"Appealing for Local Control and Spatial Inequality" a Zube Lecture Presented by Alejandra Reyes

Please join the UMass Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning for "Appealing for Local Control and Spatial Inequality: Reforming Governance and Development Rationalities in Southern California," a Zube Lecture presented by Alejandra Reyes on Thursday, October 10th at 4pm in the Design Building Lecture Hall (DB 170).

Several limitations have thwarted the implementation of California housing law for over fifty years. This research sheds light on the evolution of municipal-state relations at a period of reform by analyzing the contentious implementation of state housing law in Orange County, California, a region of concentrated affluence. Systemic privilege has historically allowed some jurisdictions to influence decision-making at higher levels, skewing housing policy and planning outcomes. Nonetheless, and despite contention between different government levels and localities, the leverage of reactionary local politics is weakening. State reforms, along increasingly diverse and mobilized constituents, are prompting slow but important policy change.

Alejandra Reyes is Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy at UC Irvine’s School of Social Ecology. Her research centers on questions of governance around housing policy, finance, production, and access – and highlights the critical influence of political and economic factors on housing and urban development.

Previously, she was the 2018-2019 Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance at University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. She received her B.A. in Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Community and Regional Planning at the University of Texas at Austin.