Kenya L. Covington

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Kenya L. Covington conducts empirical research that examines social and economic inequality associated with the structural makeup of metropolitan areas. Her work suggests ways to better utilize social and urban policies that likely mitigate disparities in economic opportunity and well-being overall.

For over a decade she was professor of urban studies and planning at California State University Northridge and concluded her tenure as full professor. In 2015 she was named Distinguished Teacher of the Year.

Professor Covington teaches courses on Housing Policy, Introduction to Public Policy, Research Methods, Forces of Urbanization, Social Inequality and Urban Poverty. She joined the Public Policy faculty at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs in 2017. 

Dr. Covington actively participates in APPAM, Urban Affairs, ACSP and the Population Association of America. Over her career, Dr. Covington’s articles have appeared in the Journal of Urban Studies, Brookings Institution Policy Briefs, Journal of Urban Affairs, the International Journal on Economic Development, the Harvard Journal on Legislation, the National Urban League’s 2003 and 2004 publication titled The State of Black America, and The Review of Black Political Economy, among other publications.

Kian Goh

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Kian Goh is Associate Professor of Urban Planning at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She researches the relationships between urban ecological design, spatial politics, and social mobilization in the context of climate change and global urbanization. Dr. Goh’s current research investigates the spatial politics of urban climate change responses, with fieldwork sites in cities in North America, Southeast Asia, and Europe. More broadly, her research interests include urban theory, urban design, environmental planning, and urban political ecology. As a professional architect, she cofounded design firm SUPER-INTERESTING! and has practiced with Weiss/Manfredi and MVRDV. She previously taught at Northeastern University, the University of Pennsylvania, the New School, and Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Goh received a PhD in Urban and Environmental Planning from MIT, and a Master of Architecture from Yale University.

Dr. Goh’s forthcoming book, Form and Flow: The Spatial Politics of Urban Resilience and Climate Justice, will be published by the MIT Press in 2021. The book investigates the contested power relationships and conflicts around plans proposed by cities to respond to climate change impacts. Exploring sites in New York, Jakarta, and Rotterdam, it traces the global flows of ideas and influence in the production and justification of climate change plans, and the local social movements organized against unjust and exclusionary actions.

Recent publications include articles on urban theory and climate justice in Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, urban planning and the Green New Deal in the Journal of the American Planning Association, the politics of urban flooding in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, the global and urban networks of climate change adaptation in Urban Studies, and queer space and activism in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers.

Michael Manville

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Michael Manville is Professor of Urban Planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Both his research and teaching focus on the relationships between transportation and land use, and on local public finance. Much of his research concerns the tendency of local governments to hide the costs of driving in the property market, through land use restrictions intended to fight traffic congestion. These land use laws only sometimes reduce congestion, and can profoundly influence the supply and price of housing.

Dr. Manville’s research has been published in journals of planning, economics, urban studies, and sociology. He has received research funding from University Transportation Centers, from the John Randolph Haynes Foundation, and the TransitCenter, among others. He has consulted for developers, environmental groups, local governments, and the United Nations.

Dr. Manville has an MA and PhD in Urban Planning, both from UCLA Luskin. Prior to joining Luskin as a faculty member, he was Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University.

Selected Publications

Manville, Michael and Emily Goldman. 2017.  Would Congestion Pricing Harm the Poor? Do Free Roads Help the Poor? Journal of Planning Education and Research.

Manville, Michael and Taner Osman. 2017. Motivations for Growth Revolts: Discretion and Pretext. City and Community. 16(1):66-85.

Manville, Michael. 2017. Travel and the Built Environment: Time for Change. Journal of the American Planning Association. 83(1): 29-32.

Manville, Michael, David King and Michael Smart. 2017. The Driving Downturn: A Preliminary Assessment. Journal of the American Planning Association. 83(1):42-55.

Manville, Michael. 2017. Automatic Street Widening: Evidence from a Highway Dedication Law. Journal of Transport and Land Use. 10(1): 375–393

Manville, Michael. 2017. Bundled Parking and Vehicle Ownership: Evidence from the American Housing Survey. Journal of Transport and Land Use. 10(1): 27–55

Manville, Michael and Daniel Kuhlmann. 2016. The Social and Fiscal Consequences of Urban Decline: Evidence from Large US Cities. Urban Affairs Review. 1-39.

