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Loukaitou-Sideris Provides Insight on Rideshare Safety for Women

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Urban Planning Professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris shed light on women’s interactions with transportation systems in a Rewire article explaining female riders’ frustrations with rideshare services. Loukaitou-Sideris said sexual harassment is incredibly common in transportation settings around the world. Incidents of sexual harassment and uncomfortable behavior with rideshare drivers have prompted requests for increased safety measures, especially for women. While nearly 45% of female rideshare users have expressed their preference for a female driver, only 20-30% of Lyft and Uber drivers are female, and neither rideshare service allows female riders to request a female driver. Loukaitou-Sideris’ research on women-only public transportation in other countries, such as women-only train cars, found that women worried such an arrangement would “perpetuate discrimination” by taking away the option to sit in other cars of the train. Many women express their desire to be able to safely use the same service as men, instead of needing a women-only solution.

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Roy on Global Poverty and Social Justice

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In a Team Human podcast hosted by Douglas Rushkoff, Professor of Urban Planning and Social Welfare Ananya Roy discussed poverty and social justice from a global perspective. Roy explained how the “visible forms of poverty and inequality” in her childhood “shaped [her] interests in the study of cities and the manifestation of social inequality.” Roy discussed the relationships and discrepancies between poverty in the United States compared to developing countries in the global south, explaining that “poverty in many other parts of the world is not necessarily associated with political disenfranchisement in the ways in which it is in the United States.” Roy discussed spaces of mobilization and political power, noting that while “the master’s tools will not dismantle the master’s house, the master’s tools can certainly occupy the master house.” Roy concluded, “As Americans, we have an ethical and political responsibility to address the policies that then produce poverty around the world and in the United States as well.”

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Wachs Explains Lack of One-Way Streets in Los Angeles

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In an LAist article, Urban Planning Professor Martin Wachs commented on the history behind the lack of one-way streets in Los Angeles compared to East Coast cities. Los Angeles built wide roads to accommodate the automobiles and streetcars popular in the first half of the 20th century, Wachs said. The wide streets and long blocks characteristic of Los Angeles would make one-way streets difficult, he added. Los Angeles experimented by converting Pico and Olympic to one-way streets to ease traffic for the 1984 Olympics, but complaints from residents and business owners resulted in the restoration of two-way traffic. “One-way streets tend to work best when blocks are short and streets are narrow, so cars can easily loop around to reach their destination. When there are five or six lanes of traffic, like Venice Boulevard, cars have to merge over too many lanes to make a turn and the flow of traffic gets messy,” Wachs explained.

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Taylor on Public Opposition to Congestion Pricing

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In a Los Angeles Times article about the prospect of congestion pricing in West Los Angeles, Urban Planning Professor Brian Taylor commented on public opposition to the proposed fees. The article explained the findings of the Southern California Association of Governments’ recently published study, which modeled the effects of a $4 fee to enter a 4.3-square-mile area of West Los Angeles and Santa Monica during weekday rush hour. According to the model, such a fee would immediately reduce traffic delays and miles driven within the area by 20%, leading to increases in transit ridership, biking, walking and carpooling. Despite the predicted successes of congestion pricing, many residents of the area expressed their opposition to the proposal. Taylor, director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, said that “people typically oppose the system before they’ve seen it work, [but] they tend to go majority opposition to majority support when they see it in practice.”

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Loukaitou-Sideris Co-Authors New Book on Transit-Oriented Development

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A new book co-authored by Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, professor of urban planning at UCLA Luskin, takes a novel and critical look at the effects of compact development around urban transit systems. “Transit-Oriented Displacement or Community Dividends? Understanding the Effects of Smarter Growth on Communities” (MIT Press), is the work of Loukaitou-Sideris and Karen Chapple, professor of city and regional planning at UC Berkeley, who studied the “realities on the ground” surrounding the question of who wins and who loses with the creation of new transit accessibility. “Gentrification — and the often ensuing displacement — are not stable but dynamic and changing processes that are not often well captured by the collection of census data that occurs every five or 10 years,” Loukaitou-Sideris said. “We learned a lot about gentrification in specific neighborhoods — not readily obvious from census data — from interviews with community groups and from multiple visits to these neighborhoods,” she said. The authors note that, although gentrification does entail increasing land rents and housing prices, it is also about “losing the sense of place in a neighborhood that you grew up in and have lived for many years, that now looks different and serves different socio-demographic groups.” Loukaitou-Sideris said the intention of the book is not to “send the message that we need to stop building TODs and higher-density housing around transit stops, where appropriate. But we want to send a notice to planners and policymakers that they also need to enact or continue anti-displacement policies in these areas to protect existing residents from displacement.”

