Affiliated Scholars

AllHousing AffordabilityAccess to OpportunitiesTransportationHealth AccessPublic SpaceUrban DesignJobs and the Regional EconomyReal Estate Development

Internal medicine physician, postdoctoral fellow
Katherine Chen

Distunguished Professor and Associate Dean
Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris

Assistant Professor, Faculty Affiliate
Jose Loya

Associate Professor

Moira O’Neill

Housing Initiative Project Manager
Shane Phillips

Associate Director, Adjunct Assistant Professor
Gregory Pierce

Distinguished Research Professor
Donald Shoup

Professor and Department Chair
Chris Tilly

Director

Evelyn Blumenberg

Evelyn Blumenberg is the Director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and a Professor of Urban Planning within the Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her research examines the effects of urban structure — the spatial location of residents, employment, and services — on economic outcomes for low-wage workers, and on the role of planning and policy in shaping the spatial structure of cities. Professor Blumenberg’s recent projects include analyses of trends in transit ridership, gender and travel behavior, low-wage workers and the changing commute, and the relationship between automobile ownership and employment outcomes among the poor.

Areas of Work:Transportation, Access to Opportunities

Deputy Director

Madeline Brozen

Madeline Brozen is Deputy Director of the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and a transportation researcher. Her research focuses on the transportation needs for vulnerable populations and how transportation connects people to opportunity, most recently focusing on transportation needs to healthcare. Her previous research includes work on parklet design and evaluation, park design for older adults, and street performance metrics. Madeline is a lecturer in GIS for the UCLA Urban Planning Department and commonly incorporates spatial analysis in her work. She previously managed the UCLA Complete Streets Initiative, was the founding editor-in-chief of Transfers Magazine, and is a member of the Investing in Place advisory board.

Areas of Work:Transportation, Access to Opportunities

Assistant Professor

Genevieve Carpio

Genevieve Carpio is Assistant Professor in the UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies. Professor Carpio’s research and teaching interests include race-making between diverse groups, how people make meaning in the places they call home, and the public humanities, particularly as related to the California Inland Empire and the digital world. Carpio is the author of a book on racial formation in the multiracial suburbs of Los Angeles and the Inland Empire, entitled “Collisions at the Crossroads: How Place and Mobility Make Race” (University of California Press, 2019). Her second book project examines architectural forms shaped by California race relations, such as the Spanish and Maya revivals, and their movement across the Pacific World in the early 20th century. Carpio is an interdisciplinary-trained scholar who holds a doctorate in American Studies and Ethnicity from the University of Southern California. She also holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Pomona College, an M.A. in Urban Planning from UCLA, and a graduate certificate in Historic Preservation from the USC School of Architecture.

Areas of Work:Access to Opportunities, Transportation

Internal medicine physician, postdoctoral fellow

Katherine Chen

Katherine L. Chen, M.D., is an internal medicine physician and postdoctoral fellow in the National Clinician Scholars Program and Specialty Training and Advanced Research program at UCLA. Her research explores equity issues at the intersection of urban planning and population health, focusing on ways to reduce health disparities through policies that shape affordable housing, transportation, and neighborhood environments. Recent projects have examined health outcomes among people displaced in California’s affordable housing crisis, the impact of gentrification on hypertension and diabetes control in Los Angeles, transportation access to health care during the COVID-19 pandemic, and nonprofit hospitals’ engagement with housing needs in the local community.

Areas of Work:Access to Opportunities, Housing Affordability, Health Access

Lecturer

Kenya Covington

Kenya L. Covington conducts empirical research that examines social and economic inequality associated with the structural makeup of metropolitan areas. Her work suggests ways to better utilize social and urban policies that likely mitigate disparities in economic opportunity and well-being overall. For over a decade, she was professor of urban studies and planning at California State University, Northridge and concluded her tenure as full professor. In 2015, she was named Distinguished Teacher of the Year. Professor Covington teaches courses on Housing Policy, Introduction to Public Policy, Research Methods, Forces of Urbanization, Social Inequality and Urban Poverty. She joined the Public Policy faculty at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs in 2017.

