History

Allen Scott, now a distinguished professor emeritus of public policy and geography, was the Lewis Center’s inaugural director. Under his leadership, the center began to publish books and articles through Sage Publications and initiated the peer-reviewed Critical Planning Journal, now run by UCLA urban planning graduate students. The center’s research centered around economic development and labor, thanks to two major grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Haynes Foundation.

Roger Waldinger’s research garnered the center a $400,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to conduct a “ground-breaking comparative three-year study on the impact of immigration in American cities.” This research project, called “Immigration and the American City,” cemented urban immigration as an area of focus for the Lewis Center. Waldinger is now a distinguished professor of sociology and director of the UCLA Center for the Study of International Migration.

Paul Ong is a research professor at the Luskin School and director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge. During his leadership of the Lewis Center, he jointly published an important report on the 2000 Census that addressed systemic undercounting of minorities and low-income people throughout Los Angeles County. The center then collaborated with LA County and LA Metro to help municipal authorities better understand the transit needs of underserved and underrepresented areas. The Southern California Survey, a new research effort to focus “on issues and attitudes of interest for use by researchers, social scientists, and local agencies,” became the basis of the center’s work for the next several years.

As Lewis Center director, J.R. DeShazo kicked off new research projects on cultural tourism in lower-income neighborhoods of Los Angeles, socioeconomic conditions facing taxi drivers, congestion pricing, spatial equity and health care access, and graduated density zoning. The center also continued research initiatives around the statewide housing plan and the Southern California Public Opinion Survey. DeShazo is a professor of public policy, urban planning, and civil and environmental engineering and now leads the Luskin Center for Innovation.

Brian Taylor, a professor of urban planning, led both the Lewis Center and the Institute of Transportation Studies, where he still serves as director. Under his leadership, the center’s focus turned primarily to transit, housing, and regional economics, notably receiving a HUD grant to study the connections between those issues for low-income residents. California’s growing housing affordability crisis influenced much of the Center’s research and events, including several studies on the impact of regulations and political opposition on housing production. In conjunction with the Southern California Association of Governments, the center also launched REVISION, an interactive web application to analyze neighborhood change, transit networks, employment patterns, and more.