New UCLA Center to Study Regional Urban Problems

Reflecting a desire to play a more visible role in the region’s policy-making arena, UCLA today announced the creation of a center to focus on many of the urban problems--from transportation to land use--facing local governments in Southern California.

A UCLA official said that the new Center for Regional Policy Studies will coordinate independent study on urban issues now under way at UCLA and provide a resource for community leaders who are trying to find new strategies for solving social and environmental problems.

“We feel the university should have an expanded role in helping to frame the public debates which are central to the process of regional renewal,” said Richard Weinstein, dean of UCLA’s Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning, where the center will be based.

Weinstein said a goal of the center is to solve “the policy gridlock”--the inability of the region’s many governments to work together. Pursuit of that goal could put the center in the thick of a growing debate about the effectiveness of local government as it is now constituted.

Weinstein does not shy away from expressing his skepticism of the current local government system.

“With 162 separate political jurisdictions (in the five-county region around Los Angeles), we have the most balkanized political geography in the country, if not the world,” he said. “At the same time, we confront issues like air pollution, traffic congestion, jobs and housing that do not respect the artificial political boundaries that we have created over the years.”

Poverty, Land Use

Weinstein said the center also will focus on regional poverty, on “the link between transportation, land use and environmental degradation” and on the structure of the region’s economy.

The center is being created with a $5-million endowment from UCLA alumni and home builders Ralph and Goldy Lewis. Weinstein said the facility, to be called the Lewis Center, will draw on more than 80 faculty members and 115 departments and professional schools at UCLA. A director for the center has yet to be chosen.

With the center, UCLA becomes one of 95 universities throughout the country, including Cal State Long Beach, to establish a local research institute for urban policy studies.