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Doctoral Student Honored for Transportation Research

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Julene Paul, a Ph.D. student in urban planning, was named the 2021 student of the year by the Pacific Southwest Region University Transportation Center, a federally funded network of eight partner campuses in Arizona, California and Hawaii. Paul works closely with the Institute of Transportation Studies and the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at UCLA Luskin. Her research includes a study of the effects of COVID-19 on transportation behavior, an investigation into trends in automobile ownership, and a deep dive into BlueLA, an electric-car-sharing program that provides services to low-income areas of Los Angeles. She has presented some of her work at national conferences and has been published along with her co-authors, including her advisors, Evelyn Blumenberg and Brian Taylor. Paul’s interest in transportation was stoked while studying urban policy and working as a research assistant for the Education Innovation Laboratory as an undergraduate at Harvard University. Later, while pursuing her master’s degree in city and regional planning at Rutgers University, Paul worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. After graduating from Rutgers, she went on to work as a program manager at the Federal Transit Administration. When asked for advice for the current generation of urban planning students, Paul recommended taking advantage of internship opportunities and seeking out mentors from these experiences. She also encouraged students to venture out beyond their required classes when possible. Paul said a UCLA Law course in employment law challenged her to think critically about transportation policies and their effects on workers.

 

On the Decline and Fall of Parking Requirements

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A StreetsBlog article about the evolution of mandatory parking requirements noted that recommendations put forward long ago by Distinguished Research Professor of Urban Planning Donald Shoup are now gaining wide acceptance. Shoup recommended removing off-street parking requirements, allowing developers and businesses to decide how many parking spaces to provide for their customers. He also recommended pricing on-street parking so that one or two spaces will always be left open in order to avoid parking shortages. Finally, he suggested spending parking revenue on public service projects on the metered streets, which would help increase the popularity of demand-based pricing. Many local governments are taking these recommendations seriously and implementing changes. The article cited Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville‘s research on San Diego’s 2019 decision to stop requiring parking for housing near transit, which helped make affordable housing projects more economically viable. As Shoup predicted, parking requirements are quickly being eliminated across the United States.

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Goh on Eco-Friendly Ambitions for Indonesia’s New Capital

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Assistant Professor of Urban Planning Kian Goh was mentioned in a Science article about the anticipated environmental burden of Nusantara, the planned new capital of Indonesia. Nusantara will replace the overcrowded and increasingly flood-prone Jakarta, and planners are envisioning an environmental utopia, including green recreational spaces, eco-friendly construction and energy efficiency. “The big question, of course, is how and if they’ll achieve these ambitions,” Goh said. “Planning scholars are by and large skeptical of plans for smart or sustainable cities ‘from scratch.’” The construction of Nusantara could also have a significant impact on the ecology of Borneo, and the residents of the old capital Jakarta will continue to suffer from rising sea levels and flooding due to climate change. “Jakarta will still be the economic center of Indonesia … and still have to take on its social issues and environmental issues,” Goh said.

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Manville on How Toll Roads Change Driver Behavior

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville spoke to Community Impact Newspaper about ways to reduce traffic congestion on roads and freeways. The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority has broken ground on its $612 million expansion of US 183 North in Austin, Texas. The project will add four express toll lanes and two general-purpose lanes, making it 18 lanes wide in some areas. While Manville said he sees advantages in express lanes, he is skeptical the project will actually reduce congestion because adding non-toll lanes will induce demand and cause more people to use them. Manville explained that he prefers toll roads because they force drivers to consider the time involved and how they make trips. “If you just changed the behavior of a small number of people who might get on that road, the road works a lot better, carries more people, there’s less congestion, and you actually have a high-quality service,” Manville said.

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Manville Sees Pandemic Shift in Parking Paradigm

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville spoke to Commercial Observer about how the pandemic opened up new possibilities to utilize streets and parking spaces. Many restaurants were able to save their businesses by expanding outdoor seating into parking lots and street parking spaces; other parking spaces have been converted to electric vehicle charging stations and even ghost kitchens. “The pandemic gave everyone this very vivid illustration of how much space, even in very vibrant parts of their area, is devoted to surface parking,” Manville said. “It helped them understand, more than any other sort of medium could, just how much of this scarce resource of urban land is devoted to holding empty cars.” These pandemic-triggered changes have accelerated a shift toward reevaluating the parking paradigm, including a Los Angeles city ordinance that does not require builders to add new parking and efforts to transform some downtown parking structures into affordable housing units.

