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| ### The Possibility Lab Releases its Abundance Policy Research Consortium’s First Three Reports Focused on the Built Environment |
| The UC Berkeley Possibility Lab’s Abundance Accelerator** **released today the first three reports authored by its Abundance Policy Research Consortium that focus on scarcity in the built environment and the need for a paradigm shift to address major shortages. These reports feature perspectives from three experts on housing, transportation, and energy: Paavo Monkkonen (… |
| ### The Possibility Lab Releases its Abundance Policy Research Consortium’s First Three Reports Focused on the Built Environment |
| The UC Berkeley Possibility Lab’s Abundance Accelerator** released today the first three reports authored by its Abundance Policy Research Consortium that focus on scarcity in the built environment and the need for a paradigm shift to address major shortages. These reports feature perspectives from three experts on housing, transportation, and energy: Paavo Monkkonen (housing), Juan Matute (transportation), and Keith Taylor **(energy). “California can lead on policies that chip away at the scarcity we are so often conditioned to accept and have in many ways come to see as just the way things are,” said Dr. Amy E. Lerman, professor of political science and public policy at UC Berkeley and executive director of the Possibility Lab. “But across the state, we have the resources and capacity to expand access to the fundamentals people need for stable, healthy, and fulfilling lives. Last year, we brought together some of California’s top researchers to help us rethink how our systems and institutions operate, so we can move toward solutions that grow the supply of essential goods and services - from housing and transportation, to clean water and healthy food, to childcare, eldercare, good jobs, and quality education. Their reports explore tangible policy solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing our state.”In the summer of 2024, the Possibility Lab invited public policy researchers from across California to share their ideas to address the questions of scarcity and how the state might move toward a people-centered abundance agenda. This collaboration has culminated in the Abundance Policy Report Series, featuring 12 original memos commissioned and edited by the Lab’s Abundance Accelerator. These reports will be published through March. |
| ## Housing |
| Paavo Monkkonen is a Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He researches and writes about how policies and markets shape urbanization, social segregation, and housing affordability in cities around the world. In his report Housing Abundance in California: A Starter Home for the 21st Century, he argues that California needs a paradigm shift to improve the quality of multi-family housing (such as apartment buildings and duplexes) and to course-correct from decades of policymaking that treated new housing as a ‘threat’ to neighborhoods of predominantly single-family homes. This paradigm shift, says Monkkonen, would prioritize building out the “missing middle” of housing so that new developments focus on housing stock somewhere between single-family homes and skyrise apartments. If California were to embrace this middle path in housing construction, then California residents could expect more medium-density, mixed-use neighborhoods that offer shared green spaces as well as new pathways to homeownership in multifamily buildings. |
| ## Transportation |
| Juan Matute is the Deputy Director at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and a Lecturer in Urban Planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He researches public transit, transportation finance and governance, new mobility, and parking. Likewise in transportation, Matute argues for a shift away from prioritizing vehicles toward a paradigm that prioritizes and protects people. This means worrying less about how many cars can travel on a given roadway and, instead, focusing on improving people’s access to whatever form (or combination) of transportation they need: whether by car, foot, bike, or public transit. In his report, An Abundance Agenda for Transportation, Matute describes the geography of California in terms of “abundance hubs” that provide plentiful resources and “scarcity zones” that provide limited access to necessities like healthcare and healthy food. Accordingly, he suggests that transportation policy should be judged by how well it enables the flow of movement between scarcity zones and abundance hubs, so that residents without proximity to necessities can easily travel to get their needs met. While broader investments in scarcity zones are a necessary long-term project, transportation policy that expands the accessibility of essentials can improve equity in the near-term. |
| ## Energy |
| Keith Taylor is an Associate Professor of Cooperative Extension & Community Economic Development at UC Davis. To Taylor, abundance in the built environment is not just a matter of how we live and how we travel; it’s also about how we generate and distribute the energy that powers our daily lives. According to Taylor in his report Achieving Energy Abundance: The Role of the Civil Economy and Institutional Diversity, California already has the raw renewable resources for clean energy abundance. What’s missing are the systems that can actually harness this potential and convert it into affordable utility bills for households across the state. The remedy, in Taylor’s view, is both technical and institutional: create a “Smart Grid” that enables a wider array of providers to contribute to clean energy production. California’s current system is a “hub-and-spoke” grid, where energy flows primarily from large, centralized power plants to consumers. In this model, it is difficult for smaller, local producers—for instance, a solar-equipped apartment building—to efficiently put excess power back into the system. A Smart Grid, on the other hand, powered by new digital technologies, creates a flexible network of connectivity, so that energy can move more dynamically between different producers and users. The result is less centralized control over California’s energy supply, and more opportunities for diverse actors to participate in renewable energy production. People-Centered Policymaking in the Built EnvironmentThe reforms these researchers suggest focus on a key idea: that the built environment is as much about infrastructure as it is about people. So what role should people play in designing and carrying out these visions for abundant housing, transportation, and energy? What priorities do people living and working in California have when it comes to the built environment in their communities? In the Possibility Lab’s** **Framework, the path to abundance is paved by a fundamental shift in the distribution of decision-making power. Without this shift, the status quo will likely continue enabling NIMBYism to block new housing and transportation while letting existing utilities continue to dominate the energy sector. To shift the balance of power and create constructive opportunities for people-centered policymaking, local and state governments might consider experimenting with changes to when and where public engagement happens. For example, rather than gathering input from neighborhood residents on a project-by-project basis, planning processes for new housing, energy, and transportation projects could be deliberated at a larger geographic scale and earlier in the planning process. |