The January 17, 1994 Northridge Earthquake damaged four major freeways in the Los Angeles area, creating the prospect of gridlock in the nation's prototypical automobile city. This paper examines the effect of the transportation damage on business activity. Using survey responses from 559 firms...

This paper examines the link between highways and employment growth within two metropolitan areas. Most studies of the land use impacts of transportation focus on residential location. yet in decentralized urban areas, the relationship between the highway network and intrametropolitan employment...

This paper provides preliminary evidence that the placement of buildings influences the concentration of fine particulates by altering wind flow. The authors collected measurements of fine particulate concentration, wind speed, wind direction, and traffic levels around five Southern California...

Local governments seem to be continually strapped for funds. While the role of their planners in generating revenue is often discussed, it is also rarely investigated in any detail. We address this research gap by considering the fiscal nature of land use policy vis-a-vis a specific planning...

While transit-oriented development (TOD) has become an increasingly popular planning idea, very few studies have examined how localities plan for and implement transit-oriented projects. This paper helps fill that gap by studying the TOD implementation process near stations on the oldest of the...

Does a person’s environment influence their physical activity? Intuition, theory, and preliminary evidence all suggest that there is an association between environment and physical activity, but questions of causality and magnitude remain poorly answered, in large part due to data...

Walking or bicycling to school could contribute to children’s daily physical activity, but physical environment changes are often needed to improve the safety and convenience of walking and cycling routes. The California Safe Routes to School (SR2S) legislation provided competitive funds...

Safe Routes to School (SR2S) programs have generated tremendous interest among U.S. policymakers, planners, and public health officials in recent years. These programs target the walk to school as an essential point of intervention to improve pedestrian safety and increase physical activity...