News and Events—Previous Items
Robocar/taxi: product design and transport planning
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
305 Wurster Hall, UC Berkeley
Speaker: Steve Raney, Cities21
“A car is often a person’s second largest capital expenditure, after a home, yet a car sits unused some 95% of the time. With the Google self-driving car, people could avoid the outlay of many thousands of dollars, or tens of thousands, on an item that mostly sits and, instead, simply pay by the mile. Driving could become Zipcar writ large (except the car comes to you). - Forbes Magazine, Jan 2013.” Use cases: long commutes, vacation travel, robotaxi. Taxi experience: rendezvous; coping without a trunk; kid drivers; phone prod: desk => robotaxi => train; hands-free destination selection. Avoiding sparse systems. Good/bad planning outcomes.
Steve Raney’s project history includes: Google self-driving cars, Ultra personal rapid transit (PRT: self-driving EVs at London Heathrow Airport), the US EPA’s "Transforming Office Parks into Transit Villages" study of Pleasanton, and BART’s Group Rapid Transit study. He conceived Bay Area MTC’s $33M Climate Innovations Grant Program. He has sketched last-mile PRT designs for Palo Alto, Mountain View, Cupertino, San Jose Airport, Oakland Airport, South SF, Emeryville, Alameda, and Redwood City. He holds the first patent for "smartphone instant ridesharing.” He authored 18 transportation papers. He holds three masters: business, software, and transportation from Columbia, RPI, and Berkeley (DCRP ’03).
Urban modeling for enhancing master plan making: SIMPLAN for Ahmedabad, India
Friday, June 8, 2012
noon - 1 pm,
316D Wurster Hall
Presented by Dr. Bhargav Adhvaryu, Professor in Infrastructure Engineering & Management, CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India, Fulbright Visiting Professor at the UCLA Department of Urban Planning
Planners are usually faced with the decision of what planning policy to pursue in order to achieve the best possible future! Using modelsthat simulate urban dynamics, it is possible to test and assessalternative planning policies, thereby making the decision processmore objective and transparent. Examples are the full-fledged and complex land use—transport interaction models, which have been successfully applied in many cities of the developed world,demonstrating its effective use in assessing alternative planning andtransport policies before finalizing their master plan. However, in the developing world, building such complex models is challengingdue to lack of data availability and resource constraints. Addressingsuch constraints, a SIMplified PLANning modeling suite calledSIMPLAN has been developed for the case study city of Ahmedabad, India. SIMPLAN is built using available census andsome basic employment related sample survey data, and containsfour sub-modules for spatial trend analysis, residential location, modal split, and alternative policy assessment framework.
India is rapidly urbanizing and is at a crucial juncture in itsdevelopment. The urbanization phenomenon has both positive andnegative effects. It could be argued that appropriate urbandevelopment policies and planning methodology can use thepotential positives to foster better equity of benefits from thebooming overall growth. On the other hand, if India does notcapitalize on thepotential advantages appropriately, then in the next few decades the negatives of urbanization could amplify, worseningcity living and become a stumbling block in its economic growthstory. It is believed that using a methodological planning frameworksuch as SIMPLAN, cities in the developing world can prepare theirown tailor-made policy that best satisfies their objectives, making theplanning efforts count for improving the quality of life in cities.
Contact: Erick Guerra, 510-423-1444 eguerra@berkeley.edu
Partnering with K-12 Education in Building Healthy, Sustainable, and Competitive Regions: A California Policy Symposium
Thursday, December 6, 2012
10:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Tsakopoulos Library Galleria 828 I Street Sacramento, California
Join leaders from across California to discuss aligning important policy agendas: ensuring high-quality, opportunity-rich schools in healthy, sustainable communities. The success of our cities and regions depends on high-quality schools, just as high-quality schools depend on the vibrancy, health, and sustainability of our communities. State and local policy leaders increasingly recognize how the conditions, qualities, and locations of K-12 school environments affect not only teaching and learning but also equity and healthy community objectives, including land use, growth, and congestion.