Areas of Work:Access to Opportunities, Housing Affordability

Professor

Dana Cuff

Dana Cuff is a professor, author, and scholar in architecture and urbanism at UCLA where she is also the founding director of cityLAB, a think tank that explores design innovations in the emerging metropolis. Since receiving her Ph.D. in Architecture from UC Berkeley, Cuff has published and lectured widely about postwar Los Angeles, modern American urbanism, the architectural profession, affordable housing, and spatially embedded computing. Her urban and architectural research now span across continents to Sweden, China, Japan, and Mexico. In 2013 and 2016, Cuff received major, multi-year awards from the Mellon Foundation for the Urban Humanities Initiative, bringing design and the humanities together at UCLA.

Areas of Work:Housing Affordability, Public Space, Urban Design

Professor

Chris Elmendorf

Professor Elmendorf’s varied teaching and research interests include property and land-use law, election law, statutory interpretation, and administrative law. He is a leading authority on California’s “housing element” law, through which the state undertakes to make local governments to accommodate their share of regionally needed housing. He has published widely in top law journals, as well as peer-reviewed political science journals.

Areas of Work:Housing Affordability, Access to Opportunities, Health Access

Director of Research

Silvia Gonzalez

Silvia R. González directs climate, environmental justice, and health research at the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative. Her academic research focuses on how the places we live in influence socioeconomic inequality and environmental health outcomes along racial lines. At LPPI, Gonzalez has co-authored multiple reports analyzing the neighborhoods most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Previously, Silvia worked as the founding assistant director at the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge where she led projects that examine racial inequality in Los Angeles. More recently, she co-directed community-based and environmental equity research projects at the Luskin Center for Innovation to advance the Human Right to Water and Community-led Climate Investments in California. She continues to be affiliated with these centers. She holds a BA in Geography/Environmental Studies and a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning with a focus on Economic Development from UCLA. Silvia received her PhD from UCLA in Urban Planning in 2020

Associate Faculty Director

Michael Lens

Michael Lens is Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy and Associate Faculty Director of the Lewis Center. Professor Lens’s research and teaching explore the potential of public policy to address housing market inequities that lead to negative outcomes for low-income families and communities of color. This research involves housing interventions such as subsidies, tenant protections, and production. Professor Lens regularly publishes this work in leading academic journals and his research has won awards from the Journal of the American Planning Association and Housing Policy Debate.

Areas of Work:Housing Affordability

Lecturer, Real Estate Adviser

Joan Ling

Joan Ling is a real estate adviser and policy analyst in urban planning. She has experience in real estate financial analysis, affordable housing and urban mixed use development, and state and local land use and housing policy, legislation and regulation. Ling is Board Director, Housing California and MoveLA and former Treasurer, Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles and former Executive Director, Community Corporation of Santa Monica. Her current research focus is on the nexus between land use policy and real estate development as well as analysis of community benefits project and program level feasibility.

Areas of Work:Real Estate Development

Distunguished Professor and Associate Dean

Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris

Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris is the Associate Dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, a Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning, and a core faculty of the UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative. Professor Loukaitou-Sideris’ research focuses on the public environment of the city, its physical representation, aesthetics, social meaning and impact on the urban resident. Her work seeks to integrate social and physical issues in urban planning and architecture. An underlying theme of her work is its “user focus”; that is, she seeks to analyze and understand the built environment from the perspective of those who live and work there. Dr. Loukaitou-Sideris’ research includes documentation and analysis of the social and physical changes that have occurred in the public realm; cultural determinants of design and planning and their implications for public policy; quality-of-life issues for inner city residents; transit security, urban design, land use, and transportation issues.

Areas of Work:Urban Redevelopment, Urban Design, Public Space

Assistant Professor, Faculty Affiliate

Jose Loya

José Loya is an Assistant Professor in Urban Planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and faculty affiliate with the Chicano Studies Research Center. His research addresses Latino issues in urban areas by connecting ethno-racial inequality and contextual forces at the neighborhood, metropolitan, and national levels. His research discusses several topics related to stratification in homeownership, including ethno-racial, gender, and Latino disparities in mortgage access.