Manville, Michael and Benjamin Cummins. 2015. Why Do Voters Support Public Transportation? Public Choices and Private Behavior. Transportation. 42(2):303-332

Manville, Michael. 2015. Comment on Talen et al. Journal of the American Planning Association, 81:4, 313-314.

Manville, Michael. 2014. Parking Pricing. In Parking: Issues and Policies, edited by Steven Ison and Corinne Mulley. Emerald Press. (Refereed).

Manville, Michael. 2013. Parking Requirements and Housing Development: Regulation and Reform in Los Angeles. Journal of the American Planning Association. 79(1):49-66.

Manville, Michael, Alex Beata, and Donald Shoup. (2013). Turning Housing into Driving: Parking Requirements and Density in Los Angeles and New York. Housing Policy Debate. 23(2):350-375.

 

 

Darin Christensen

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Darin Christensen is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He received his Ph.D. in political science and M.A. in economics from Stanford University.

Darin studies political economy, focusing on institutions and policies that promote investment and mitigate social conflict in developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. He has consulted on projects for The Asia Foundation, USAID, and The World Bank.

Darin is a co-founder of the Project on Resources and Governance (PRG) and an affiliate of several academic centers, including the California Center for Population Research, Center for Effective Global Action, Evidence in Governance and Politics, and UCLA’s African Studies Center.

More information about his research and teaching can be found at darinchristensen.com.

Ananya Roy

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Ananya Roy is Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare, and Geography and The Meyer and Renee Luskin Chair in Inequality and Democracy at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the founding Director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA, which advances research and scholarship concerned with displacement and dispossession in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the world. Working in alliance with social movements and community organizations, the Institute seeks to build power and abolish structures of inequality. Previously she was on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received her Master’s in City Planning (1994) and Ph.D. in Urban Planning (1999). There she was the recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award, the highest teaching recognition that the University of California, Berkeley bestows on its faculty.  In 2011, Ananya received the Excellence in Achievement award of the Cal Alumni Association, a lifetime achievement award which recognizes her contributions to the University of California and public sphere.

Ananya is a scholar of global racial capitalism and postcolonial development whose research is concerned with the political economy and politics of dispossession and displacement. With theoretical commitments to postcolonial studies, Black studies, and feminist theory, she seeks to shift conceptual frameworks and methodologies in urban studies to take account of the colonial-racial logics that structure space and place. As a researcher, Ananya strives to advance research justice, by which she means accountability to communities directly impacted by state-organized violence. At the very heart of her work is an insistence on the transformation of the public university – through teaching, public scholarship, and community engagement – so that it can be a force for social justice.

Ananya’s books have focused on urban transformations and land grabs in the global South as well as on global capital and predatory financialization. They include City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics of Poverty; Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, South, Asia, and Latin America; Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global; Territories of Poverty: Rethinking North and South; and Encountering Poverty: Thinking and Acting in an Unequal World. Ananya is the recipient of several awards including the Paul Davidoff book award, which recognizes scholarship that advances social justice, for Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development. Ananya has also played a key role in leading the call for “new geographies of theory,” critiquing the EuroAmerican parochialism of urban studies and demonstrating the capacious concepts that can be generated by thinking from the intellectual traditions of the global South.

Ananya leads a National Science Foundation Research Coordination Network on Housing Justice in Unequal Cities, which creates a field of inquiry into housing justice shared by university-based and movement-based scholars. Along with colleagues at UCLA, Ananya has recently led a Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar on Sanctuary Spaces: Reworlding Humanism, which is concerned with the place of racial others in liberal democracy. Situating transnational inquiry and solidarity at the present moment of resurgent white nationalism and xenophobia, her work on sanctuary challenges Western humanism and foregrounds alternative frameworks of freedom and justice. Ananya was Editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research from 2016 to 2020. She is the 2020 Freedom Scholar, an award bestowed by the Marguerite Casey Foundation and Group Health Foundation to social justice leaders.