Fall 2012 Urban Health Equity Seminar Series
This series will run the entire academic year. For the fall semester, the seminars take place on five Mondays, starting October 1, 2012 and ending November 26, 2012. Download the flyer.
Monday, November 26, 2012
The Role of Academic-Community Partnerships in Building Urban Health Equity
Wurster 305 | 5-7:30 pm
Promoting Cycling and Walking for Sustainable Cities, Lessons from Europe and North America
Sponsored by IURD
Friday, November 16, 2012
112 Wurster Hall, UC Berkeley
Speaker: John Pucher, professor in the School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University in New Jersey
Professor Pucher argues that cycling and walking are the most environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable of all transport modes. He then provides an international overview of cycling levels and trends among many different countries in the developed world, noting that even technologically advanced countries with high per capita income and high levels of car ownership can have high levels of walking and cycling and much lower levels of car use than typical in the USA, Canada, and Australia.
Transport- Talk, Trends & Thinking in Urban India
Brownbag lunch seminar
Sponsored by IURD
Wednesday, October 3, 2012 12-1pm
316D Wurster Hall, UC Berkeley
Presented by Madhav Pai, Director of EMBARQ India and Civil Engineer from Mumbai
As India urbanizes - cities are making big decisions about how they build their transport. These decisions will have far reaching consequences and shape Indian cities of the future. Madhav will give a ringside view of these developments – talking about the successes, challenges, possibilities and contradictions.
New Research Agendas for Low Carbon Cities
Sponsored by IURD and the Energy and Resources Group
Wednesday, September 12, 2012 2-3pm
305 Wurster Hall, UC Berkeley
Presented by Dr. Steffen Lehmann, Chair and Professor of Sustainable Design in the School of Art, Architecture & Design and Director of the Research Centre for Sustainable Design and Behaviour (sd+b Centre) at the University of South Australia, in Adelaide, Australia.
Dr. Lehmann will explore the notion of the ‘zero waste city’,which extends the concept of the sustainable city to include optimising all urban material flows.
For more information see: www.slab.com.au and www.unisa.edu.au/sustainable-design
Urban Housing Economy & Transit
Confronting a Crisis: A Three-Part Conference Series on Sustainability
This conference series highlights state-of-the-art initiatives to plan the sustainable cities of the future. Three conferences bring together leading practitioners, top academics, and high-ranking state and federal government officials to discuss the barriers to implementing energy efficiency in the residential sector, more sustainable economic development and fiscal practices, and transportation innovations that will reduce its environmental footprint. The conferences are open to the public and will culminate in the production of policy briefs that summarize the discussions and provide action steps to policymakers.
Now Online Policy Notes from Conference 2 Sustainable Economic Development Strategies in Lean Fiscal Times
POLICY NOTE 1-2012: Community Development in Lean Fiscal Times
by Tony LoPresti
POLICY NOTE 2-2012: Real Estate Development in a Post-Redevelopment World
by Alea Gage
POLICY NOTE 3-2012: Sustainable Economic Development through Advanced Manufacturing Policy
by Chris Schildt
(more to come in coming weeks)
Podcasts, Slides and Summary Report from the Seminar Series: Infilling California Tools and Strategies for Infill Development
Sponsored by the Center for a Sustainable California and IURD, and co-sponsored by the Urban Land Institute of San Francisco, the Association of Bay Area Governments, the California Infill Builders Association, and the Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment at BerkeleyLaw.
Plan-it sustainably: The challenge of community ecological-economic sustainable development
Presented by Scott T. Edmondson, AICP, and Katja Irvin, AICP
Coverage of Sustainable Economic Development Strategies in Lean Fiscal Times, the second in the three-part series, Urban Housing Economy and Transit. In February 2012 Northern News, publication of the Northern Section of the California Chapter of the APA.
