela Jr. 2016.  Guest Co-editors.  Symposium: Contesting the Streets.  Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research. Volume 18, Number 1: Pgs, 3-122.

Theodore, N., D. Blaauw, C. Schenck, A. Valenzuela Jr., C. Schoeman, E. Melendez.  2015.  “Day Labor, Informality and Vulnerability in South Africa and the United States.”  International Journal of Manpower.  Vol. 36 No. 6: 1-18.

Areas of Expertise: economy, jobs low-wage workers, day labor, immigration, urban poverty, urban planning, inequality

Leobardo Estrada

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Leo Estrada passed away on Nov. 3, 2018. A memoriam to his life and career published on the occasion of his June 2018 retirement can be found here.

Professor Estrada’s areas of expertise included ethnic and racial demographic trends, particularly in the Latino population of the southwestern United States, inner city redevelopment, and social policy analysis and research methods.

He twice had been asked to provide his knowledge on methodologies related to ethnic and racial groups to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, serving as Special Assistant to the Chief of the Population Division and as Staff Assistant to the Deputy Director.

He  participated in numerous national studies, including an evaluation of the U.S. Standard of Live Birth for the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics.

His areas of interest were (1) ethnic communities—Latino American; (2) geographic information systems; and (3) race and ethnicity. He taught courses on Planning for Minority Communities and Geographic Information Systems.

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

The Dynamic Demographic Mosaic Called America: Implications for Education
Estrada, L. “The Dynamic Demographic Mosaic Called America: Implications for Education,” Education and Urban Society 25, no. 3 (1993).

The Changing Profile of Mexican America, A Sourcebook for Policy Makers
Estrada, L. The Changing Profile of Mexican America, A Sourcebook for Policy Makers. Claremont, CA: Tomas Rivera Center, 1986.

The Politics of the Census: A Reflection of the Dilemmas in U.S. Society
Estrada, L. “The Politics of the Census: A Reflection of the Dilemmas in U.S. Society,” Proceedings of the Joint Canada-United States Conference on Measurement of Ethnicity. Washington, DC: GPO, September, 1993

Eric Avila

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Eric Avila’s research interests include (1) History: 20th century, United States, urban, cultural, History of Los Angeles and the U.S. West, historiography; (2) Ethnic Studies: Chicano Studies, race and racialization, spatial segregation, identity formation, Ethnic Communities – Latino American; and (3) Architecture and urban planning: built environment studies, Los Angeles/Southern California.

His research has won various awards and prizes, including the recent inclusion of his article, “Popular Culture in the Age of the White Flight: Film Noir Disneyland, and the Cold War (Sub)Urban Imaginary” published in the Journal of Urban History, within a new publication by the Organization of American Historians featuring the ten best articles in American history written between the summers of 2005 and 2005. He has begun research for a book entitled, The Folklore of the Freeway: A Cultural History of Highway Construction.

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

The Chicano Studies Reader: An Anthology of Aztlán
Noriega, Chon, Avila, Eric, Sandoval, Chela, Pérez Torres, and Dávalos, Mary Karen, 2001, The Chicano Studies Reader: An Anthology of Aztlán, 1970-2000 (Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center).

Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles
Avila, Eric, 2004, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles (University of California Press).

Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Film Noir, Disneyland and the Cold War (Sub)Urban Imaginary
Avila, Eric, 2004, “Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Film Noir, Disneyland and the Cold War (Sub)Urban Imaginary,” Journal of Urban History (Sage Publications).

Evelyn Blumenberg

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Evelyn Blumenberg is the Director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and an Urban Planning professor within the Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Her research examines the effects of urban structure — the spatial location of residents, employment, and services — on economic outcomes for low-wage workers, and on the role of planning and policy in shaping the spatial structure of cities.

Professor Blumenberg’s recent projects include analyses of trends in transit ridership, gender and travel behavior, low-wage workers and the changing commute, and the relationship between automobile ownership and employment outcomes among the poor.

Professor Blumenberg was honored in 2014 as a White House Champion of Change for her research on the links between transportation access, employment, and poverty.

Professor Blumenberg holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in urban planning from the University of California, Los Angeles.

She teaches courses on planning history and theory, research design, poverty and inequality, transportation and poverty, and urban policy.