Her current research is concerned with racial banishment, the expulsion of working-class communities of color from cities through racialized policing and other forms of dispossession. Such work is reflected in her scholarship on property, personhood, and police, which studies policing as a race-making project, as well as in her role as convener of the After Echo Park Lake research collective, which studies displacement in Los Angeles. For Ananya, the horizon of abolition is at stake in such scholarship. This is in turn involves “undoing property,” including the transformation of the policed-propertied order that is the elite university.

Website: https://challengeinequality.luskin.ucla.edu/ananya-roy/

Michael Lens

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Michael Lens is Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy, and Associate Faculty Director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. Professor Lens’s research and teaching explore the potential of public policy to address housing market inequities that lead to negative outcomes for low-income families and communities of color. This research involves housing interventions such as subsidies, tenant protections, and production. Professor Lens regularly publishes this work in leading academic journals and his research has won awards from the Journal of the American Planning Association and Housing Policy Debate.

In ongoing research, Professor Lens is studying the neighborhood context of eviction, the role of charter schools in neighborhood change, and is engaged in multiple projects (with Mike Manville and Paavo Monkkonen) concerning housing supply in California. Lens is also working on a book project that examines fifty years of neighborhood change in Black neighborhoods following the 1968 Fair Housing Act.

Professor Lens’s research has received funding from the MacArthur Foundation, the Arnold Foundation, and the Terner Center for Housing Innovation, among other sources.

Professor Lens teaches courses on quantitative analysis, poverty and inequality, community development, housing policy, and research methods.

For an appointment, please send an email.

 

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

It’s Time to End Single-Family Zoning
Journal of the American Planning Association (Forthcoming)
With Michael Manville and Paavo Monkkonen
Download file

Extremely Low-Income Households, Housing Affordability and the Great Recession
Urban Studies 55(8): 1615-1635
Download file

Spatial Job Search, Residential Job Accessibility, and Employment Outcomes for Returning Parolees
Demography 54: 755-800
With Naomi Sugie
Download file

Employment Proximity and Outcomes for Moving to Opportunity Families
Journal of Urban Affairs 39(3): 547-562
With C.J. Gabbe
Download file

Job Accessibility Among Housing Subsidy Recipients
Housing Policy Debate 24(4): 671-691
Best Paper of 2013-14, Housing Policy Debate
Download file

The Impact of Housing Vouchers on Crime in U.S. Cities and Suburbs
Urban Studies 51(6): 1274-1289
Download file 

The Limits of Housing Investment as a Revitalization Tool: Crime in New York City
Journal of the American Planning Association 79(3): 211-221
Best Article of 2014, Journal of the American Planning Association
Download file

Safe, but Could be Safer: Why do Voucher Households Live in Higher Crime Neighborhoods?
Cityscape 15(3): 131-152
Download file

Subsidized Housing and Crime: Theory, Mechanisms, and Evidence
Journal of Planning Literature 28(4): 352-363
Download file

American Murder Mystery Revisited: Do Housing Voucher Households  Cause Crime?
Housing Policy Debate, 22(4): 551-574
Download file

Do Vouchers Help Low-Income Households Live in Safer Neighborhoods? Evidence on the Housing Choice Voucher Program (with Ingrid Gould Ellen and Katherine O’Regan)
2011, Cityscape, 13(3): 135-159
Download file

Michael A. Stoll

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Michael A. Stoll is Professor of Public Policy in the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He serves as a Fellow at the American Institutes for Research, the Brookings Institution, the Institute for Research on Poverty at University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and served as a past Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation.

Dr. Stoll’s published work explores questions of poverty, labor markets, migration, and crime. His past work includes an examination of the labor market difficulties of less-skilled workers, in particular the role that racial residential segregation, job location patterns, job skill demands, employer discrimination, job competition, transportation, job information and criminal records play in limiting employment opportunities.

His recent work examines the labor market consequences of mass incarceration and the benefits and costs of the prison boom. A recently completed book, Why Are so Many Americans in Prison, explores the causes of the American prison boom and what to do about it to insure both low crime and incarceration rates.

Much of his work has been featured in a variety of media outlets including NPR, PBS, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Economist, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, Univision, among other outlets.  He also regularly advises the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services and Labor, as well as for state and local governments in various capacities.

Prof. Stoll received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a B.S. from the University of California, Berkeley.

