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Manville on Transit System Cuts

Michael Manville, professor and chair of Luskin urban planning, commented in a Bloomberg CityLab Perspective on service cuts that could be coming to regional transit systems nationwide. While focused on Pittsburgh’s transit system, which is considering reductions in service, systems across the U.S. are weighing service cuts due to growing deficits caused by increased costs, passenger counts below pre-pandemic levels, and the exhaustion of pandemic-era aid. For Pittsburgh, this would mean cutting bus routes, creating longer wait times for other routes, limiting running times as well as disconnecting a number of suburban townships from the network. Experts caution that severe service reductions could have effects that will last for years to come such as forcing low-income riders to purchase cars, straining budgets and contributing to regional congestion and pollution. “Once you buy the car, you’re not coming back to the train or bus, even if service is restored,” Manville said.

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Mullin on Political Shift in Attitudes on Environmental Protection

Megan Mullin, faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation was a guest on the UCLA Daily Bruin podcast “Bruin to Bruin.” The episode focused on the growing polarization in environmental politics, the aftermath of the 2025 Los Angeles County fires and the UCLA Luskin professor of public policy’s work and journey as an environmental researcher. The UCLA Luskin Endowed Chair in Innovation and Sustainability was asked about the shift in attitudes about environmental protection between political parties in the U.S. “We all care about clean water, we all care about clean air, and if you put it to the test, we all want a climate that’s livable for human populations. How we get there becomes the real challenge,” said Mullin, who also is leading a UCLA team tasked with developing policy recommendations to help Los Angeles recover from the 2025 wildfires. “It’s been a 30-year trajectory of division.”

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Hererra on Slow Harms and Citizen Action

April 24, 2025/0 Comments/in Luskin in the News Veronica Herrera /by Stan Paul

Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Political Science Veronica Hererra was a recent guest on the Sur-Ubano Podcast based at the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design. The episode focused on Hererra’s 2024 book, “Slow Harms and Citizen Action” (Oxford University Press), which chronicles the struggle against toxic exposure in urban Latin America. The podcast cites toxic pollution as the cause of more than 12 million deaths each year with 92 percent occurring in middle- or low-income countries, and notes that because environmental harms are often slow moving — yet long-standing problems — they can be difficult to detect and result in inaction or resignation. “I find that the strength and the success and failure of environmental movements is really tied up in this larger story of democracy building in the region, in the historical legacies of the struggle for human rights as part of the struggle for democratization…something that the book emphasizes,” Hererra said.

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Seeking Solutions for Today’s Issues — and Tomorrow’s With an equity lens, faculty pursue research on plastic pollution, transportation access, mortgage lending and youth empowerment

January 24, 2025/0 Comments/in Luskin Forum Online Jose Loya, Laura Wray-Lake, Madeline Brozen, Veronica Herrera /by Mary Braswell

By Stan Paul

The outcome of the 2024 national election will impact our nation and world for decades to come, and during this critical time, UCLA Luskin remains committed to — and actively engaged in — research that addresses pressing global, national, regional and local issues.

One UCLA Luskin research initiative is focused on civic engagement among young people who will be determining the direction of the nation through their vote. Others are investigating housing access and affordability, transportation access, the environment and other issues that intersect the fields of urban planning, social welfare and public policy.

Amid rising costs and declining state funding for the University of California system, external funding sources large and small allow individual scholars and UCLA Luskin-affiliated research centers to continue to pursue important and timely research on numerous policy issues.

During the 2023-2024 fiscal year, donors committed $856.5 million — the second-highest fundraising total in UCLA history. Alumni and friends of the university came forward with more than 68,000 gifts, 94% of which were less than $10,000. The Luskin School’s fundraising efforts brought in $7,811,898 of that total.

Here is a spotlight on faculty research made possible by this funding:

Mitigating Plastics Through an Environmental Justice Lens

Plastics are all around us — and in us. It’s in our water and soil, the food and water we consume, and the products and packaging that we use on a daily basis. However, some communities are more negatively impacted, or plastic burdened, than others, according to work being conducted by UCLA Luskin researchers.

Veronica Herrera, associate professor of urban planning and political science, and Daniel Coffee MPP ’20, a project manager at the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation (LCI), received funding through LCI from the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation to define and map the plastics burden in California and its communities.

