Equity and Social Justice

Lawrence Scarpa, FAIA, is joining us as the second JW&VL Visiting Professor of Practice in housing and urban design. Scarpa is principal of the award-winning firm Brooks + Scarpa and co-founder of housing nonprofit Livable Places, Inc. and the Affordable Housing Design Leadership Institute.

“How do perceptions of public space and land impact the disciplines of landscape architecture and environmental planning?” That is the central issue of Public Land, Public Space, Public Discourse, a semester-long lecture series presented by UC Berkeley’s Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning that aims to spark critical thinking about public realms. The series is anchored by two keynote events: a conversation between renowned landscape designers Walter Hood and Laurie Olin, paired with a screening of a new film portrait of Olin, and a lecture by acclaimed writer Rebecca Solnit.

The Department of City & Regional Planning is pleased to welcome AJ Kim, associate professor of city planning in the School of Public Affairs at San Diego State University, as the 2026 Robert S. Cornish Chair of Regional Planning. A specialist in housing and community economic development, participatory methods, environmental justice, and health equity, Kim will co-teach a spring-semester graduate environmental justice studio, Toward Equitable Health Outcomes in Low-income Communities of Color, with Margaretta Lin.

Terner Center Managing Director and Professor of City & Regional Planning Ben Metcalf provides a 101 of housing solutions in less than two minutes. Metcalf has dedicated his life to housing research and policy, motivated by a deep understanding of what’s at stake. “If we can’t start from that place of having a stable home, it’s very hard to do just about anything else,” he says.

A newly published Terner Center for Housing Innovation report highlights data and trends in home insurance costs for California homeowners. It finds that insurance challenges are most acute for some of the state’s vulnerable homeowners, including those living in mobile homes or high-risk locations.

The City of Berkeley greenlights a street redesign based on the work of Master of City Planning students’ plan, Oxford for All, continuing the College of Environmental Design’s tradition of making tangible impacts in our community.

For the past 10 years, research from CED’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation has helped lawmakers in cities and states across the country tackle the housing crisis and address homelessness.

Architectural history graduate student Luke Leuschner’s passion for modern architecture transcends academic research — it’s transforming the city of Berkeley’s understanding of its own built environment.

Meet Arcus Social Justice Corps Fellows — Rashida Chase (MRED+D 2024), Elizabeth Garcia (MLA 2027), and Sam Rodriguez (MArch + MCP 2026) — who are using design, planning, and research to impact communities.

Jason Corburn and the founder of the the Advance Peace gun violence prevention, DeVone Boggan, reveal how the community-based approach truly works and how it holds out genuine hope, and proven solutions, for those trying to end the plague of gun violence in U.S. cities.

Rachel Vineberg Jones (MArch 2019) and her husband Eric Jones have made a generous commitment to the College of Environmental Design to increase access to design education for North Bay high school students.

The College of Environmental Design is proud to announce that the Landscape Architecture Foundation has named Sariyah Benoit (MLA 2027) to the fourth cohort of its LAF Ignite scholarship and mentorship program.

Kristina Hill, Institute of Urban & Regional Design Research Director and associate professor, alongside five Bay Area environmental justice organizations launches the Bay Area Community Air Quality Map, a new tool designed to provide real-time estimates of air quality across the Bay Area for students and their families.

In this 101 in 101 video, Professor of Architecture Ronald Rael gives a primer on earthen architecture and explains why our future homes could be made using the soil beneath our feet. Soil is a material so compelling that it has long been a central pillar of Rael’s work and teaching.

For the first time, Berkeley teams came out on top in the 2025 Innovation in Affordable Housing Student Design and Planning Competition. The theme for this year’s competition, which received entries from schools across the country, was “designing for disasters.”

Designer, educator, researcher, and alum David Brown (MArch 1990) led this year’s competition, with the theme Lot, Garden, and Void. Student teams of five to six students had 58 hours to create their designs before presenting to a panel of jurors. Brown, professor of architecture and director of the College of Architecture at the University of Illinois – Chicago, is best known for The Available City, his ongoing initiative to document, explore, and reimagine vacant lots in Chicago as landscapes of collective action.

CED announces Just Climate Futures grants to support projects that investigate carbon-neutral timber construction, new methods of wildfire risk mitigation, converting commercial buildings into affordable housing, and the environmental impacts of AI.

Three alums will receive the Distinguished Alumni Award at CED’s 2025 Commencement ceremony on May 20 at the Greek Theatre. This year’s awardees are John Cary (MArch 2003), Lee Ehmke (MLA 1988), Sujata Srivastava (MCP 2000). The award honors alums who have exhibited outstanding public service, in its broadest sense, throughout their career.

The Terner Center is tracking more than 220 housing-related bills as legislators attempt to tackle California’s housing affordability crisis.

New research from Assistant Professor of City & Regional Planning Max Buchholz published in PNAS suggests that large cities, with their high cost of living and large populations, may create strong barriers to Black and Latinx workers accessing good jobs with high levels of upward mobility, as compared to white workers. This research is part of Buchholz’s ongoing investigations into the causes of urban inequality.