Urban modeling for enhancing master plan making: SIMPLAN for Ahmedabad, India
Visiting Scholars Roundtable
Friday, June 8, 2012 , Noon-1pm
316D Wurster Hall, UC Berkeley
Presented by Dr. Bhargav Adhvaryu, Professor in Infrastructure Engineering & Management, CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India, Fulbright Visiting Professor at the UCLA Department of Urban Planning
Contact: Erick Guerra, 510-423-1444 eguerra@berkeley.edu
Visiting Scholars Reception
Tuesday, May 1, 2012, 4-5:30 PM
316D Wurster Hall, UC Berkeley
*Snacks and refreshments will be served. Please feel free bring a dish to share as well.
See a Video of the Karen Chapple Backyard Cottage
Karen Chapple is a city planning professor so she knows all about the benefits of backyard cottages as urban infill and for adding density to sprawling neighborhoods, but when she took out a loan to build her own “accessory dwelling unit” (AKA secondary dwelling unit, granny flat, in-law unit), she did it for what she calls selfish reasons. “This is how can I build a space that will accommodate my friends that visit, or my caretakers for my child, or my extended family, and also be able to raise rent money when my income is low."
Education leaders call for modernization..."We can't afford to not be strategic," said Jeff Vincent, the deputy director of UC Berkeley's Center for Cities & Schools and lead author of the report, California's K-12 Educational Infrastructure Investments. "At the state level, the funds for contributing to K-12 facilities are at their end."—SF Chronicle
Plan-it sustainably: The challenge of community ecological-economic sustainable development By Scott T. Edmondson, AICP, and Katja Irvin, AICP. Coverage of Sustainable Economic Development Strategies in Lean Fiscal Times, the second in the three-part series, Urban Housing Economy and Transit. In February 2012 Northern News, publication of the Northern Section of the California Chapter of the APA.
IURD's Jason Corburn on the $300 'Slum' House at the Berkeley Blog.
IURD Working Papers
Water, Neighborhoods and Urban Design: Micro-Utilities and the Fifth Infrastructure by V. Elmer and H. Fraker
Socioeconomic Segregation in Hong Kong: Spatial and Ordinal Measures in a High-Density and Highly Unequal City by Paavo Monkkonen and Xiaohu Zhang
Infilling California: Tools and Strategies
April 7- May 6, 2011
A Five-Part Evening Seminar-Lecture Series
May 2011 Diablo Magazine:
IURD Associate Director Karen Chapple Winner of One of the 2011 Eco Awards "The Delaware House Wins for: Providing eco-chic housing, without building up or sprawling out."
Second Units Can Add Density
IURD Associate Director Karen Chapple unveils a scalable path toward "invisible" density—in her own backyard.
Urban Housing Economy & Transit
Confronting a Crisis: A Conference Series on Sustainability
This conference series highlights state-of-the-art initiatives to plan the sustainable cities of the future. Three conferences bring together leading practitioners, top academics, and high-ranking state and federal government officials to discuss the barriers to implementing energy efficiency in the residential sector, more sustainable economic development and fiscal practices, and transportation innovations that will reduce its environmental footprint. The conferences are open to the public and will culminate in the production of policy briefs that summarize the discussions and provide action steps to policymakers.
Conference 2. Sustainable Economic Development Strategies in Lean Fiscal Times: Thursday, November 17, 2011
Community, Sustainability, and Public Space: Urban Design after the Arab Spring
Monday, November 7
112 Wurster Hall, UC Berkeley
Presented by Amir Gohar, IURD Visiting Scholar
See related IURD report: Connecting Cairo to the Nile: Renewing Life and Heritage on the River (2011) WP-2011-06 (and related Policy Brief)
Pre-lecture reception where research team leader and LAEP Department Chair, Professor G. Mathias Kondolf, will introduce Amir Gohar and the Cairo research team.
Reception: 5 pm in the 1st floor Lobby of Wurster
Lecture: 6:30 pm in 112 Wurster Hall
"Big Ideas for Job Creation" Conference
Saturday, June 16, 2012, 9am - 5pm
Seaborg Room of the UC Berkeley Faculty Club
Sponsored by the Institute for Research on Labor & Employment, IURD, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
After holding a national contest for "big ideas" about what cities and states can do to create jobs, we identified 12 big ideas, which will be presented at the conference.