RECENT WORK

Journal Articles

  1. Blumenberg, Evelyn, Fariba Siddiq, Samuel Speroni, and Jacob Wasserman (2024). “Putting Automobile Debt on the Map: Race and the Geography of Automobile Debt in California,” Transportation Research Part A, 19: 104230. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2024.104230
  2. Blumenberg, Evelyn, Fariba Siddiq, Samuel Speroni, and Jacob Wasserman (2024).  “Driving A-loan: Automobile Debt, Neighborhood Race, and the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Transport Policy, 155: 321-330. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2024.07.007
  3. Schouten, Andrew and Evelyn Blumenberg (2024).  “License to Drive: The Effect of State Driver’s Licensing Laws on the Travel of Unauthorized Immigrants,” Transportation Research Part A, 187: 104163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2024.104163
  4. Blumenberg, Evelyn and Samuel Speroni (2024).  “Employment Concentration, Dispersion, and the Changing Commute in the San Francisco Bay Area,” The Journal of Transport and Land Use, 17(1): 625-646. https://doi.org/10.5198/jtlu.2024.2456 
  5. Schouten, Andrew, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Brian D. Taylor (2024).  “Are Immigrants Migrating Away from Transit?  Immigrant Transit Use Trends in California,” Travel Behaviour and Society, 36, July.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tbs.2024.100817
  6. Yao, Zhiyuan, Evelyn Blumenberg, Madeline Wander (2024).  “Sex Differences in Child Care Travel,” Findings, April 9. https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.115790
  7. Blumenberg, Evelyn and Hannah King (2024, April).  “Young Workers, Jobs-Housing Balance, and Commute Distance: Findings from Two High-Housing-Cost U.S. regions,” Cities.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2024.104842 
  8. Blumenberg, Evelyn, Madeline Wander, and Zhiyuan Yao (2024).  “Decisions and Distance:  The Relationship between Child Care Access and Child Care Travel,” Journal of Transport Geography, 114.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2023.103756
  9. Giamarino, Chris, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Madeline Brozen (2024). “Who Lives in Vehicles and Why? Understanding Vehicular Homelessness in Los Angeles,” Housing Policy Debate.  34(1):  25-38.  https://doi.org/10.1080/10511482.2022.2117990 
  10. Paul, Julene, Miriam Pinski, Madeline Brozen, and Evelyn Blumenberg (2023).  “Can Subsidized Carshare Programs Enhance Access for Low-Income Travelers?”  Journal of the American Planning Association. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2023.2268064 

Vinit Mukhija

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Vinit Mukhija is a Professor of Urban Planning, the former Chair of the Department of Urban Planning, and has a courtesy appointment in Asian American Studies at UCLA. He is leading the Department of Urban Planning’s efforts to develop a new, one-year self-supporting graduate professional degree program in real estate development, which will situate real estate development pedagogy within a broader framework of politics, policy analysis, sustainability, and equity at the urban level.

Professor Mukhija’s research focuses on housing and the built environment. He is known for his scholarship on cities and the informal economy, affordable housing and urban design, and the redevelopment and upgrading of informal housing. It spans informal housing and slums in developing countries and “Third World-like” housing conditions (including colonias, unpermitted trailer parks, and illegal garage apartments) in the United States. He is particularly interested in understanding the nature and necessity of informal housing and strategies for upgrading and improving living conditions in unregulated housing. His work also examines how planners and urban designers in both the Global South and the Global North can learn from the everyday and informal city.

Professor Mukhija is interested in both spatial and institutional transformations. Initially, he focused on the Global South, particularly Mumbai, India, and demonstrated the value of slum-dwellers’ participation and input in housing interventions, including their contrarian support for the redevelopment of their slums. He published these findings in his first book, Squatters as Developers? (Ashgate 2003), which was reissued in paperback (Routledge 2017).

More recently, he has focused on informal housing and urbanism issues in the Global North, including unpermitted trailer parks, bootleg apartments, and garage conversions without permits. Most of this research is based on fieldwork in Los Angeles and surrounding areas. To draw attention to the growing prevalence and challenges of urban informality in the U.S., he co-edited a book, The Informal American City, with his colleague Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris (MIT Press 2014). The book questions the conventional association of informal economic activities with developing countries and immigrant groups in developed countries. It also makes a case for a spatial understanding of urban informality. It includes Professor Mukhija’s chapter on the widespread prevalence of unpermitted second units on single-family-zoned lots in Los Angeles.