RECENT BOOKS

 

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

Why are So Many Americans in Prison? jointly authored with Steven Raphael, New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2013.

Do Prisons Make Us Safer? The Benefits and Costs of the Prison Boom
edited with Steven Raphael, New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2009

Barriers to Reentry? The Labor Market for Released Prisoners in Post-Industrial America edited with David Weiman and Shawn Bushway, New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007 (Selected as a Noteworthy Book in Industrial Relations by Princeton University’s Industrial Relations Section.)

Randall Akee

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Randall Akee is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles in the Department of Public Policy and American Indian Studies. He is also Chair of the America Indian Studies Interdepartmental Program. He completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in June 2006. Prior to his doctoral studies, Dr. Akee earned a Master’s degree in International and Development Economics at Yale University. He also spent several years working for the State of Hawaii Office of Hawaiian Affairs Economic Development Division.

Dr. Akee is a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in Labor Studies and the Children’s Groups. He is also a research fellow at the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development and at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), a faculty affiliate at the UCLA California Center for Population Research (CCPR) at UCLA and a faculty affiliate at UC Berkelely Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA). His main research interests are Labor Economics, Economic Development and Migration.

Previous research has focused on the determinants of migration and human trafficking, the effect of changes in household income on educational attainment, the effect of political institutions on economic development and the role of property institutions on investment decisions. Current research focuses on income inequality and immobility by race and ethnicity in the US. Dr. Akee has worked on several American Indian reservations, Canadian First Nations, and Pacific Island nations in addition to working in various Native Hawaiian communities.

From August 2006 until August 2009 he was a Research Associate at IZA, where he also served as Deputy Program Director for Employment and Development. Prior to UCLA (2009-2012), he was an Assistant Professor at Tufts University and spent AY 2011-2012 at the Center for Labor Economics at University of California, Berkeley.

In June 2013 he was named to the U.S. Census Bureau’s National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations.

Google Scholar Citations

Published and Forthcoming Papers:

“Estimating Institutionalization and Homelessness for Status First Nations in Canada: A Method and Implications,” forthcoming in International Indigenous Policy Journal. (with Donna Feir)

“Socioeconomic Outcomes for Indigenous Students attending a High Performing School” forthcoming at Journal of American Indian Education.

“How Does Household Income Affect Child Personality Traits and Behaviors?” (with E. Simeonova, J. Costello, and B. Copeland) American Economic Review, 108(3), 775-827.

“The Role of Race, Ethnicity and Tribal Enrollment on Asset Accumulation: An Examination of American Indian Tribal Nations”. (with Sue K. Stockly, William Darity Jr, Darrick Hamilton, and Paul Ong), forthcoming in Ethnic and Racial Studies.

“Critical Junctures and Economic Development —  Evidence from the Adoption of Constitutions Among American Indian Nations.” (with Miriam Jorgensen and Uwe Sunde), Journal of Comparative Economics, 2015, Volume 43, pp. 844-861.

“The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and Its Effects on American Indian Economic Development” (with Katherine Spilde and Jonathan Taylor) Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2015, Volume 29, No. 3, pp. 185-208.
Press: American Economics Association

“Social and Economic Changes on American Indian Reservations in California: an Examination of Twenty Years of Tribal Government Gaming” (with Katherine Spilde and Jonathan Taylor) UNLV Gaming Research & Review Journal, 2014, Volume 18, No. 2.

“Investigating the Effects of Furloughing Public School Teachers on Juvenile Crime in Hawaii” (with T. Halliday and S. Kwak), Economics of Education Review, Volume 42, 2014, pp. 1-11.
Press: KITV News, Hawaii News Now, Honolulu Star Advertiser, West Hawaii Today

“Property Institutions and Business Investment on American Indian Reservations” (with M. Jorgensen), Regional Science and Urban Economics, Volume 46, 2014, pp. 116-125.

“Transnational Tracking, Law Enforcement and Victim Protection: A Middleman Tracker’s Perspective” (with A. Basu, A. Bedi and N. Chau), Journal of Law and Economics, May 2014, v. 57, pp. 349-386.

