Elizabeth Deakin, Professor Emerita of City and Regional Planning and Urban Design, University of California, Berkeley

This presentation is sponsored by ITS-Davis’ partnership with the Pacific Southwest Region University Transportation Center.

Title

Transportation's Linkages to the Affordable Housing Problem

Time

1:40pm - 3:00pm

Location

1605 Tilia, Room 1103, West Village

Abstract

This seminar will examine the interrelationships between transportation and affordable housing in the United States, with a special focus on California. Housing costs are burdensome for over half of the renters in the US and a quarter of its homeowners. The problems are especially acute in California and in the Northeast (Boston to Washington), and they fall most heavily on lower income groups. Along with cost burdens come problems of overcrowding and substandard housing quality. Factors affecting housing affordability range from the housing products being sought and produced in private markets to government policies and regulations that have under-invested in publicly assisted housing and restricted the types and densities of housing that can be built. Transportation has long been used as a tool to open up new areas for housing development, but as the full costs of mobility have been more fully recognized, strategies that emphasize accessibility have increasingly been promoted. The seminar will discuss both causes and potential cures for this pressing public policy problem.

Biographical Sketch

Elizabeth Deakin is Professor Emerita of City and Regional Planning and Urban Design at UC Berkeley, where she also is an affiliated faculty member of the Energy and Resources Group. She previously was Director of the UC Transportation Center (1999-2008) and co-director of the Global Metropolitan Studies Center (2004-2009). She served as vice-chair and then chair of the UC Berkeley Academic Senate (2013-2015) and represented UC Berkeley on several committees of the UC Systemwide Academic Council.

Deakin’s teaching at Berkeley has been in the areas of transportation planning and policy and land use and environmental planning. She taught the transportation studio for many years, working with the students to develop products that were useful to local clients and in several cases were summarized and published as journal articles. She also has been an active faculty advisor, particularly for masters and PhD student.

Deakin’s research focuses on transportation and land use policy, the environmental impacts of transportation, and equity in transportation. She has published over 300 journal articles, conference papers, book chapters, and research reports on such topics as the social and For more information please contact the Seminar Coordinator at (530) 752-0247ITS-Davis welcomes members of the campus community and visitors from the region to attend this seminar series.Students may enroll for 1 unit of credit in TTP-281-001environmental impacts of transportation, transportation pricing strategies, and development exactions and impact fees. In the 1990s she was one of the creators of several plans for transit-oriented development that won prizes from the American Planning Association (APA) and the American Institute of Architects (AIA). She has carried out research projects on urban infrastructure finance and traffic management strategies in Australia, China and Latin America as well as in the US. In 2012, she served as the editor for the transportation chapter of the International Panel on Climate Change Working Group III- report (Mitigation of Climate Change). She also helped developed international green bonds standards for transit projects. Since her retirement, in addition to continuing to carry our research projects and mentor students, she has co-edited a book on international experiences with high speed rail and edited a book on the integration of transportation, land use, and environmental planning. She currently is advising the California Strategic Growth Council and the California Legislature on factors affecting the efficacy of plans for reducing greenhouse gases.

Deakin has been appointed to a number of government posts including city and county commissions and state advisory boards in California. She has testified on transportation legislation before the US Senate Public Works Committee, the House Technology and Infrastructure Committee, and the House Science Committee. She has taught courses in Australia, Argentina, China, France, Germany, Mexico, and Ecuador and has served as an adviser to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the European Council of Ministers of Transport, and MISTRA (the Swedish sustainable development foundation). She has served on review boards for a number of universities in the US and the EU, and in Hong Kong.

She was recognized for her contributions to the field of planning as the recipient of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning’s biennial Distinguished Educator Award. Her contributions to transportation planning and policy were recognized by the UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies through its Distinguished Legacy Award.

Deakin holds degrees in political science and transportation systems analysis from MIT (where she also completed minors in math and psychology) and a law degree from Boston College Law School, where she recently competed a term on the Dean’s Council.