Center for Sustainable Urban Development
Director: David Warren

Concept:  
The Center for Sustainable Suburban Development (CSSD) has been established at UCR with the aid of an endowment of $2 million provided by a donor concerned with sustainable suburban communities. A planning grant awarded in 2002 enabled UCR to work closely on a new public policy vision for suburban growth issues with Dr. Edward Blakely, Dean of the Robert J. Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy at New School University in New York and a leading thinker on urban planning, community development, and public policy issues. 

The suburbs are the locus of population growth around the world. They require new political and social institutions, and they demand that culture adapt to them. They place pressure on such social systems as education, transportation and government, while also affecting air, land and water resources. Informed management of these issues can only be based on solid data and careful analysis. 

Taking advantage of its location in the midst of one of the fastest growing suburban areas in the world, and being on a university campus with diverse intellectual resources, the CSSD will coordinate the research of faculty members from various disciplines with their differing methodologies and knowledge to solve or ameliorate the complex problems of suburbs.

Goals:
The CSSD will generate research and policy analyses that focus on the economic, social, planning, and ecological challenges of the suburbs. The Center will employ a cross-disciplinary approach drawing on faculty in the social and natural sciences, engineering, the humanities, and the professional schools. UCR has academic depth in key areas such as regional policy planning and environmental impacts. The Center will have the ability to forecast the ecological implications of population change and to assess changes in habitat quality over time, especially for the sensitivity of target species to localized threats. The Center's research will encompass the following areas of relevance: 

· Land use
· Environmental sustainability
· Transportation
· Infrastructure
· Housing, community and human development
· Local government

· A multidisciplinary investigation of the Santa Ana River watershed, including research on economic and demographic processes, as well as development of a strategy for water management 
· A multidisciplinary investigation of cleanup and sea-level options for the Salton Sea
· A multidisciplinary investigation of energy production options in Southern California

· A study of the Riverside County Integrated Plan, one of the most innovative regional planning efforts in the nation which addressed transportation planning, multi-species habitat plan, and a general county plan in one planning document. 

· The establishment of an Inland Empire Demographic Research Center, integrated statistical databases for regional policy and research issues.