In 2022, California Gov. Gavin Newsom approved SB-54, a bill that would establish the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act. The law requires producers to ensure that 100% of single-use packaging and plastic food service ware sold in California is recyclable or compostable by 2032, and will provide about $500 million annually for the California Plastic Pollution Mitigation Fund to help communities affected by plastic.

While SB-54 is one of the most comprehensive laws of its kind, there are concerns by environmental justice organizations that the money may not be equitably distributed to communities most impacted by plastic pollution.

“Our research creates an environmental justice framework to help decision makers route the mitigation funds toward communities most disproportionately impacted by plastic pollution, which are communities of color and low-income,” Herrera said.

The report defines the plastics burden as being threefold: site-based exposures (living or working near plastics industrial facilities), dietary exposures (such as via processed foods) and consumer products exposures (such as through personal care products), and shows how these exposures are more likely to present disproportionate impacts on communities of color. Herrera and Coffee have also created a geospatial map that shows the site-based exposures on California’s communities for facilities such as landfills and plastics recyclers.

“Our report stresses that some communities are more likely to be doubly or triply burdened and also have pre-existing vulnerabilities in dealing with these burdens, such as lower access to health care,” Herrera said.

“We want to continue to add to the mapping tool to expand our measures of the plastics burden. Maybe this will inspire researchers in other states to get data to replicate what we are doing for California. More data on the plastics burden will help policymakers make real change.”

Removing Obstacles to Transportation Access

Transportation is not equally accessible or distributed equitably across regions. The lack of reliable and affordable transportation only adds to socioeconomic inequities for low-income communities and individuals, especially for people of color.

Researchers at the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs are studying the effects of a novel approach — universal basic mobility (UBM) — to address financial barriers to reliable transportation. UBM was recently piloted in a small number of cities nationwide, including Los Angeles.

Madeline Brozen, co-principal investigator and deputy director of the Lewis Center, is leading the team that is analyzing the effectiveness of the L.A. pilot program, also known as mobility wallets. Researchers at UC Davis also are working with UCLA to complete the comprehensive mixed-methods evaluation examining travel trends, experiences and spending for pilot programs in Los Angeles.

The initial pilot program, launched in 2023 by the city of Los Angeles, with partners LA Metro and the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, is the largest UBM pilot to date. This first phase provided $150 a month to 1,000 participants in South Los Angeles. According to Brozen, a second phase started last fall and also includes 1,000 people from South Los Angeles but has been expanded to include an additional 1,000 participants from throughout Los Angeles County.

Brozen explained that the UBM works like universal basic or guaranteed income in the form of a prepaid debit card, which can be used for a range of transportation options. These include city buses, bikeshare and e-scooters as well as ride-hail servicesincluding Uber and Lyft and Amtrak for more regional travel.And the wallets are being used, she noted. The programshave tracked thousands of transportation transactions since the program began.

So far, the results have been promising. Brozen is working with Lewis Center Director and longtime Luskin Urban Planning Professor Evelyn Blumenberg, as well as Urban Planning PhD students who are assisting with analyzing the experiment’s results.

“People know this is a one-year program. So, they’re not going to change their behavior really drastically for a temporary support,” Brozen said. “Most people have figured out how to get to their job, how to get their groceries, but a lot of times, it’s the trips they aren’t making.”

These include trips that people with reliable transportation may take for granted, like having the ability to see family and friends. It also helps with trips that would normally be expensive, long and in places where transportation would become burdensome for them.

An additional benefit is that program participants are allowed to use the wallet for themselves or anyone else, such as a child that requires transportation, Brozen explained. The mobility wallets give participants options that provide both stress relief and budget relief.

“It gives them autonomy. … There’s improvement to people’s lives,” she said.

Investigating Barriers to Home Ownership

Buying a new home has been challenging for most people before — and, even more so, after —the COVID-19 pandemic. But for low-income people, that dream has moved almost beyond reach.

A two-year grant has allowed UCLA Luskin’s José Loya to examine those barriers for low-income people as they seek upward social mobility through homeownership. Loya, an assistant professor of urban planning, received the grant asa 2023-25 Emerging Poverty Scholarship Fellow through theUniversity of Wisconsin’s Institute for Research on Poverty. Loya, also a faculty affiliate with UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center, said that the first part of his research is to investigate the relationship between low-income households and homeownership, and barriers in the search for upward social mobility.

Working with Luskin PhD students, he is already seeing some interesting results:

“We see that low-income individuals are heavily constrained in the mortgage market, which limits their home ownership opportunities more broadly,” he said. “That’s both at the individual and community levels. So low-income communities also face very large barriers to accessing or to improving or to increasing ownership opportunities in their neighborhoods as well.”