Space is limited. Register here. Admission is free. Lunch will be served.
Contact: Marie Maniscalco, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, UC Berkeley. 530-219-9580 mmaniscalco@berkeley.edu.
Job Creation Colloquia
All events are located at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE), 2521 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA.
Pleased R.S.V.P. to Myra Armstrong, zulu2@berkeley.edu. For more details, check the IRLE events page.
Realizing the Vision of a High-Speed Rail System in California: Connecting People While Fostering Prosperity, Smart Growth and Sustainability
May 2-3, 2011
Clark Kerr Conference Center , UC Berkeley
Co-sponsored by UC Berkeley's Center for Environmental Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy and IURD
"Chicago and Its Skyway: the Cintra-Macquarie Lease in Historical Perspective"
Wednesday, May 4, 2011, 12 to 1:30 p.m.
Room 305, Wurster Hall, UC Berkeley campus
Co-sponsored by IURD and the University of California Transportation Center
Presented by Louise Nelson Dyble, PhD
"What's Changing for the Transport Sector in Urban India?"
IURD Lecture
Thursday, April 21, 2011, 4-5 pm
305 Wurster Hall, UC Berkeley
Presented by Sarath Guttikunda, Researcher, UrbanEmissions.Info in New Delhi, India
April 14: Backyard Cottages Sprout Like Mushrooms
...Karen Chapple, a city planning professor at the University of California, Berkeley, says she was intrigued by the burgeoning trend and built her own backyard cottage this year — as a class project, no less — to see the feasibility of backyard cottages as affordable housing options in the Bay Area.
"Carbonless footprints: Promoting health and climate stabilization through active transportation"
Monday, April 18, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
Read related paper.
Presented by Lawrence D. Frank, Ph.D., AICP, CIP, ASLA Bombardier Chair, University of British Columbia
Dr. Frank is the Bombardier Chairholder in Sustainable Transportation at the University of British Columbia, Senior Non-resident Fellow of the Brookings Institution, and President of Urban Design 4 Health, Inc. He specializes in the interaction between land use, travel behavior, air quality; and health and the fuel consumption and climate change impacts of urban form policies. He has been studying the effects of neighborhood walkability on travel patterns and sustainability for 20 years and has led over $18 million in funded research and published over 100 peer reviewed articles and reports on these topics. Dr. Frank works directly with local governments to help translate results from research into practice based tools that provide direct feedback on the health and environmental impacts of alternative transportation and land development proposals.
Sponsored by: School of Public Health; College of Environmental Design; IURD; University of California Transportation Center; and the Safe Transportation Research and Education Center (SafeTREC).
"Inclusionary Housing and Land Value Recapture: A Comparative Perspective "
Lecture sponsored by IURD
Wednesday, March 30, 4 - 5:30 pm
Presented by Nico Calavita
Nico Calavita is a Professor Emeritus from San Diego State University and co-editor (with Alan Mallach) of Inclusionary Housing in International Perspective: Affordable Housing, Social Inclusion, and Land Value Recapture (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2010).
IURD Associate Director Karen Chapple on the Berkeley Blog, "Redevelopment is dead, long live revitalization!"
Brown's plan could cut into Oakland's redevelopment projects ...It remains to be seen whether or to what extent Brown will carry through on his threat to end, or at the very least reform, redevelopment in the state..... MALO HUTSON, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF CITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING AT UC BERKELEY, said the governor's proposal is prompting discussions and bargaining that will likely result in more oversight and transparency for redevelopment. ... KAREN CHAPPLE, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF CITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING AT UC BERKELEY, sympathizes with urban cities that are left with few spending options once the bulk of their general fund revenues are used for public safety or other commitments. But she thinks they shouldn't always fall back on redevelopment, which more often than not helps big developers....(Oakland Tribune)
Cash to fight blight paying city salaries in California...Karen Chapple, a UC Berkeley professor of city planning, has described raiding redevelopment money as a "bad habit," akin to tapping "a slush fund." But she also noted that it is easy to understand why cities have turned to it. "This is a tool cities use to fill the gap when they are desperate," Chapple said....(Los Angeles Times)
"Approaches to professionalism in the face of mismanagement or corruption in developing countries"
IURD Lecture
Friday, March 18, 2011, 1-2 pm
Room 305, Wurster Hall, UC Berkeley campus
Presented by Jonathan Richmond
UCTC Student Conference
February 24-25, 2011
Job Creation Colloquia
All events are located at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE), 2521 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA. Pleased R.S.V.P. to Myra Armstrong, zulu2@berkeley.edu.
