News

Joan Walker, Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and GMS core faculty member, will begin a 3-year term as GMS Co-Director. She joins continuing Co-Director Matt Kondolf, as Co-Director Alison Post steps down at the end of her 3-year term.  Professor Walker’s research focus is behavioral modeling, with an expertise in discrete…

We are pleased to welcome our newest GMS core faculty member, Sai Balakrishnan.  Balakrishnan has served as Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design since 2015. Through her research and teaching, Balakrishnan focuses on processes of urbanization and planning institutions in the global south, and on the spatial politics of…

Daniel Kammen’s editorial, “How electric vehicles can help advance social justice,” was featured in the June 21 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. Kammen explores Lyft’s commitment to transition to 100% electric vehicles by 2030.

GMS Professor Brandi Thompson Summers’ editorial, “We need action to accompany art,” was featured in the Boston Globe. She discusses the disparity between symbolism and the structural and policy reforms needed to address systemic racism in the United States.

GMS faculty affiliates Daniel Chatman (DCRP), Karen Frick (DCRP), Daniel Rodriguez (DCRP) and GMS core faculty member Joan Walker (CEE) have been awarded a CITRIS seed grant to investigate factors affecting compliance with shelter-in-place orders instituted in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.  In their study, “Social distancing and sheltering in place: Using a nationwide smartphone…

GMS Professor Brandi Thompson Summers’ editorial, “What Black America Knows About Quarantine,” was featured in The New York Times. She discusses race and spatial inequality in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and Ahmaud Arbery’s murder in Glynn County, GA.

GMS Professor Brandi Thompson Summers delivered a talk on her book, Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City, as a Next City webinar on April 29. Proceeds from the talk went towards Next City’s Urban Affairs Journalism Fellowship Program.

Congratulations to Daniel Kammen, Faculty Affiliate and member of the Global Metropolitan Studies Executive Committee, for being elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences! He is one of nine Berkeley faculty to join the AAAS this year.