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Urban Planning Alumna Leads National Endowment for the Arts

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Urban Planning alumna Maria Rosario Jackson PhD ’96 has been confirmed as chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, becoming the first African American and Mexican American woman to lead the federal agency. “The arts are critical to our well-being, to robust economies and to healthy communities where all people can thrive,” said Jackson, a professor at Arizona State University who has served on the National Council on the Arts since 2013. For more than 25 years, Jackson’s work has focused on understanding and elevating arts, culture and design as critical elements of strong communities. She has served as an advisor on philanthropic programs and investments at national, regional and local foundations, including the Los Angeles County Cultural Equity and Inclusion Initiative and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. She serves on the board of directors of the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County, among other organizations, and her work appears in a wide range of professional and academic publications. She also taught a UCLA course on arts, culture and community revitalization. Jackson grew up in South Los Angeles and credits her parents with instilling a love of the arts in her family. “Our art, culture and creativity are some of our country’s most valuable resources,” she said. “They are evidence of our humanity, our ability to learn from our examined experience, and our ability to imagine and innovate.” President Joe Biden nominated Jackson to the NEA post in October, during National Arts and Humanities Month; her appointment was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Dec. 18.

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Manville on Showdown Over California Housing Laws

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An NBC News report on a looming showdown over new California laws aimed at building more housing included insights from Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville. The laws going into effect on Jan. 1 include Senate Bill 9, which will allow property owners to construct more than one unit on lots previously reserved for single-family homes. Opponents say the laws will strip cities and counties of control over zoning and will not ensure that new units will be affordable. A proposed constitutional amendment that would undo several of the laws may appear on the November 2022 ballot. The debate illustrates how difficult it is to address the state’s affordable housing crisis. “It took a long time for us to get into this hole, and it’s going to take a long time to get out,” Manville said. “It’s going to take some time to see so much construction that rents are going to fall.”

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Wasserman Cautions Against Overinvesting in Rail

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Jacob Wasserman, research project manager at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, spoke to the Los Angeles Business Journal about the explosion of rail construction projects in Los Angeles. Four major rail projects are currently under construction in L.A. County, with several more projects in the pipeline. “For the modern era, this is a huge investment in rail transportation on the scale rarely seen in recent memory,” Wasserman said. However, rail transit ridership has been steadily declining in L.A. County, a trend that was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, Wasserman cautioned against overly investing in rail. “Remember, the vast majority of people taking transit in L.A. County take the bus, so the rail system has drawn a disproportionate amount of funding and resources,” he said. “Rail should be reserved for those instances where the congestion and density are high enough that there’s a demonstrable time savings over other modes of travel.”

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Single-Family Zoning Causes Harm, Manville Says

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville joined Detroit Today to discuss the effect of single-family zoning laws on wealth, access and opportunity. In most cities, the majority of residential land is zoned for single-family housing. By preventing non-single-family homes from being constructed in certain areas, Manville noted that single-family zoning hinders access to wealth for new, younger homebuyers, reinforces segregation and exacerbates issues of housing affordability. “My objection has nothing to do with single-family homes themselves,” Manville explained. “It’s the idea that you can have a law saying that nothing else can be built.” In metropolitan areas undergoing growth, single-family zoning drives up the minimum purchase price to be a part of the community, and this barrier has adverse consequences that fall disproportionately on low-income people and people of color. “Regardless of motivation, keeping these barriers in place causes harm, and we would do some good to remove them,” Manville concluded.

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Pierce on Municipal Approaches to Heat

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Gregory Pierce, co-director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, co-authored an article in Planetizen discussing different cities’ approaches to addressing extreme heat. “People of color and those with lower incomes are disproportionately exposed to heat, and the largest health risks fall on seniors, young children and those with chronic conditions,” Pierce wrote. Climate change has led to an increase in heat-related deaths and hospitalizations. In a recent paper published in the Journal of Planning Education and Research, Pierce and his co-authors analyzed surveys by California’s Office of Planning and Research to determine what factors influence whether municipalities actively plan for extreme heat and what kinds of heat-related planning and policy innovations they have adopted. The authors recommended making social equity a top priority in heat adaptation planning. They called for engaging with local communities and directing investments where they are needed most to eliminate thermal inequity.

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