Urban Growth Seminars at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy University of Southern California

How will California, the 6th largest economy in the world, ensure 21st century mobility for a population that will grow to 50 million people by the year 2050, and address ambitious state legislation to lower greenhouse gas emissions?

Speaker:
Tony Mendoza
Deputy Director of Planning and Integration
California High-Speed Rail Authority

Discussant:
Woodie Tescher
Principal, Los Angeles, PlaceWorks

Tony Mendoza, Deputy Director of Planning and Integration for the California High-Speed Rail Authority, provides insight into one of the largest infrastructure projects underway in the United States – the California High-Speed Rail Program.

California’s high-speed rail will connect the mega-regions of the state, contribute to economic development and a cleaner environment, create jobs and preserve agricultural and protected lands. By 2029, the system will run from San Francisco to the Los Angeles basin in under three hours at speeds capable of over 200 miles per hour. The system will eventually extend to Sacramento and San Diego, totaling 800 miles with up to 24 stations.

Approximately $3 Billion worth of construction is now underway in several sites across approximately 119 miles from Madera to North of Bakersfield in the Central Valley. Planning, engineering and environmental analyses is currently underway in northern and southern California. Additionally, the Authority is supporting station area planning in proposed station cities throughout the state.

Discussant for this seminar is Woodie Tescher of PlaceWorks. Woodie has 30+ years’ experience in policy planning, urban design, sustainability and public health, community outreach and engagement. He is also the recipient of numerous leadership and project awards from professional peers.

Where do Millennials come from, where are they going, and how long will they last? The great surge of Millennials that inundated LA in the last decade has been a tremendous boom. Growing numbers of young adults have revitalized neglected areas and invigorated the restaurant, food truck, and bar sector of the urban economy. But they have also flooded the rental housing market and pushed out working class Angelenos. These Millennials also comprise the cutting-­‐edge workforce for the future and are helping to invigorate a new economy in LA. As their occupational careers evolve, what will follow for their residential attainments?

Recent research is illuminating the dynamic trajectories of Millennial change. Adult careers were stunted by the Great Recession, which has finally begun to loosen its grip. Meanwhile all the individual Millennials have grown a decade older since 2006. What is next for those who are now entering their 30s, and what does it mean for their changing demands on the housing market?

Speaker:
Dowell Myers
Professor, USC Price
Director, Population Dynamics Research Group

Discussant:
Ann Owens
Assistant Professor of Sociology and Spatial Sciences
USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Dowell Myers presents key findings from his latest research, some newly published in Cityscape, or Housing Policy Debate, and others held in limbo awaiting approval by sponsors or regulatory bodies. Myers is a professor of policy, planning, and demography in the USC Price School.

Discussant for this seminar is Ann Owens, assistant professor of sociology at USC, who is a highly regarded scholar of social inequality, with a focus on urban neighborhoods, housing, education, and geographic and social mobility.

Highlights from Greg Morrow's presentation at the USC Urban Growth Seminar Series. Watch the full version here: https://youtu.be/-NfzlAwoD68

The acute shortage of housing in Los Angeles was decades in the making, as will be shown by a review of community downzoning and the well-­‐intentioned citizen efforts to preserve old neighborhood advantages. A search for housing solutions in our great city on the coast, now grown much larger, requires creative thinking. One approach being considered is a grand strategy of high-­‐density building on the avenues, directing growth there while preserving the character of single-­‐family neighborhoods. This also has the advantage of creating more shops/restaurants/amenities walkable to the neighborhoods in behind these mixed-­‐use boulevards. Greg Morrow is a longtime scholar of Los Angeles and a planner/architect with deep respect for community process and the cultural value of preservation. Morrow offers practical design solutions to share with Los Angeles that borrow from his international experience. Is this enough? Responding to Morrow’s presentation with additional ideas will be Matthew Glesne, housing planner for the City of Los Angeles.