Along with colleagues Kian Goh and Loukaitou-Sideris, his recent edited book, Just Urban Design: The Struggle for a Public City (MIT Press, November 2022), presents the idea of inclusive urban life as a condition of justice and emphasizes the potential contributions of urban design to spatial justice through the “publicness” of cities. In a chapter on unpermitted secondary suites in Vancouver, which are surprisingly present in one-third of the city’s single-family houses because the built form of semi-basements makes adding informal units very easy, he examines how the units have been legalized with residents’ support, particularly Chinese Canadian and Indo-Canadian immigrants.

Professor Mukhija expanded his work in the two edited volumes on unpermitted second units into a new book, Remaking the American Dream: The Informal and Formal Transformation of Single-Family Housing Cities (MIT Press, 2022). He examines how the detached single-family home, which has long been the basic building block of most U.S. cities—not just suburbs—is changing in both the American psyche and the urban landscape. In defiance of long-held norms and standards, single-family housing is slowly but significantly transforming through incremental additions, unpermitted units, and gradual institutional reforms of once-rigid, local land use regulations. He argues that informal housing is vital in helping disadvantaged households access affordable housing and is not limited to immigrant communities from the Global South. Nonetheless, urban informality affects wealthy and less affluent families differently. Low-income and working-class residents, including immigrants, disproportionately bear the burdens of risky housing. The safe housing available on the formal market is unaffordable for the less fortunate, while affordable informal housing can often be dangerous.

Professor Mukhija trained as an urban planner (Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology), urban designer (MUD, University of Hong Kong), and architect (M.Arch., University of Texas, Austin, and B.Arch., the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi). He also has professional experience as an urban designer and physical planner in India, Hong Kong, and Kuwait, with new town design proposals and projects in India, China, and the Middle East. Before coming to UCLA, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher for the Fannie Mae Foundation in Washington, D.C., and developed neighborhood upgrading and renewal strategies for American cities. Some of his past projects have been funded by the Haynes Foundation, the California Policy Research Center, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and the World Bank.

Professor Mukhija has won multiple teaching awards at UCLA (2007, 2009, and 2013). His current teaching portfolio includes planning studios; “Introduction to Physical Planning,” a core course for students in the MURP program’s Design and Development area of concentration; “Informal City: Research and Regulation,” a seminar course that combines readings from the Global South and fieldwork-based case studies by students of informal economic activities in the Global North; and the “Comprehensive Project,” a group capstone option for MURP students. He recently taught the Comprehensive Project twice in partnership with Pacoima Beautiful (https://www.pacoimabeautiful.org/). The full and summary reports can be accessed here: https://knowledge.luskin.ucla.edu/2019/02/21/cnk-collaborates-on-transformative-climate-communities-effort/

Professor Mukhija has advised the Indian Institute of Human Settlements, Bangalore, on course and curriculum development. His other community and public service contributions include past membership on the Board of Directors of LA-Más, a Los Angeles-based urban design nonprofit organization; the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, a community organizing, research, legal representation, and policy advocacy nonprofit organization focused on California’s low income, rural regions; and the Los Angeles Area Neighborhood Initiative (LANI), a nonprofit organization focused on community-based urban revitalization strategies; serving as the Chair of the Global Planning Educators Interest Group (GPEIG) within the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP); and as current/past editorial advisory board member of the Journal of Planning Education and Research, the Global Built Environment Review, Architecture and Culture, and the Journal of the American Planning Association.

Books

Mukhija, V., 2022, Remaking the American Dream: The Informal and Formal Transformation of Single-Family Housing Cities, MIT Press, Cambridge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Goh, K., A. Loukaitou-Sideris, and V. Mukhija, 2022, Just Urban Design: The Struggle for a Public City, MIT Press, Cambridge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mukhija, V. and A. Loukaitou-Sideris, 2014, The Informal American City: Beyond Taco Trucks and Day Labor, MIT Press, Cambridge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mukhija, V., 2017, Squatters as Developers? Slum Redevelopment in Mumbai, Routledge, London. [Original edition: 2003, Ashgate, Aldershot, England (Studies in Development Geography Series of King’s College and School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London).]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stephen Commins

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Stephen Commins works in areas of regional and international development, with an emphasis on service delivery and governance in fragile states. Commins was Director of the Development Institute at the UCLA African Studies Center in the 1980s, and then worked as Director of Policy and Planning at World Vision International in the 1990s.

