Urban Planning Faculty Research and Teaching Interests 2009-10
Printable PDF
|
ERIC
AVILA |
 |
Associate
Professor (Joint
appointments with Chicana/o Studies and History)
Research: The
culture of cities; comparative U.S. urban
history; 20th-century urbanism; history of Los Angeles; racial
identity and racialization; urban Latino/Chicano culture; the uses and
meanings of the urban built environment.
Teaching: History of Los Angeles, comparative U.S. urban
history, Chicano/Latino urbanism
|
EVELYN
BLUMENBERG |
 |
Associate
Professor
Research: Urban
poverty and low-wage labor markets; social policy and planning; economic
development; gender and planning; employment accessibility and travel
behavior.
Teaching: Introduction to Histories and Theories of Planning;
Urban Poverty and Planning, Transportation and Economic Development, Urban
Policy and Planning, Capstone Project Seminar.
|
STEPHEN
COMMINS |
 |
Lecturer, Associate
Director, Center for Civil Society
Research: political economy of service delivery;
services and governance in fragile states; disaster mitigation and management;
water and sanitation services in urban areas; Non-Governmental Organizations
(accountability, effectiveness, North-South linkages); the World Bank
(public sector reform; services and governance)
Teaching:
Urbanization in the Developing World; Non Governmental Organizations;
Conflict and Development, Disasters.
|
RANDALL
CRANE
|
|
Professor;
Vice Chair (Joint
Appointment with Institute of the Environment)
(on
leave S'10)
Research: Urban development, environmental policy,transportation
economics, housing, and governance. Ongoing projects: sprawl and growth
management; the influence of the built environment on travel behavior;
basic environmental services and intergovernmental reform in Africa, Asia,
Latin America and the Middle East; housing and poverty in the metropolitan
U.S.; the restructuring of the grocery industry..
Teaching:
Environmental Politics and Governance; Sprawl; Urban Environmental
Problems–Water Resources; Transportation Economics, Finance and Policy,
Transportation and Land Use.
|
DANA
CUFF |
 |
Professor
(Joint appointment with Architecture/Urban Design)
Research: Social
production of the built environment, political context for design, low-income
housing and neighborhoods, urban design, community planning, critical urban
studies, qualitative methods, the culture of design practice.
Teaching:
Planning & Architecture Studio; Architectural Profession; Politics,
Ideology, and Design. |
LEOBARDO
ESTRADA
|
 |
Associate
Professor (Joint appointment with Chicana/o Studies) (on leave S'10
Research: Social
planning; survey research; planning for multiple publics; demographic studies,
geographic information systems.
Teaching:
Geographic Information Systems; Planning for Minority Communities.
|
CAROL
GOLDSTEIN |
 |
Lecturer
(W'10)
Research: Cultural planning: policy, equity, funding, space,
coalition-building, access and participation; infrastructure and resources
for artists, cultural workers and arts organizations; cultural heritage
and historic preservation; public art.
Teaching: Introduction to Physical Planning; special topics
in arts, culture and historic preservation. |
GILDA
HAAS |
 |
Lecturer,
Director,
Community Scholars Program
Research: The Right to the City, urban land reform, popular
economics, and strategies for building effective democratic organization.
Teaching:
Community Economic Development, Comprehensive Project
|
SUSANNA
HECHT |
 |
Professor
(Joint appointment with Institute of the Environment)
Research: Political
ecology; theories of environmental change; globalization and natural resources;
environment and development in the tropics; conservation in inhabited
environments; matrix ecology and rural development; gender and natural
resources; Amazon basin forest resurgence; indigenous knowledge systems,
resources and resistance movements; peasant economies and globalization;
agroecology; environmental history; historical ecology; Amazonian Pre-Columbian
bio-archeology; institutions and governmentality; participatory planning;
tropical land use and climate consequences.
Teaching:
Development Theory: A History of Ideas; Environmentalism, Past, Present,
& Future; Conservation in Inhabited Environments; Environmental Justice
and Political Ecology: Introduction to Theory and Politics.
|
ASEEM
INAM |
 |
Visiting
Professor
Research: Nexus of public policy and private profit in shaping
cities such as Las Vegas; urban design prototypes as transformative catalysts;
mundane standards as strategic interventions for designing spectacular
urban form; designing the prosaic versus designing the exceptional in
the city; theory/practice dialectic as generator of design solutions;
comedy improvisation as a method of creative collaboration in professional
practice; comparative international urbanism.