Areas of Work:Health Access, Housing Affordability, Homeownership

Professor

Michael Manville

Michael Manville is Professor of Urban Planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Both his research and teaching focus on the relationships between transportation and land use, and on local public finance. Much of his research concerns the tendency of local governments to hide the costs of driving in the property market, through land use restrictions intended to fight traffic congestion. These land use laws only sometimes reduce congestion, and can profoundly influence the supply and price of housing.

Areas of Work:Housing Affordability

Professor

Paavo Monkkonen

Paavo Monkkonen is Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, director of the Latin American Cities Initiative, the coordinator of the Regional and International Development Concentration, and a Faculty Cluster Leader for the Global Public Affairs Initiative. Professor Monkkonen researches and writes on the ways policies and markets shape urbanization and social segregation in cities around the world. His scholarship ranges from studies of large-scale national housing finance programs to local land use regulations and property rights institutions often not recognized for their importance to housing. Past and ongoing comparative research on socioeconomic segregation and land markets spans several countries including Argentina, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, and the United States. He continues to work as a consultant on national housing and urban policy in Mexico, where he has various long-term research projects.

Areas of Work:Housing Affordability

Professor

Vinit Mukhija

Vinit Mukhija is a Professor of Urban Planning in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. His research focuses on informal housing and slums in developing countries and “Third World-like” housing conditions (including colonias, unpermitted trailer parks, and illegal garage apartments) in the United States. He is particularly interested in understanding the nature and necessity of informal housing, and strategies for upgrading and improving living conditions in unregulated housing. His work also examines how planners and urban designers in both developing and developed countries can learn from the everyday and informal city.

Areas of Work:Public Space, Housing Affordability

Associate Professor

Moira O’Neill

Moira O’Neill is an associate professor in urban and environmental planning at UVA’s School of Architecture. She also holds an academic appointment at the Law School. Moira O’Neill’s interdisciplinary research and teaching focuses on land use, climate, and resilience. Her research examines state and local government efforts to mitigate the impacts of climate change while also addressing inequality. She is the Principal Investigator on a study titled the Comprehensive Assessment of Land Use Entitlements Study (CALES). CALES contributes new data to explore which regulations best promote housing affordability and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Most recently, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, she is collaborating with UCLA scholars to explore how CALES data, with other research methods, can inform fair housing questions.

Areas of work:Housing Affordability

Research Professor

Paul Ong

Professor Ong has done research on the labor market status of minorities and immigrants, displaced high-tech workers, work and spatial/transportation mismatch, and environmental justice. He is currently engaged in several projects, including an analysis of the relationship between sustainability and equity, the racial wealth gap, and the role of urban structures on the reproduction of inequality.

Areas of Work:Access to Opportunities, Transportation

Housing Initiative Project Manager

Shane Phillips

Shane Phillips manages the Randall Lewis Housing Initiative for the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. In this role, he supports faculty and student research, manages events, and publishes research, policy briefs, and educational materials. His work covers a wide range of housing topics including tenant protections, housing production policies, and government revenue and financing reforms. Shane is also the author of “The Affordable City: Strategies for Putting Housing Within Reach (and Keeping it There),” in which he argues for an “all of the above” approach to housing policy and outlines 55 strategies for improving affordability and household stability.

Areas of Work:Housing Affordability

Associate Director, Adjunct Assistant Professor

Gregory Pierce

Greg Pierce is the Associate Director of the Luskin Center for Innovation and leads its Water, Environmental Equity and Transportation programs. He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the UCLA Department of Urban Planning. Pierce received a Ph.D. in urban planning in 2015 and a master’s in urban planning in 2011, both from UCLA. He is the author of 30+ peer-reviewed articles. Current and past sponsors of this work include the California State Water Resources Control Board, the California Air Resources Board, the Strategic Growth Council, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department, WaterAid, the Water Foundation, The Resources Legacy Fund, Environment Now, the DiCaprio Foundation, the World Bank, the UC Multicampus Research Initiative, the UC Institute of Transportation Studies and the UCLA Grand Challenge.

Postdoctoral Scholar

Jessica Schirmer

Jessica Schirmer is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. Her research examines how interest groups and institutions shape policy, and how federal, state, and local policies impact housing affordability, spatial inequality and land use. Her recent projects include analyses of property tax reform and trends in housing production.

