|
 In profile this month is the Institute of Urban and Regional Development (IURD), which serves faculty and students of the University of California at Berkeley by conducting research on urban and regional growth and decline, as well as the effects of public policies on patterns and processes of development.
IURD is an organized research unit that brings together faculty and students from across the campus to work on urban and regional development issues. IURD assists the campus community in raising research funds and provides administrative support for this work. IURD also supports graduate education through research training and internships for professional school students. IURD is a primary research home for many UC Berkeley faculty members, primarily from the College of Environmental Design, but from other professional teaching programs as well. As a focal point on campus for faculty whose work engages current urban policy and planning issues, IURD brokers relationships with community partners and assists in the dissemination of community-based research to broad audiences, in both academic and public venues.
The Institute has long served as a portal to the university for people in San Francisco Bay Area communities, including city and county planners, community-based organizations and others looking for technical assistance and guidance.
Over the past 14 years, IURD has convened leadership conferences, conducted analyses and evaluations, and provided other technical assistance on urban policy issues including neighborhood and economic development, environmental protection, community empowerment, and social change. As a whole, the Institute has developed close relationships with city, community, and nonprofit institutions working in Oakland and West Oakland in particular, raising more than $4 million in the last five years for collaborative projects with community-based organizations and public agencies in the City of Oakland. Faculty and students involved in these projects have been drawn from the College of Environmental Design, the Colleges of Natural Resources and Civil Engineering, the School of Education, and the School of Public Health.
IURDs current research focuses on the following topics:
- Sustainable development and regulation of urban growth and land use;
- Social and economic impacts of changes in urban life, with a focus on inner-city inequality;
- Evolving patterns of suburbanization and central-city reconstruction;
- Transportation alternatives, including high-speed rail and transit-based land development;
- Information technology applications in urban development;
- Disaster preparedness; and
- Improvements in methods of analysis, evaluation and planning.
The Institute produces newsletters, working papers and monographs describing current research and other topics of interest to researchers and professionals in the community. IURD also hosts visiting scholars from around the world. Each semester a series of brown bag and dinner seminars is held featuring our visitors and other researchers. A schedule of events is available online.
IURD develops and supports interdisciplinary research and practical work that helps scholars and students understand how cities and regions work, while helping public and private agencies, national and state governments, and communities adopt and implement more effective policies.
With the rapid spread of urbanization around the worldaccompanied by problems of housing affordability, sprawl, transportation, environmental quality, urban poverty, and physical declinedemand for IURDs work has steadily increased. Since its founding, IURD has been rooted first and foremost in the social sciences, whether its work involves predicting the consequences of growth policy or the effectiveness of earthquake preparedness. IURD provides facilities and support to faculty who initiate their own projects in such diverse fields as disaster preparedness, disability studies, economics, housing, labor, land use, policy-making, technology, and transportation. For more information, visit www-iurd.ced.berkeley.edu .
|