 

Manville on Congestion Pricing as a National Traffic Strategy

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville, who comments frequently on reducing traffic by implementing congestion pricing during peak hours, shared his views with a national audience in an interview with NBC News.  The article noted that congestion pricing has been successfully adopted in Singapore, Stockholm, London and Milan and is under serious consideration in Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston and New York. “If you can find a way to deter a small proportion of vehicles, you get a big improvement in speed and big increase in flow,” Manville said of congestion pricing. Cars stuck in traffic contribute more to pollution than cars in free-flow traffic, he added. Manville said congestion pricing is sensible yet politically difficult because politicians are wary of imposing added costs to voters. The key is to change people’s mindset, he said. “We are so used to the road being free,” he said. “If your water wasn’t metered, you might take a longer shower, even if it wasn’t that important to you.”

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Loukaitou-Sideris Featured on List of Must-Read Books About Cities

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“Sidewalks: Conflict and Negotiation Over Public Space,” a book by professor of urban planning Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and co-author Renia Ehrenfeucht, was featured in a Curbed article as one of the top 25 must-read books about cities written by women. The article highlights the importance of the female perspective in urbanist discourse. “Sidewalks: Conflict and Negotiation Over Public Space” is the first book to analyze sidewalks as a distinct public space. In the book, Loukaitou-Sideris and Ehrenfeucht examine the evolution of the urban sidewalk in the United States and the conflicts that have arisen over its competing uses, from the right to sit to the right to parade.

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Forum Explores Latin American Identity of Los Angeles

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Author and journalist Daniel Hernandez and professor Eric Avila explored the Latin history, features and identity of Los Angeles at a March 14, 2019, forum hosted by the Latin American Cities Initiative at UCLA Luskin. Initiative director Paavo Monkkonen, an associate professor of urban planning and public policy, moderated the forum on “Los Angeles as a Latin American City.” Hernandez, editor and host of L.A. Taco and the author of “Down & Delirious in Mexico City,” commented on corruption and infrastructure in Los Angeles, explaining that “there are things from Latin America that we should not import, [such as] the way political offices are doled out.” He noted that Los Angeles “is developing in a way that only benefits the people who already have money,” a pattern that is all too familiar in Latin American cities like Buenos Aires, Argentina. Avila, professor of Chicano studies and urban planning, researches the intersection of racial identity, urban space and cultural representation in 20th century America. According to Avila, Los Angeles is a Latin American city “in terms of population, the built environment, present-day demography, and the regional design and infrastructure.” However, he said, “Los Angeles is not a Latin American city in regard to the historically sustained efforts to whitewash and erase Spanish and Mexican past, including informal and formal practices of racial segregation, the creation of a subordinate labor force, racial hierarchies and white supremacy as a principle of urban development.” — Zoe Day

Cuff Highlights Disney Hall’s Contribution to Local Identity

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Dana Cuff, professor of architecture, urban design and urban planning, was featured in an article explaining the effect the Walt Disney Concert Hall has had in redefining the identity of downtown Los Angeles. Before the hall’s construction, downtown L.A. was notoriously lifeless and empty, the article said. “Anyone living downtown seemed like refugees from real cities elsewhere,” Cuff commented. Increased funding of public art has helped revitalize the downtown area. Cuff explained, “Getting people out of their private spaces and bringing them into collective everyday life, that’s what a city is.” Disney Hall, designed by architect Frank Gehry, changed the Los Angeles skyline when it opened in 2003. The building was praised as an architectural triumph and a cultural landmark with its asymmetrical walls of shiny stainless steel. “When a city can claim its local identity, which I think that area around Grand Avenue is starting to do, that’s an amazing achievement,” Cuff said.

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Roy on Sanctuary Cities in the Trump Era

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Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare and Geography Ananya Roy spoke with The Blue and White Magazine prior to giving a lecture at Columbia University on sanctuary cities in the Trump era. Roy discussed the mission of the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin, which she directs. “The collaborations between powerful universities and radical social movements and community-based organizing is never an easy one, but it is work that we are committed to doing,” Roy said. In the Trump era, she said, cities have been reactivated as sites of resistance even though sanctuary cities predate Trump. The 1980s saw a more radical and expansive understanding of sanctuary due to the recognition of U.S. imperialism and the violence it inflicted as the cause for Central Americans fleeing their countries, Roy said. The contemporary sanctuary movement is founded on the assertion of local sovereignty and reliance on local police power, she added.

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