Posts

Shoup on Reclaiming Land for People, Not Cars

/0 Comments/in /by

Urban Planning Professor Donald Shoup and California Assemblywoman Laura Friedman co-authored a CityLab article calling for an end to minimum parking requirements, arguing that the outdated mandates drive up poverty, homelessness and carbon emissions. “We’ve essentially built many of our cities for cars and made housing for humans incidental to that use,” the authors wrote. Across the United States, they noted, there is an average of 1,000 square feet of parking per car but only 800 square feet of housing per person. Shoup and Friedman urged passage of Assembly Bill 1401, which would end California parking mandates for new buildings near public transit and in walkable neighborhoods, while still giving developers the option to add parking if needed. If the bill becomes law, it would reduce the cost of housing and serve as a model of sustainability, they argued. “In this era of climate change and a crisis of affordability, we have to reclaim urban land for people,” they wrote.

Read the article

Gas Tax Is ‘Absolutely Necessary,’ Wachs Says

/0 Comments/in /by

Martin Wachs, distinguished professor emeritus of urban planning, spoke to the San Diego news site inewsource about Senate Bill 1, a gas tax  passed in 2017 to improve the condition of California roads. Some communities are unsatisfied with the pace of road repairs, the article noted. But Wachs called the law “a short-term fix that was absolutely necessary.” In the future, he added, different solutions will be needed as fuel mileage rates increase and more people drive electric cars that don’t use gas — two trends that will cut into gas-tax revenue. “We’ll be selling less gasoline in relation to the driving that we do as years go by,” Wachs said.

Read the article

 

Pierce on Presence of Lead in State’s Drinking Water

/0 Comments/in /by

Gregory Pierce, adjunct professor of urban planning and associate director of research at the Luskin Center for Innovation, spoke to Arizona PBS about the presence of lead in California’s drinking water. California is testing pipes and upgrading plumbing at public schools across the state, the article noted. Nearby homes typically share the same water systems, but “there’s no required testing for these privately owned places, which may result in many people not knowing that the water they are using for showers, cooking and drinking purposes may have lead contamination,” Pierce said. The article cited a UCLA report card on water quality in Los Angeles County, where some residents perceive that their tap water is unsafe. “With the lack of trust in their water, these lower-income residents and areas are now having to rely on water stores, or having to buy drinks such as juice or soda because they believe there are issues with their water.”

Read the article

Taylor on the Incomplete 710 Freeway

/0 Comments/in /by

Brian D. Taylor, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin, spoke to KCRW’s Greater L.A. about shelved plans to expand the 710 Freeway through the San Gabriel Valley. Taylor, a professor of urban planning, said the project was one of many freeway expansion proposals to face opposition. The major difference, he said, was that much of the 710 project was completed. “The dilemma we have is, as we built fewer and fewer of the projects that were to be the planned network, we ended up making the freeways that were built larger and larger,” disrupting surrounding communities, Taylor said. Now that the freeway will not be extended on land that had been procured, officials have an opportunity to develop an already built-up area, he added. “The larger nut to crack, which is how not to have chronic congestion, probably doesn’t lie in building more of these kinds of highways,” Taylor concluded.

Listen to the podcast

 

DeShazo and Callahan on California’s Move Toward Clean Energy

/0 Comments/in , /by

Luskin Center for Innovation Director JR DeShazo and Deputy Director Colleen Callahan co-authored an opinion piece for the Capitol Weekly that explores the rise of clean energy in cities. Dozens of cities and counties in California are already running on 100% clean energy, a transition often spearheaded by local leaders, the authors found. They argued for a statewide move toward clean energy achieved by reforming state and utility policies, modernizing grid operations and increasing grid connectedness. “Local communities are proving possible what once seemed impossible: Cities and counties can run on 100% clean power,” DeShazo and Callahan wrote. “By achieving this goal today, local initiatives can light the way for the rest of the country. They can and should serve as inspiration to other cities, states, and the federal government to support 100% clean energy commitments, and to take bold action to achieve those goals.”

Read the article

 

More Lanes Does Not Mean Less Congestion, Manville Says

/0 Comments/in /by

Michael Manville, associate professor of urban planning, spoke to WWJ Radio’s The Break Down: Road Work Ahead about the impact of deteriorating infrastructure on traffic congestion. Governments cannot keep up with road repairs, and adding more lanes has proven to be ineffective, the podcast noted. In Los Angeles, an additional lane was added to Interstate 405 in the hopes of alleviating congestion. This project ultimately failed, which was “actually entirely predictable,” Manville said. “Anything that you’re doing to try and add capacity will not reduce congestion,” he said, explaining that adding lanes simply attracts more drivers. “It lowers the price in time of using the road, and you can’t reduce congestion by making driving on a busy road at a busy time less expensive. It becomes fundamentally self-undermining,” he said.

Listen to the podcast

 

Mini-Mall Model Troublesome, Yaroslavsky Says

/0 Comments/in /by

Los Angeles Initiative Director Zev Yaroslavsky spoke to Curbed LA about the development of mini-malls in Southern California. Yaroslasvky said that mini-malls were popular with the public but not so popular from a planning standpoint. “I viewed the new mini-mall model as troublesome,” he said, noting that mini-malls broke up the pedestrian character of streets by providing parking in front of the businesses. Yaroslavsky said Proposition U, a 1986 initiative he sponsored when he served on the Los Angeles City Council, limited commercial development but was not in response to the reemergence of mini-malls. Rather, it was in response to massive buildings. “People were fed up with the changing scale of new buildings in commercial zones adjacent to residential neighborhoods,” he said.

Read the article

 

Wachs on the Future of California’s Bullet Train

/0 Comments/in /by

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning Martin Wachs spoke to the Los Angeles Times about California’s beleaguered plan to build a high-speed rail line that had initially sought to link San Francisco and Los Angeles. Concerns about the time required and cost of the rail’s construction continue to be raised following Gov. Gavin Newsom’s State of the State speech. “There’s an enormous amount of uncertainty,” said Wachs, a member of the peer review committee monitoring the business plans of the high-speed rail project. “You can’t be completely sure of what it will cost,” he added. “The technology changes as it’s being built, the demand pattern changes as it’s being built.”

Read the column

 

Loukaitou-Sideris on Challenges Facing California’s High-Speed Rail

/0 Comments/in /by

Professor of Urban Planning Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris spoke with the Your Call’s One Planet Series podcast about the challenges facing California’s high-speed rail project. Litigation and the lack of regional planning in California contributed to the project’s delay, said Loukaitou-Sideris, who added that it is a mistake that the private sector is not more involved. Loukaitou-Sideris argued that bringing in more local and municipal actors to gauge their interest in developing the land surrounding the rail could lead to economic development for the cities the rail travels through. She also advised looking at European countries for inspiration for the high-speed rail. “With good planning, with good involvement and good management, things can happen,” said Loukaitou-Sideris, who is also UCLA’s associate provost for academic planning.

Listen to the Podcast