Public Scholarship
Metropolitan Futures Lecture Series
2009-2010 Lectures
The Metropolitan Futures lecture series explores the nexus between demographic change and contemporary issues in urban planning and policy. The lecture series is designed to facilitate dialogue and to enhance public awareness and civic engagement around these important issues.
Fall Quarter Lecture:
"Metropolitan Futures: Imagining California Tomorrow"
Featured Speaker:
- Joseph Dunn, Chief Executive Officer, California Medical Association, and Former California State Senator
When: November 2, 2009
Where: University Club, 801 E. Peltason
Time: 6:00 pm-7:00 pm (Pre-Lecture Reception) || 7:00 pm-8:30pm (Lecture and Discussion)
Lecture Description:
How are our communities and the larger regional and global context changing? What are the implications for transportation, business location, and residential choice? How will changes in these and related areas affect access to opportunity (jobs, housing, and education) and quality of life. Former State Senator and California Medical Association CEO Joe Dunn will explore and discuss how these and related issues can provide an improved understanding of communities, and produce inventive, visionary planning strategies and processes to ensure a thriving future for the golden state and its metropolitan regions.
Co-Sponsors: Department of Planning, Policy and Design, Office of Government and Community Relations, and School of Social Ecology
Speaker Bio:
As the California Medical Association’s CEO since 2006, Joe Dunn has rebuilt the staff infrastructure of CMA and focused on why no doctor should “go it alone” without CMA. The aggressive advocacy style started with bringing on new key staff leaders and with the creation an environment where CMA Centers work cohesively, all under one roof.
Frequently, Mr. Dunn speaks to medical students, residents and to County Medical Societies. He highlights that the challenges in medicine do not lie within medicine; they lie in law, politics and economics. Mr. Dunn talks about these challenges to show doctors that they must stand together to be better in the political arena. CMAs Center for Government Relations has remained a powerhouse in Sacramento politics rising to help physicians meet the demands of practicing medicine.
CMA has been a key player on advocating for health reform, both in Washington and Sacramento. Mr. Dunn has successfully refocused CMAs mission on the multi-pronged approach of legislative, legal and economic advocacy. Over the last three years there have been several victories one each of these fronts:
- Legislative - CMA successfully won passage of a bill that directs $1 million to the Steven M. Thompson Loan Repayment Program, which provides student loan relief to medical students who agree to practice in underserved communities.
- Legal - When the state legislature cut Medi-Cal rates 10% in the face of a $15 billion budget shortfall, the CMA team filed a lawsuit, winning a federal court order against the cuts.
- Economic - When Medicare rates were scheduled to be cut 15%, CMA and our county partners took action, ensuring through coordinated grassroots advocacy that California’s congressional delegation supported physicians and their senior patients, not health plans.
Mr. Dunn led California's investigation into the state energy crisis and uncovered how Enron and other energy pirates were gaming the market. He helped unearth the infamous Enron memo that described in detail how the state was plundered and which led to civil penalties and criminal indictments of rogue energy traders. Mr. Dunn was dubbed the "Man Who Cracked Enron" by California Lawyer Magazine.
Prior to his election to the Legislature, Mr. Dunn played a major role in litigation to stop tobacco companies from targeting youth in their advertising campaigns. He fought industrial polluters who exposed neighborhoods to toxic chemicals and worked to give patients better access to quality health care.
Mr. Dunn graduated with honors and Bachelor’s degree from the College of St. Thomas. He earned a Juris Doctorate degree with honors from the University of Minnesota School of Law in 1983.
Winter Quarter Lecture:
"Keeping Orange County Moving: The Promise and Challenge of Transit Oriented Development"
Featured Speaker:
- Will Kempton, Chief Executive Officer, Orange County Transit Authority
Powerpoint of Lecture:
- Transit Oriented Development [ TOD-at-UCI.pptx - 3.38 MB ]
When: February 10, 2010
Where: Place Student Union, Pacific Ballroom C
Parking: $6-$8 at the Student Center Parking Structure (SCPS) Click here for a map | Click here for information about visitor permits
Time: 6:00 pm-7:00 pm (Pre-Lecture Reception) || 7:00 pm-8:30pm (Lecture and Discussion)
Lecture Description:
Transit oriented development has been hailed by many as a strategy that will help California and its metropolitan regions and municipalities improve the environment and curtail climate change.
By producing transit friendly options that include a housing and job mix that considers the unique demographic needs of localities, transit oriented development could hold some promise for addressing concerns about a type of “smart growth” that is ecologically friendly, economically viable, and socially equitable.
How much about transit oriented development is myth versus fact and what might it take to help make the “transit” in transit oriented development a success? These and other key questions will be explored by Mr. Kempton in his lecture on this critically important topic.