Another factor is that high home prices coupled with higher interest rates has an impact on whether financial institutions are willing to lend to lower-income individuals, pricing them out of the market.

“The monthly payment itself is just too high to afford homeownership under current circumstances,” Loya said.

A second aspect of the research has been to examine the impact of neighborhood poverty on appraised home values. He explained that while home values are typically thought of as based on the actual home and land, appraised values also are a reflection of community resources.

“And this has a dramatic impact on lower-income neighborhoods or minority neighborhoods that often are neglected when it comes to public investment,” Loya said.

Loya also noted that housing studies for lower-income people has typically focused on rental markets because the majority of low-income residents are renters.

“However, the next stage for upward social mobility is signaled by homeownership, the largest vehicle for generating wealth,” he said. “When we think about low-income households and neighborhoods, essentially we want to determine or assess the opportunities that they have for homeownership and other ways of generating wealth.”

This is where Loya’s research comes in.

“I’m able to look at that intersection of wealth building through homeownership and poverty research,” he said, pointing out that poverty or household income is not static.

“We know that incomes fluctuate, opportunities fluctuate, and homeownership is a good marker of mobility,” he said, explaining, “When people view homeownership as an opportunity, do families have access to it?”

Understanding Youth Civic Engagement and Opportunities

Generations are given labels, stereotyped and defined, and each generation is actively engaged in defining itself.

Professor of Social Welfare Laura Wray-Lake is in the third year of research funded by AmeriCorps to assess civic engagement among young people and understand experiences of youth activists with different social identities.

Her research is multi-pronged. In partnership with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Wray-Lake is looking at survey data from a large sample of youth advocates, which she said will help in understanding “some of the factors that differentiate the way that young people are engaged and the different issues that interest them.”

Another aspect of that work involves evaluating the ACLU’s National Advocacy Institute, a one-week summer training program for youth advocates, to find ways the institute made a difference for participants. Wray-Lake and colleagues surveyed young people who went through the institute before and after the training along with a follow-up six months later.

The findings are showing that institute participants increased their civic knowledge, agency and likelihood of action one week after the institute, relative to a comparison group of civically engaged young people who did not participate in the program, and some of the effects are maintained six months later.

A third part of her AmeriCorps-funded work involves a longitudinal study to map out trajectories of how young people become activists. Over three years starting in 2023, Wray-Lake is tracking 1,000 young participants, ages 14-18, as they transition to adulthood and move on to college or other paths.

“Adolescents are really engaged and really involved in a lot of different issues,” including racial justice, women’s rights, LGBTQ issues, and justice here and abroad related to conflict in the Middle East, Wray-Lake said.

Wray-Lake said the young people she studies represent a general sample and weren’t recruited because they were civically engaged. But she said that the vast majority are engaged in at least one issue.

“Young people today are paying attention. They care about many different things. And so I think the way that relates to the election is they’re looking for which candidates are really speaking to the issues that they’re interested in.

“I’ve noticed that young people have gotten more motivated since Kamala [Harris] has joined in, but they also have issues and interests that neither candidate is really speaking to. I think that’s a piece that’s important.”

And although the youngest of the participants who were surveyed cannot yet vote, their views still matter and their actions can make a difference, she said.

“There might be ways they’re participating, like sharing their views on social media or with friends and family, and some of them might be campaigning for the candidates,” Wray-Lake said, adding that people don’t have to be 18 to be an active citizen.

“The motivation for doing what I do is showing how teenagers can be contributors to society and their communities. They have ideas, they have motivation, and they actually make real change in their communities through youth-led movements and organizations that they’re part of.”

New Book Chronicles Citizen Action to Combat Environmental Injustice

June 3, 2024/0 Comments/in Luskin's Latest Blog Veronica Herrera /by Mary Braswell

In communities around the world, toxic pollution has taken a terrible toll on public health, leading to more than 12.5 million deaths a year, according to the World Health Organization. In her new book “Slow Harms and Citizen Action: Environmental Degradation and Policy Change in Latin American Cities,” UCLA Luskin’s Veronica Herrera sheds light on the struggle against toxic exposure and the role of grassroots activism in crafting effective environmental policies. “For the millions of communities around the world where pollution is a slow-moving, long-standing problem, residents born into toxic exposure often perceive pollution as part of the everyday landscape,” writes Herrera, an associate professor of urban planning. The book, published by Oxford University Press, shares her pathbreaking research into river pollution on the poor fringes of three Latin American capitals: Bogotá, Colombia; Lima, Peru; and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Through original interviews, photographs, maps and other sources, Herrera illustrates how human rights movements that had previously helped dismantle state-sponsored militarized violence have also laid the groundwork for successful environmental activism. “In many instances, citizen-led pressures are increasingly the environmental regulatory institution of last resort in Global South cities,” Herrera writes.

