As the second-most populated city in the United States, with 3.5
million people and an expected 50,000 more each year, Los Angeles
faces complex challenges in its quest for a sustainable future.
From environmental issues to affordable housing, urban thinkers
from a variety of disciplines gathered on Oct. 6 in Perloff Hall to
begin searching for answers and innovative ideas for Los
Angeles’ unforeseeable future.
Hosted by the Department of Urban Planning in the School of
Public Policy and Social Research, the conference not only offered
audience members the opportunity to engage in debate with the
various guests, but also served as a fundraiser for providing urban
planning students scholarships.
Issues at the core of urban living include transportation,
protecting the environment, accommodating new immigrants, and
offering affordable housing, said Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris,
professor and chair of the UCLA Department of Urban Planning.
The concept of sustainability ““ ensuring the continuity of
economic, social and environmental elements of society for the
present as well as the future ““ has generated discussion
about a number of different approaches to tackling the
uncertainties of city planning.
Friday’s conference suggested an alternative methodology
for attacking such challenges by proposing a new kind of
decision-making model.
Steve Bankes, chief technology officer for Evolving Logic Inc.
and professor of information science at the Pardee RAND Graduate
School, introduced the Computer Assisted Reasoning System software,
which utilizes computational experimentation to more accurately
reason about a variety of uncertain situations, such as city
planning.
Bankes is the main designer for a software which allows
computers to generate plausible situations based on the
user’s input, and consequently enables the user to formulate
and compare effective policies according to these scenarios.
Straying away from a more standard approach in which policy
makers “predict and then act,” computer models, Bankes
said, provide officials with a wide range of scenarios to consider
when planning for a growing region.
“We want to see the future very broadly so we can navigate
the best we can,” Bankes said, adding that
“robust” policy making is the key element in this new
approach. “Our goal is to look for policies that will preform
satisfactorily.”
The methodology, which relies on advanced computer software,
aims at capturing a variety of situations that could be true and
allows users to see what things need to be done so that various
futures can be accounted for.
In addition, the process results in strategies that are not only
optimal for likely scenarios, but is rather “robust”
across a wide range of scenarios, Bankes said.
Providing the context for implementing this new technology, S.
Gail Goldberg, planning director for the city of Los Angeles,
assessed L.A.’s current situation in regional planning and
introduced the city planning committee’s new initiatives.
“There is planning (in L.A.), but no coordination ““
that has been a great cost to this city,” Goldberg said.
In addition to strengthening coordination, Goldberg added that
L.A.’s tendency for “planning project by project”
needs to change as well in order to encompass long-term benefits
and consequences.
Among the planning department’s initiatives, Goldberg
stressed the need to engage the public in the planning process.
“It (should be) a part of everyone’s daily
work,” she said in her speech, adding that community
involvement will help generate a necessary public dialogue around
planning.