Teaching:
Comprehensive Capstone Project: Transit Oriented Design and Development
|
MARIE
KENNEDY |
|
Visiting
Professor
Research: Community
development, planning education, participatory action research; particular
emphasis on developing racial and cultural awareness in community planning
and on participatory planning methodologies for community empowerment; water
politics and policies; Latin American social movements. |
JACQUELINE
LEAVITT |
 |
Professor
Research: Rethinking housing and community development
policy, including issues of nonprofits and public housing, with a national
and international focus and emphasis on grassroots women's needs and efforts
to improve their living conditions; relationships between organizing,
planning and methods for democratizing governance structures.
Teaching:
Community Development and Housing Policies; Women and Community Development;
Gender Debates; Looking at Los Angeles.
|
ROBIN
LIGGETT |
 |
Professor
(Joint appointment with Architecture/Urban Design)
Research: Quantitative methods and statistical analysis;
computer graphics and computer applications in architecture, urban design
and urban planning; development of interactive computer software for aid
to design and decision making with special emphasis on facility layout
and energy analysis.
Teaching:
Quantitative Analysis in Urban Planning; Programming computer applications
in Architecture and Urban Design.
|
JOAN
LING |
 |
Lecturer
( S'10)
Research: Comparative housing policy, nexus between
transportation, land use and real estate, community development, redevelopment,
real estate development and finance, and cost effectivesustainable construction
technology.
Teaching: Real Estate Development Studio
|
ANASTASIA
LOUKAITOU-SIDERIS |
 |
Professor
Research: The public environment of the city, its physical
representation, aesthetics, social meaning, and impact on the urban resident;
physical planning and urban design for different cultures; transit safety.
Teaching:
Seminar on Public Space; History of the Built Environment in the US;
Urban Design: Theories, Paradigms, Applications; Planning & Architecture
Studio.
|
VINIT
MUKHIJA |
 |
Associate
Professor (Joint appointment
with Asian American Studies)
Research: Housing and land development; urban and
neighborhood revitalization; development strategies for low income communities;
physical planning and urban design; property rights and planning institutions.
Teaching:
Planning and Development Studio; Land Use Planning; Housing Policies in
Developing Countries; Graphics and Urban Information.
|
BARBARA
NELSON |
 |
Professor
(joint appointments in Public Policy Urban Planning, Social Welfare, and
Political Science)
Research: Conflict resolution; women, politics and public policy;
public management; organizational theory and behavior; state and society;
social and economic policies in industrialized nations.
Teaching: Conflict Resolution.
|
PAUL
ONG |
 |
Professor
(Joint appointments with Asian-American Studies and Social Welfare)
Research: Race, ethnicity and environmentalism; urban spatial
structures and socio-economic inequality; housing policy; photographic
documentation of urban change.
Teaching:
Urban Data Analysis; Policy, Planning, and Community Change; Photographic
Methods.
|
GARY
ORFIELD |
 |
Professor
(Joint appointment with Graduate School of Education and Information Studies)
Research: Educational policy as it relates to the challenges
of urban schools; civil rights; urban policy and minority opportunity.
Co-director and Founder, The Civil Rights Project, the nation's leading
research center on issues of civil rights and racial inequality.
|
STEPHANIE
PINCETL |
 |
Adjunct
Associate Professor (F'09)
Reseach:
land use and governance from an interdisciplinary environmental perspective;
the evolution of land governance on the urban fringe at the intersection
of endangered species protection and urban growth, as well as on the potential
for enhancing the sustainability of Los Angeles.
Teaching: Environmental Politics and Governance,
Land Use and Development, Urban Sustainability
|
NEAL
RICHMAN |
 |
Lecturer;
Director, Center for Neighborhood Knowledge (not teaching 2009-10)
Research: Planning education and professional practice,
planning ethics, real estate development and finance, comparative research
in housing policy, non-profit development and management including community
development corporations, cooperatives, and popular education programs.
Community development and the new technologies. Methodological interests:
qualitative studies, cross-national research in planning and development.
Teaching: Non-profit Development; Real Estate Development
& Finance; Professional Development Seminar
|
DONALD
SHOUP |
 |
Professor
Research: Public finance; transportation; land use; parking.
Shoup's research has led a growing number of cities to charge market prices
for curb parking and dedicate the revenue to finance added public services.
His research on employer-paid parking led to the passage of California's
parking cash-out law, and to changes in the Internal Revenue Code to encourage
parking cash out.
Teaching: Applied Microeconomics for Urban Planning; Urban
Public Finance; Urban Transportation Economics. |
EDWARD
SOJA |
 |
Distinguished
Professor
Research: Critical urban and regional studies; interpretations
of urban restructuring in Los Angeles; comparative studies of regional restructuring
in industrial societies; and spatiality and planning theory.
