November 2, 2009
USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development alumna Anupama Mann recently received the Gill-Chin Lim Award for the best dissertation on international planning for her thesis, "A Megaproject Matrix: Ideology, Discourse and Regulation in the Delhi Metro Rail." The award is given by the Global Planners Educators Interest Group at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning.
October 28, 2009
The USC Center for Economic Development was awarded a two-year $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration to broaden the scope of the center's applied research and outreach initiatives. The center is housed at the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development.
October 21, 2009
The Los Angeles Times quoted Professor Richard Green on how banks are responding to government pressure to scale back repossessions of troubled properties. "I don't think people are saying it to each other, but they're seeing it's in nobody's interest to have mass foreclosures," said Green, director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.
Urban Growth Seminar
Featured Speaker:
Prof. Hilda Blanco, M.C.R.P., Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus of Urban Design and Planning, Adjunct Professor of Public Affairs
Director, MSPCI Program
Urban Design and Planning, College of Built Environments, University of Washington
Date / Time: Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2009, 12:15 - 1:30 p.m.
Location: RGL 101
USC Institute for Global Health Lecture Series: Visions for Change
Featured Speaker:
Ruth Levine, Ph.D.
Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development
Date / Time: Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009, 5 - 6:30 p.m.
Location: Town and Gown, Ballroom
Holt Visiting Professorship in Communication and Public Policy
Featured Speaker:
Peter Guber
Founder and CEO, Mandalay Entertainment
Former Chairman and CEO, Sony Pictures Entertainment
Date/Time: Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009, 4 - 5:30 p.m.
Location: University Club, Dining Room
October 17, 2009
The Orange County Register ran a Q&A with Stan Ross of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate on the commercial development industry, which has suffered from defaults and bankruptcies. "The commercial sector has not yet fully seen the impact of illiquidity in the capital markets. As a result, we haven't seen the full magnitude of defaults or foreclosures yet in the marketplace," Ross said. "Some of these institutions that were holding or buying these securities will run into some serious problems with respect to liquidity and capital requirements. They will either have to be restructured, taken over or look for new equity capital to continue on. The impact on the economy could be a further loss of some institutions and a continued slowdown of new development."
October 17, 2009
The Huffington Post ran an op-ed by SPPD Senior Fellow Sherry Bebitch Jeffe about former President Bill Clinton's endorsement of California gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom. "The intervention of a former president in California politics, so visibly and actively, was unprecedented," Jeffe wrote. Clinton may have been motivated by the fact that Newsom's opponent is Attorney General Jerry Brown, she added. "The bad blood between Clinton and Brown goes back to 1992, when Brown kept beating up on Clinton, the last candidate actually standing in the Democratic presidential race, distracting Clinton's political operation from gearing up for the general election," Jeffe wrote. This column originally ran on USC's Politics and Society Web site.
October 17, 2009
The New Planner, an online publication for and by student members of the American Planning Association, featured an article in its Fall 2009 issue written by Alan Huynh, a senior in the urban planning program at SPPD. His article is titled "The Importance of Transportation Demand Management."
October 17, 2009
The Bakersfield Californian quoted Richard Green of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate in an article about first-time homebuyers. Green said that banks don't have the staffing capacity to move a lot of inventory through the foreclosure process quickly, particularly when properties are owned by investors with competing liens. He added: "Appraisers are scared to death of getting sued if a home turns out to be worth less than they said, so they're being extremely conservative."