Hecht Joins Podcast to Discuss Deforestation in Latin America

March 27, 2024/0 Comments/in Luskin in the News Susanna Hecht /by Les Dunseith

UCLA Luskin Professor Susanna Hecht joined the LatinNews Podcast to talk about deforestation and other environmental issues in the Amazon. Hecht, a professor of urban planning who also serves as director of the Center for Brazil Studies at UCLA, spoke about the region’s history and the complex dynamics relating to forest resurgence in the tropical world. To begin, she noted with a laugh that the interview was taking place “from climate-battered Southern California. My road is closed from landslides, so just to keep things in proportion, climate change is pretty generalized these days, even in places that view themselves as immune from it.” As the podcast proceeded, she spoke about geopolitical issues and provided an overview of the various types of resource depletion that continue to plague the Amazon and how these practices contribute to climate change.

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State Investments to Fight Climate Change Are Working, Reports Show

June 15, 2022/0 Comments/in Luskin's Latest Blog /by Les Dunseith

Watts is a leader in local solutions to the climate crisis, according to new progress reports for a state-funded project. This year, 300 Watts residents received energy efficiency upgrades like smart thermostats and LED lighting to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions and reduce energy bills. Volunteers delivered 261,000 pounds of fresh food to almost 10,000 residents by rescuing produce that would have otherwise ended up in landfills. And the community also started planting 2,250 trees, which will cool down streets and sequester carbon. These projects in Watts are part of the Transformative Climate Communities (TCC) program administered by California’s Strategic Growth Council, which is providing millions of dollars in grants for climate action and community benefits in partnership with local government, residents and organizations. The UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation analysis documents the progress of TCC-supported action in five communities across California: Fresno, Ontario, Stockton, and the northeast San Fernando Valley and Watts neighborhoods of Los Angeles. The annual reports are part of an ongoing evaluation that UCLA is conducting in collaboration with TCC grantees. “Learning from these pilots is important,” said Jason Karpman, project director at UCLA. “As one of the most comprehensive community-scale climate programs in the world, lessons from TCC can support equitable climate action elsewhere.” Policymakers are considering how to bring elements of TCC to more underserved communities, and a previous report from the Luskin Center for Innovation identified the TCC program as a nationwide model for such efforts.

Ong Honored for Work Advancing Environmental Justice

May 20, 2022/0 Comments/in Luskin's Latest Blog Paul Ong /by Mary Braswell

Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, has received the 2020-2021 Haagen-Smit Clean Air Award from the California Air Resources Board. Ong is one of six individuals from around the world to receive the honor, which recognizes career accomplishments related to air quality and climate change. Ong was cited for his work on matters of community service and environmental justice. “Professor Ong’s more than 100 publications addressing racial inequalities have had an outsized influence on concerns for environmental justice,” the board said in announcing the award. “He has worked for more than three decades as a scientist and educator on interdisciplinary social science and environmental teaching, policy-focused research and community engagement.” The Haagen-Smit Clean Air Awards will be presented today at 9 a.m. PDT at a California Air Resources Board meeting that will be webcast via Cal-Span. Later in the day, the board will host the Clean Air Leadership Talks featuring presentations on the work of the six award recipients, who are known for their accomplishments in the field of air quality and climate science, environmental policy and environmental justice. The talks will be livestreamed beginning at 2 p.m. and available for viewing later on the board’s YouTube channel. The award program was named after Arie J. Haagen-Smit, a native of Utrecht in the Netherlands, who was a leader in developing air quality standards based on his research efforts. Due to a hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic, this set of prizes is for the combined years of 2020 and 2021.