Teaching: The Evolution of Regional Planning Doctrines; Political
Economy of Urbanization; Colloquium in Planning Theory.
|
MICHAEL
STOLL |
 |
Professor
(Joint appointment with Department of Policy Studies).
Research: Interplay of race/ethnicity, urban poverty
and labor markets, and urban economic development strategies.
Teaching:
Urban Poverty and Workforce Development.
|
MICHAEL
STORPER |
 |
Professor
(On leave F'09 and S'10)
Research: (1) The role of regional context in shaping
globalization processes. Why some regions are "good" at certain
things and are so difficult to imitate. What can be imitated, and what cannot,
in a global economy where information and capital move more easily than
ever?
(2) How new telecommunications technologies affect regional development
and face-to-face contact and the implications for economic development and
globalization. (3) How institutions affect economic development of regions.
(4) How current insights in economic growth theory can be incorporated into
updated regional policies, especially in the European Union.
(5) Why the Los Angeles metropolitan economy has fallen so far behind that
of the San Francisco Bay Area over the last 30 years -- Is it because of
changing economic specializations, different patterns of immigration, or
different political and institutional responses to economic change? (6)
Is globalization reinforcing the local nature of technological change and
hence technological gaps among world regions, or is it allowing backward
regions to leapfrog and catch up technologically? (7) What are the successful
policy-shaped responses to globalization in areas such as inequality, technological
change, labor market regulation that might be extended to other areas and
become part of a new system of global governance?
Teaching: Theories of Regional Economic Development;
Globalization; Advanced Workshop on Regions in the World Economy. |
LOIS
TAKAHASHI |
 |
Professor
(Joint appointment with Asian American Studies)
(On leave 2009-10)
Research: Disruptive
social capital and health among Asians and Pacific Islanders; social service
delivery focusing on HIV/AIDS and homelessness; collaboration among community-based
organizations; environmental management in rapidly developing regions.
Teaching: Advanced
Planning Theory and History I, II; Locational Conflict; Homelessness.
|
BRIAN
TAYLOR |
 |
Professor;
Department Chair; Director, Institute of Transportation Studies.
Research: Transportation policy, planning, and finance.
The politics of transportation finance; history of freeway finance and
the linking of subsidies to public transit performance. The role of equity
in the finance of transportation systems. Relationships between transportation
and urban form; effects of suburbanization on employment access and commuting
patterns of women, minorities, and low-income workers. Planning for special
populations, such as public transit use by the poor and planning transportation
services for the disabled.
Teaching:
Transportation Planning; Travel Behavior Analysis; Transportation,
Land Use & Urban Form; Transportation Economics, Finance & Policy;
Research Design, Introduction to Cities and Planning; Transportation Geography.
|
CHRIS
TILLY |
 |
Professor;
Director, UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment
Research: International migration; immigrants in the urban
economy; causes and consequences of urban poverty; welfare reform; social
policy; race, ethnicity and social inequality.
Teaching: Immigration and U.S. Society; Urban Poverty
and Public Policy; Urban Labor Markets.
|
ABEL
VALENZUELA |
 |
Professor;
Director, Center for the Study of Urban Poverty. (Joint appointment with
Chavez Center for Interdisciplinary Instruction in Chicana/o Studies)
Research: International migration; immigrants in the urban
economy; causes and consequences of urban poverty; welfare reform; social
policy; race, ethnicity and social inequality.
Teaching: Immigration and U.S. Society; Urban Poverty
and Public Policy; Urban Labor Markets.
|
RUI
WANG |
 |
Assistant Professor
Research: Environmental policy; urban economics; transportation
policy; Chinese urbanization.
Teaching: Introduction to Environmental Policy and
Planning; Transportation and Environmental Issues; Advanced GIS |
GOETZ
WOLFF |
 |
Lecturer
Research: Regional economic development with a focus on industrial
restructuring and labor market dynamics. Emphasis on southern California
economy in the context of regional/global integration, particularly with
Latin America/Asia. Policy-oriented industrial, spatial, and labor analysis
directed towards implementation. Industry cluster/sectoral analysis research
methods. Strategies for reducing inequality and increasing popular participation
as an integral part of economic development.
Teaching:
Sectoral Analysis; Urban & Regional Development Applications; Southern
California Regional Economy. |
MIN
ZHOU |
 |
Professor,
Department of Sociology; Chair , Asian American Studies Department (Joint
appointment with Asian American Studies)
Research: Immigrant Neighborhoods in Los Angeles: Chinatown,
Koreatown, and Pico Union; Intra-Asian Migration: Diverse Patterns of
Human Movements and the Role of the State; Race and Ethnicity; The Community;
Urban Sociology
Teaching:
Courses on immigration, sociology of Los Angeles, contemporary Asian American
communities
|
