In the News

Berkeley Talks: Climate Displacement and Remaking the Built Environment

In Berkeley Talks episode 143, a panel of UC Berkeley experts discuss climate displacement — what it means to abandon places, the power dynamics between the Global South and the Global North, challenges for both the sending and receiving regions, and what needs to happen to address this fast-growing problem.

How Housing Production, Policies Impact Displacement

New research from UC Berkeley will provide lawmakers with previously unavailable data that pinpoint the impact that new housing production, rent stabilization and just-cause eviction policies have on residential displacement.

More gentrification, displacement in Bay Area forecast

The San Francisco Bay Area’s transformation into a sprawling, exclusive and high-income community with less and less room for its low-income residents is just beginning, according to UC Berkeley researchers who literally have it all mapped out.

Report says green economy producing jobs, but urges work quality improvement

To achieve the state’s energy efficiency goals and provide better career opportunities for Californians, the state should modify its clean energy programs and its extensive but fragmented training and education programs, according to a report led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, released today (Thursday, March 17).

Featured in the Media

Please note: The views and opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or positions of UC Berkeley.
June 23, 2021
Peter Arcuni
Millions of Californians are at risk of losing their homes to wildfire. When tragedy strikes, people often rebuild in the same risky places, according to researchers at UC Berkeley and Next 10 a nonprofit think tank, who are urging California policymakers to rethink how communities are rebuilt after destructive wildfires. "This is really important in a state where the focus has been on specific [wildfire] mitigation measures such as hardening homes, prescribed burns, fuel breaks, and not on land use planning, not on making more sustainable settlement patterns around the state," said report co-author Karen Chapple, an urban planning professor and director of UC Berkeley's Center for Community Innovation. "It's about thinking about what our post-fire communities look like before the fire happens."
April 30, 2020
Daniel Cusick
A new report by Berkeley's Urban Displacement Project and the nonprofit EcoAdapt calls for climate change mitigation efforts to be integrated with other priorities, such as affordable housing, food and water security, and public safety, in order to prevent the displacement of disadvantaged individuals and families from their neighborhoods or communities. "Displacement -- whether temporary or permanent, forced or voluntary -- is an issue rooted in inequity and exacerbated by climate change," according to the report. "Climate change poses significant threats to the physical, cultural, spiritual, social, and economic displacement of communities around the world. It is also causing increasing mental and emotional distress or 'solastalgia' -- the loss of sense of place or identity."
March 3, 2020
Louis Hansen
Berkeley and other California cities are not succeeding at encouraging homeowners to build accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, to help solve the housing crisis, according to a new study by Berkeley's Center for Community Innovation. The study gave Berkeley a C+ for its measures encouraging the units, and that was a typical score. "We thought folks were doing better," says city and regional planning professor and department chair Karen Chapple, the center's faculty director. "I don't usually have a median grade of C+ in my classes." Although the grades are evolving, and they don't measure how cities have responded to laws that were just enacted in January, she says: "The shear lack of expertise at the local level is stunning. ... We have so far to go."
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