“Young Adult Obesity and Household Income: Effects of Unconditional Cash Transfers.” (with Emilia Simeonova, J. Costello, W. Copeland, and A. Angold), American Economics Journal: Applied Economics, 2013, 5(2):1-28.
Press: New York Times
Blog Posts: Daily Kos, The Economist, The Washington Post

“The Persistence of Self-Employment Across Borders: New Evidence on Legal Immigrants to the United States”,  (with David A Jaeger and Konstantinos Tatsiramos) Economics Bulletin, Vol. 33 No. 1 pp. 126-137, 2013.

“Skin Tone’s Decreasing Importance on Employment: Evidence from a Longitudinal Dataset, 1985-2000.” (with Mutlu Yuksel) Industrial and Labor Relations Review, V. 62, No. 2, 2012.

“Errors in Self-Reported Wages: The Role of Previous Earnings Volatility and Individual Characteristics.” Journal of Development Economics, V. 96, No. 2, Nov. 2011, pp. 409-421.

“‘Counting Experience’ Among the Least Counted: The Role of Cultural and Community Engagement on Educational Outcomes for American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Students.” (with Tarajean Yazzie-Mintz), American Indian Culture and Research Journal, V. 35 Num. 3,  pp. 119-150, 2011.

“Parents’ Incomes and Children’s Outcomes: A Quasi-Experiment with Casinos on American Indian Reservations,” (with J. Costello, W. Copeland, G. Keeler and A. Angold), American Economics Journal: Applied Economics, Volume 2, No. 1, January 2010, pp. 86-115.

Working Papers:

“Land Titles and Dispossession: Allotment on American Indian Reservations,”

“First People Lost: Determining the State of Status First Nations Mortality in Canada using Administrative Data,” (with D. Feir) revise and resubmit at Canadian Journal of Economics.

“Racial and Ethnic Income Inequality and Mobility from 2000 to 2014: Evidence from Matched IRS-Census Bureau Data.” (with M. Jones and S. Porter), revise and resubmit at Demography.

“Family Income and the Intergenerational Transmission of Voting Behavior: Evidence from an Income Intervention,” (with E. Simeonova, J. Holbein, E. Costello and W. Copeland)

“Reservation Nonemployer and Employer Establishments: Data from U.S. Census Longitudinal Business Databases,” (with Elton Mykerezi and Richard Todd)

Research Reports and Books:

“Access to Capital and Credit in Native Communities: A Data Review,” Native Nations Institute Report, with Miriam Jorgensen.

“American Indians on Reservations: A Databook of Socioeconomic Change from 1990 to 2010,” 2014, with Jonathan Taylor.

Research Report for the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs. “Migrant Households In India: A Comparison Of The Average Migrant Household And Migrant Households With Non-Resident Accounts In Kerala, Gujarat, Maharashtra And Punjab.” A Joint Report of Center for Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, 2012, with Devesh Kapur.

Research in Labor Economics.  “Child Labor and the Transition between School and Work”  2010. Vol. 31, edited with Eric Edmonds and Konstantinos Tatsiramos, Emerald Publishing.

Institute for the Study of Labor Prize Book.  “Wages, School Quality and Employment Demand David Card and Alan Krueger” 2011. edited with Klaus Zimmermann, Oxford University Press.

Popular Press:

“Credit Scores & Indians: Recent Evidence on the Prevalence of Low Scores & Borrowing”

Indian Country Today Media Network, April 10, 2016

“The Good(?) and Bad of Boarding Schools”

Indian Country Today Media Network, March 3, 2016.

“Manufacturing Consent for the Living AND the Dead in Hawai’i” with

Noelani Arista. Indian Country Today Media Network, November 20, 2015.

 

John Villasenor

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John Villasenor is a professor of public policy, electrical and computer engineering, management, and law at UCLA, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford. Villasenor’s work considers the technology, policy, and legal issues arising from key technology trends including the growth of artificial intelligence, the increasing complexity and interdependence of today’s networks and systems, and continued advances in computing and communications.

He has written for the Atlantic, Billboard, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Fast Company, Forbes, the Huffington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Scientific American, Slate, and the Washington Post, and for many academic journals. Prior to joining the faculty at UCLA, Villasenor was with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he developed methods of imaging the earth from space. He holds a B.S. from the University of Virginia, and an M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University.

For more information, please visit Professor Villasenor’s personal page.