Speaker:
Greg Morrow
Parker Professor in Metropolitan Growth + Change
University of Calgary

Featuring:
Matthew Glesne
Housing Planner, City of Los Angeles

Greg Morrow is the Parker Professor in Metropolitan Growth + Change at the University of Calgary, a joint appointment in the Haskayne School of Business and Faculty of Environmental Design, where he teaches real estate development, urban design studios, and planning history/theory. He is also a Commissioner on the Calgary Planning Commission. He received his PhD in urban planning from UCLA, two masters (urban design and city planning) from MIT, and architecture and undergraduate degrees from McGill University

In his lecture, Mr. Storper discusses his new book, “The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies: Lessons from San Francisco and Los Angeles.” This book challenges many conventional notions about economic development. The authors argue that it is essential to understand the interactions of three major components—economic specialization, human capital formation, and institutional factors—to determine how well a regional economy will cope with new opportunities and challenges. They argue that the economic development of metropolitan regions hinges on previously under-explored capacities for organizational change in firms, networks of people, and networks of leaders. By studying San Francisco and Los Angeles in unprecedented levels of depth, this book extracts lessons for the field of economic development studies and urban regions around the world.

Speaker:
Michael Storper
Director of Global Public Affairs, UCLA Luskin
Professor of Urban Planning, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs

Discussant:
Elizabeth Currid-Halkett
Professor, USC Price
James Irvine Chair in Urban and Regional Planning

Michael Storper (PhD, Economic Geography, University of California, Berkeley) is an economic geographer who has spent his career at UCLA, London School of Economics, and Sciences Po/Paris. Prior to joining UCLA, he was Academic Director of the Master of Public Affairs, as well as researcher at the Center for Organizational Sociology at Sciences Po in Paris. He holds an appointment as Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics in every fall term. Storper is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed academic articles and 12 books. A number of his articles are among the most highly-­cited in the journals in which they have been published. He received a "Doctorate Honoris Causa" from the University of Utrecht in 2008, and a Prime d’Excellence Scientifique in 2010. He sits on the editorial board of numerous scientific journals, including the Journal of Regional Science, Industrial and Corporate Change, The Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Studies in Comparative International Development, and Economic Geography. Storper is a frequent contributor to regional and urban policymaking for the European Union, the French government, and other international agencies. He holds dual French-­‐ American citizenship and is a fluent speaker of English, French and Portuguese.

The presentation provides an overview of Southern California water management issues related to urban water supply reliability, infrastructure, policy, and finance. It describes some of the major pressures on the urban water sector in the Los Angeles Region as a result of ongoing drought conditions -- touching on political, financial, and legal challenges faced by urban water utilities. Some aspects of the presentation are based on prior work evaluating the landscape of community water systems in Los Angeles County.

Speaker:
Henry McCann
Research Associate, PPIC Water Policy Center

Henry McCann is a research associate at the PPIC Water Policy Center, where he works on data collection, analysis, mapping, and legislative tracking. He previously managed research projects within the Smart Water Systems initiative at the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, including volume 1 of Los Angeles County Community Water Systems: Atlas and Policy Guide. He holds a master's degree in urban and regional planning from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a BA from the University of Chicago, where he majored in geographical studies.

A Joint Production of the USC Urban Growth Seminar Series and the Schwarzenegger Institute for State & Global Policy.

Over eighty percent of the energy used worldwide today is from fossil fuels. That’s a changing paradigm though as renewable energy continues to gain momentum, and proven technologies such as solar power are rapidly growing more cost effective and efficient. Join Dr. Buttgenbach for this presentation as he explains why photovoltaic (PV) power plants are becoming mainstream, and what economic and technological factors are driving this growth. Topics discussed will include national and global renewable trends, irradiance patterns, solar pricing vis-­‐à-­‐vis natural gas, energy storage, distributed versus utility generation, and more. This session will appeal to renewable energy experts and novices alike.

Speaker:
Tom Buttgenbach, Ph.D.
President and Co-Founder, 8minutenergy Renewables

Discussants:
Detlof von Winterfeldt
Director, Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events
Professor, USC

Bonnie Reiss
Global Director, Schwarzenegger Institute for State & Global Policy

Tom Buttgenbach, Ph.D., is president and co­‐founder of 8minutenergy. He brings over 20 years of executive management experience in large-scale solar PV, land entitlement, project development, M&A, and capital structuring and origination. Tom has led transactions totaling over $5 billion involving over 15,000 acres of land development, and closed over 1,400MW in power purchase agreements.

Prior to co-­founding 8minutenergy, he was a successful entrepreneur and fund manager working on Wall Street with Alliance Bernstein, a $500 billion fund, leading the investment banking group of RCLCO, where he has transacted and developed large scale real estate development projects in the US and Mexico, and as a project manager for McKinsey & Company in Europe and the US. He earned his Ph.D. in physics and astronomy from the California Institute of Technology.