Connecting the Dots on Climate Change Environmental scholar Robert Bullard charts a path to a more equitable future — if America can avoid repeating past mistakes

May 17, 2022/0 Comments/in Alumni, Climate Change, Development and Housing, Diversity, Education, Environment, For Faculty, For Policymakers, For Students, For Undergraduates, Global Public Affairs, Public Policy News, School of Public Affairs, Social Welfare News, Social Welfare PhD, Urban Planning Susanna Hecht /by Les Dunseith

By Les Dunseith

Robert Bullard has been called professor, dean, author, policy influencer, important thinker, movement starter and the father of environmental justice. But that’s not how he chose to describe himself during a May 12 talk at UCLA.

“I do what’s scientifically called kick-ass sociology,” Bullard said playfully in his opening remarks to a roomful of students, faculty, staff and other interested parties, plus an online audience. “And what I’ve tried to do is to make it simple, make it plain, make it real and connect the dots.”

The renowned scholar from Texas Southern University has written 17 books. “But it’s really just one book — don’t tell anybody,” Bullard said slyly. “The central glue that connects all of those volumes? Fairness, justice and equity.”

He often blended humor into his discussion of serious topics such as America’s history of racial discrimination and the growing global climate crisis. Titled “The Quest for Environmental and Climate Justice,” Bullard spoke and took audience questions for more than an hour in the Bruin Viewpoint Room of Ackerman Union as part of the UCLA Luskin Lecture series. It was presented in conjunction with the Harvey S. Perloff Environmental Thinkers Series and UCLA Urban Planning’s 50^th anniversary celebration.

In his introductory remarks, Dean Gary Segura of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs said, “At the Luskin School, we try to have conversations about things that actually matter — climate degradation, environmental degradation and its impact on working class and poor people of color — and for which there is a desperate need for solutions.”

Bullard is known for his courage and “his insights into how questions of race figure into environmental justice,” said the evening’s emcee, Susanna Hecht, a geographer and professor of urban planning who also serves as director of the Brazilian Studies Center at UCLA.

“He is a person who has a broad perspective and broad horizons,” Hecht said. “His work has expanded to embrace a range of topics that evolved at the center of environmental, civil rights, human rights and the question of race and vulnerability under climate change, as well as patterns of pollution in both urban and industrial landscapes.”

So, what is environmental justice?

Bullard sees it as an essential notion that all people and communities are entitled to equal protection to ensure they have adequate housing, quality health care, and access to the energy and transportation they need in their daily lives. Civil rights and human rights.

The reality rarely matches the ideal, however. He cited as an example a study that showed government relief after a natural disaster going primarily to wealthier, predominantly white communities rather than to poorer, predominantly Black areas.

“We know that all communities are not created equal,” Bullard said. “There are some that are more equal than others.”

Without action, disparities are likely to grow as industrial pollution further degrades our planet, he said.

“Climate change will make it worse on the populations that are already suffering,” Bullard said. “Those who have contributed the least to the problem will suffer the most. That’s the inequity that we’re talking about. You can’t have your basic human rights if even the right to breathe has been taken away from you.”

Despite decades of experience documenting human nature at its worst, Bullard has not given in to despair.

“I’m hopeful and optimistic that we can get this right. I’ve been working on this for 40 years, but we don’t have another 40 years. We only have, maybe, a dozen to get this right,” Bullard said.

He cited California as a leader in environmental equity and climate change responses and noted the state’s history of finding out-of-the-box solutions in technology and government, as well as its highly regarded universities.

“Let California be California. That’s my answer. Push the envelope as far as you can,” Bullard said.

“And so, I’m looking to young people. I’m looking at your faces,” he told his audience of mostly young scholars. “You are the majority now. I’m a boomer and proud of it. But millennials, zoomers, Gen X, Y and Z — you outnumber my generation. Take the power.”

—

View photos from the event on Flickr.

Taylor Encourages More Responsible Driving

September 16, 2021/0 Comments/in Luskin in the News Brian D. Taylor /by Zoe Day

Brian Taylor, director of UCLA’s Institute of Transportation Studies, spoke to Vox about how to end the American obsession with driving. The transportation sector is one of the biggest sources of pollution, but many U.S. cities are built for drivers. Taylor explained that parking is often capitalized into the costs of the goods you buy, as opposed to selling parking spaces at their true value. “The default is that the storage of private vehicles tends to get priority if you look at how we’ve allocated curb space, and that creates all sorts of problems,” said Taylor, a professor of urban planning and public policy. To disincentivize street parking, Taylor suggested that municipalities raise the price at meters, manage curbs differently or remove parking altogether in some areas, allowing only for loading, unloading, and scooter and bike traffic. He imagined a future where drivers are more responsible for these costs and are more judicious of their car use.