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Koslov on Managed Retreat for At-Risk Communities

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Assistant Professor of Urban Planning Liz Koslov was featured in a review of Mark Arax’s “The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California” in the Los Angeles Review of Books. “The Dreamt Land” focuses on the water dramas of the Central Valley in California, including the environmental degradation of the region and the state’s ongoing efforts to manage climatic variability such as drought and fire. Managed retreat refers to the planned unsettling of or relocation from a threatened area, which is becoming an increasingly popular idea among communities in coastal and fire-prone zones. “Retreat is a powerful and evocative word, one that signals a change in direction — something we share the need for as a society even though we do not all live in places that are immediately vulnerable,” Koslov wrote. 

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Loukaitou-Sideris on Viability of Central Valley Bullet Train

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Professor of urban planning Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris was featured on KPCC’s AirTalk discussing the viability of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s revised plan to build a bullet train from Bakersfield to Merced. In his State of the State address, Newsom declared that the original plan to build a high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco would cost too much and take too long, and surprised the audience by announcing the curtailed Central Valley line. Transportation experts including Loukaitou-Sideris have stressed the importance of having enough passenger demand to make the 160-mile line worthwhile. Loukaitou-Sideris expressed her “dismay at cost overruns and lack of efficient management,” arguing that “high-speed transit needs to connect high concentrations of people in centers at the origin and at the destination.” She said it is not necessary to stop the project completely but recommended “better planning, more transparency, and increased involvement from local stakeholders and the private sector.”

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