Area of Work:Housing Affordability

Distinguished Research Professor

Donald Shoup

Donald Shoup is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA. His research has focused on transportation, public finance, and land economics. In his 2005 book, The High Cost of Free Parking, Shoup recommended that cities should (1) charge fair market prices for on-street parking, (2) spend the revenue to benefit the metered areas, and (3) remove off-street parking requirements. In his 2018 edited book, Parking and the City, Shoup and 45 other academic and practicing planners examined the results in cities that have adopted these three reforms. The successful outcomes show that parking reforms can improve cities, the economy, and the environment.

Areas of Work:Transportation

Director and Professor

Brian D. Taylor

Brian Taylor is Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy, and Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA. Professor Taylor’s research centers on transportation policy and planning – most of it conducted in close collaboration with his many exceptional students. His students have won dozens of national awards for their work, and today hold positions at the highest levels of planning analysis, teaching, and practice. Professor Taylor explores how society pays for transportation systems and how these systems in turn serve the needs of people who – because of low income, disability, location, or age – have lower levels of mobility. Topically, his research examines travel behavior, transportation economics & finance, and politics & planning.

Areas of Work:Access to Opportunities, Transportation

Professor and Department Chair

Chris Tilly

Chris Tilly is Professor of Urban Planning. He studies labor markets, inequality, urban development, and public policies directed toward better jobs. He is particularly interested in understanding how combinations of institutions and markets generate unequal labor outcomes, and in how public policy and collective action can successfully be directed toward improving and equalizing such outcomes. Within this framework, Professor Tilly has examined part-time and contingent work, gender and racial disparities, job mobility, and other issues. While continuing to conduct research on workplace issues in the United States, Professor Tilly has increasingly undertaken comparative research on countries including Mexico, Brazil, China, India, Korea, and South Africa, along with several European countries.

Areas of Work:Jobs and Regional Economy

Chair, Professor

Karen Umemoto

Karen Umemoto is the Helen and Morgan Chu Endowed Director’s Chair of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. She received her Master’s degree in Asian American Studies from UCLA and her Ph.D. in Urban Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research centers on issues of democracy and social justice in multicultural societies with a focus on U.S. cities. She also examines and pursues planning processes that include a diverse array of voices, acknowledges different ways of knowing, and allows for meaningful deliberations. She is equally concerned about the structural, procedural and relational obstacles to attaining a just and democratic society. Her research and practice thus takes a broad view of planning in the context of social inclusion, participatory democracy and political transformation.

Areas of Work:Access to Opportunities, Health Access, Equity and Transformative Planning

Director and professor

Abel Valenzuela

Abel Valenzuela Jr. is Professor of Chicana/o Studies, Urban Planning, and Labor Studies. He is also Director of UCLA’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. In 2017, he was appointed Special Advisor to the Chancellor on Immigration Policy. Professor Valenzuela is one of the leading national experts on day labor (itinerant workers) and has published numerous articles and technical reports on the subject. His research interests include precarious labor markets, worker centers, immigrant workers, and Los Angeles. His academic base is urban sociology, planning, and labor studies. In addition to the topic of day labor, he has published numerous articles on immigrant settlement, labor market outcomes, urban poverty and inequality.

Areas of Work:Jobs and Regional Economy

Professor

May C. Wang

Dr. May Wang joined the faculty of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health as Associate Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences in 2008. She received an undergraduate degree from the National University of Singapore, a master’s degree in nutritional science from the University of Texas at Austin, and master’s and doctorate degrees in public health from the University of California, Berkeley. After obtaining her doctorate degree, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University School of Medicine where she was trained in the emerging field of pediatric bone health research. Since then, she has conducted research related to child obesity and bone health with a focus on addressing health disparities.

Areas of Work:Access to Opportunities, Food Insecurity, Health Access

Professor

Fred Zimmerman

Frederick J. Zimmerman is Professor of Health Policy and Management in the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA. Dr. Zimmerman is a past president of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Sciences. He is the co-author of “The Elephant in the Living Room,” and co-editor of “Development at a Crossroads,” and has written more than 100 academic journal articles. His work studies how economic structure and public policy influence population health, and has been covered in the New York Times, the BBC, Radio France Internationale, and many other outlets.

Areas of Work:Access to Opportunities