Dr. Commins was Senior Human Development Specialist at the World Bank from 1999-2005. His work at the World Bank included “Managing Dimensions of Economic Crisis: Good Practices for Policies and Institutions,” the establishment of the Bank’s children and youth cluster, and a survey of service delivery programs implemented by civil society organizations. Commins was one of the co-authors of the World Bank’s World Development Report 2004, Making Services Work for Poor People.  Following the report’s publication in 2003, he managed several initiatives on service delivery in post-conflict countries and the relationships between political reform and improved services.

Over the last decade, he has continued to work on service delivery programs, including the major study, “Service Delivery in Fragile States: Good Practice for Donors,” for the Fragile States Group of the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2006.  Some of his fragility and disaster work has included “testing the DFID state building” framework in Lao PDR and Cambodia, managing studies on disasters and safety nets for the World Bank in Bangladesh, a co-authored paper on participation, accountability and decentralization in Africa, and producing studies on health systems strengthening in fragile states for World Vision Canada and on sub-national fragility in India and Pakistan for the HLSP Institute.   He also led a team of policy researchers for the UK government, who produced a policy note and guidance resource for designing Multi-Donor Trust Funds or “Pooled Funds” in fragile states.

He worked for five years in support of a long-term study of livelihoods and post-conflict reconstruction in Pakistan, as part of a seven-country project with the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad and the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium at ODI in the UK..  For academic years 2013-15, he worked as the consultation and dissemination coordinator for the World Bank’s World Development Report 2015 (Behavior, Mind and Society). His other projects at that time included a four-country study with the Overseas Development Institute on community-driven development and livelihoods in four South Asian countries, support for World Development Report 2017 (Governance and the Law), and a project on designing long-term urban programs for urban areas affected by the Syrian refugee diaspora (Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey).

From 2016-19, his work has included designing two workshops, one on urban water and displaced populations and another on municipalities and livelihoods for city officials from Middle Eastern countries impacted by the Syrian diaspora. He was also on the writing team for World Development Report 2018 (Education: The Learning Crisis), including a background paper on Education in contexts of Fragility, Conflict and Violence, an assessment of education systems and needs in South Sudan, a study on providing digital skills for young women in low-income countries, and the second phase of the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium.

His most recent work has included serving as the thematic co-lead on Safety and Security for the African Cities Research Consortium, co-authoring papers on the ‘graduation’ approach (Social Protection plus economic livelihoods) for BRAC, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, and co-authoring papers on including refugees in Social Protection systems.

At UCLA, Dr. Commins teaches courses in regional and international development. He is the associate director for Global Public Affairs at the Luskin School.

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Livelihoods, basic services and social protection in north-western Pakistan (1).pdf
livelihoods and basic services in NWP.pdf
ter Veen Commins World Vision HSS in FS 2011.pdf
Cities, Violence and Order: the Challenges and Complex Taxonomy of Security Provision in Cities of Tomorrow

 

Dana Cuff

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Dana Cuff is a professor, author, and scholar in architecture and urbanism at the University of California, Los Angeles where she is also the founding director of cityLAB, a think tank that explores design innovations in the emerging metropolis (www.cityLAB.aud.ucla.edu).

Since receiving her Ph.D. in Architecture from UC Berkeley, Cuff has published and lectured widely about postwar Los Angeles, modern American urbanism, the architectural profession, affordable housing, and spatially embedded computing. Two books have been particularly important: Architecture: the Story of Practice which remains an influential text about the culture of the design profession, and The Provisional City, a study of residential architecture’s role in transforming Los Angeles over the past century.

Her urban and architectural research now span across continents to Sweden, China, Japan, and Mexico. In 2013 and 2016, Cuff received major, multi-year awards from the Mellon Foundation for the Urban Humanities Initiative, bringing design and the humanities together at UCLA.

Link to Professor Cuff’s Citylab website:  http://www.citylab.aud.ucla.edu/cuff.html