For more details, check the IRLE events page.
"Designing, Simulating and Visualizing Sustainable Communities"
February 11, 2011
1065 Kemper Hall University of California, Davis
Presented by Paul Waddell, Professor, College of Environmental Design, IURD
This talk will address an evolving research agenda on the development of planning support for metropolitan and city planning efforts to link land use, transportation and environmental visioning and planning. SB 375 mandates land use changes to reduce VMT and greenhouse gas emissions, but the processes to implement changes in land use and transportation plans to achieve these goals has not yet caught up to the challenge at hand. The seminar will present work in progress to address several dimensions of this agenda through coordinated land use and transportation modeling, and through the development of information technology to support public engagement and visualization of alternative scenarios and plans. A new project with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission to support the Sustainable Communities Strategies outreach process will provide a specific case to ground the discussion.
IURD Research in the News:
Secondary Dwelling Units Can Add Density (January 8)
HUD Launches One-Stop Web site on Economic and Housing Market Data
Oakland Innovator Named to White House Council Maurice Lim Miller joins a select group tasked with finding community-developed solutions to poverty. (Berkeleyside)
Immigrants Make Paths to Suburbia, Not Cities Following jobs to rural and suburban areas, in industries like construction and the food business, immigrant populations rose more than 60 percent in places where immigrants made up fewer than 5 percent of the population in 2000. In areas that had been home to the most immigrants, the foreign-born population was flat over that period. (New York Times)
Mapping America Block by Block New York Times interactive map of the Census Bureau's American Community Survey
Quality Schools and Complete Communities: Aligning Public Education and Bay Area Regional Growth
City of Palo Alto Council Chambers Thursday - November 18, 2010
4:00 - 6:00 pm
Presented by Jeff Vincent, Deput Director, Center for Cities and Schools
Fall 2010 Visiting Scholars Roundtable
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Following Landscape Features Both Locally and Naturally
Presented by Zhong Xing, Professor, Chongqing University
Artificially geometric landscapes have dominated greenscapes throughout cities, causing needless suffering in costly maintenance and decreased environmental quality. Looking at the green network and general land use plan for the downtown area of TongBai in China, Xing looks to understand the potential value of natural landscapes in systematically handling a wide range of issues associated with greenscape physical form. He looks to understand ways to incorporate "natural green frameworks", consisting of both natural and planned green spaces, into existing urban form.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Time Use in Travel to School in America's Children
Presented by Pablo Montero Souto, PhD Student, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain
This presentation examines the amount of time used by high school students in education-related travel and explores the role of place in the social and territorial stratification between boys and girls, youngest and older, whites and blacks, native and non-native, and poorer and richer from different locations. The work in progress analyzes data collected from 2003 to 2009 American Time Use Survey (ATUS).
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Post-Industrial Residential Development: an investigation into the structuring of neighborhood
Presented by Lucas Griffith, Fellow of Urban Design and Development, Department of Industrial Economics, Risk Management and Planning
With the emigration of industry to the greater international market post-industrial cities have revised economic development strategies to maintain relevance in a global market. The re-creation of city image as a sustainable place, culturally, economically and ecologically, represents the predominant vision for contemporary cities in the post-industrial era. And while much has been written about the re-imaginations of industrial lands as cultural districts and artistic incubators, as commercial parks and consumptive mall-scapes, or as reclaimed re-naturalized landscapes the research on post-industrial neighborhoods as a socio-spatial phenomenon remains limited. It is in this light that neighborhood deserves a fresh analysis.