Speaker Bio:
Will Kempton is chief executive officer of the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA), a countywide transportation agency with 1,900 employees and an annual budget of $1.2 billion. Under the direction of a 17-voting member Board of Directors, he is responsible for planning, financing and coordinating Orange County's freeway, street and rail development as well as managing bus services, commuter-rail services, paratransit van service for people with disabilities and a host of other transportation programs. He has served in the position since August 2009.
Prior to joining OCTA, Kempton served as the director of California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), overseeing an annual operating budget of more than $13.8 billion with $10 billion worth of transportation improvements under construction and 22,000 employees. Appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in November 2004, Kempton also was responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of California’s state transportation system, including more than 50,000 lane miles of state highways stretching from Mexico to Oregon and from the Pacific Ocean to Nevada and Arizona.
Kempton, 62, began his career in transportation with Caltrans in 1973. He held management positions in the area of finance and the director’s office prior to being appointed as assistant director in charge of legislative and congressional affairs.
In 1985, Kempton was named executive director of the Santa Clara County Traffic Authority, the state’s first local sales tax program. The program he managed is widely viewed as one of the most successful in the state, resulting in the delivery of nearly $1 billion in highway improvements in less than 10 years. During his assignment as director of the Santa Clara County effort, Kempton mobilized California’s sales-tax programs into an effective coalition of “self-help” counties. Selected by his peers to head this group, Kempton marshaled a coaliton of agencies and successfully lobbied Caltrans and the state Legislature to create a state-matching program for locally funded projects. To date, the partnership program has delivered more than $2 billion in matching funds for local transportation projects. This results-oriented approach – innovation to meet favorable objectives and consensus-building among diverse partners – characterizes Kempton’s leadership style.
Over the course of his career, Kempton has cultivated extensive contacts throughout the transportation community at all levels of public service. These contacts include local, regional and state administrators, as well as many key members of the state Legislature and the U.S. Congress. Kempton has been able to utilize these contacts to accomplish many policy and legislative objectives.
In January 2003, Kempton joined the City of Folsom as assistant city manager for community services. He was charged with overseeing the operations of the city’s Community Development, Neighborhood Services, Parks and Recreation, Utilities, and Public Works departments. Prior to his city appointment, he served as a City Parks and Recreation Commissioner for eight years.
Kempton resides in Orange County with his wife, Beverley. They have two adult children, Mark and Christina.
Spring Quarter Lecture:
"Water Policy and Environmental Justice in Southern California"
Featured Speaker:
- David Feldman, Chair, Department of Planning, Poliicy and Design
When: April 21, 2010
Where: Place University Club Dining Room
Time: 6:00 pm-7:00 pm (Pre-Lecture Reception) || 7:00 pm-8:30pm (Lecture and Discussion)
Lecture Description:
California has a long history of contentious, often divisive water politics. In Southern California, questions pertaining to environmental equity usually revolve around the impacts of diverting water from other parts of the state (and larger region) to support agriculture and the needs of our ever-expanding metropolitan areas.
Less well-known is that our unyielding thirst is becoming exacerbated by growing population, urbanization, pollution, and climate change.
These pressures have led policy-makers and utilities to implement a variety of innovative measures in response, including demand side approaches (e.g., metering, variable rate structures, other economic incentives), mandatory conservation measures, and greater reliance on wastewater re-use and recycling to augment potable and non-potable uses. While these approaches are all technically feasible, each faces public acceptability challenges that revolve around issues of equity and fairness. This talk examines these issues by focusing on the following questions: 1) How are certain groups disproportionately burdened and/or placed at risk (whether real or perceived) from adoption of these measures? 2) are we doing all we can to ensure that the process by which decisions over adopting and implementing such measures is fair and equitable? And, 3) how can we ensure that inequities from adopting such measures are alleviated, mitigated, and/or compensated?
Speaker Bio:
David Lewis Feldman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Planning, Policy and Design at UC Irvine. From 1993-2007, he was chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Tennessee, and served on the Research Staff of Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 1988-1993.
He is the author of Water Policy for Sustainable Development (Johns Hopkins, 2007), Water Resources Management: In Search of an Environmental Ethic (Johns Hopkins, 1995), The Energy Crisis: Unresolved Issues and Enduring Legacies (Johns Hopkins, 1996), Global Climate Change and Public Policy (Nelson-Hall, 1994) and over 60 articles and book chapters. He served as editor of The Review of Policy Research, a journal of the Policy Studies Organization (1998-2003) and symposium coordinator of Policy Studies Journal (1996-2001).
From 2006-2007, he served as the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation’s Scholar-in-Residence, President of the Tennessee chapter of the American Water Resources Association (2005); helped draft two water protection laws for Tennessee (2000, 2002); and testified before Congress on water resources development policy (2002). In 2008 he was convening lead author for the U.S. Climate Change Science program’s report: Decision-Support Experiments and Evaluations using Seasonal to Inter¬-annual Forecasts and Observational Data: A Focus on Water Resources – which examined the barriers to use of climate change information by water resource decision-makers.