Stephanie Pincetl is Professor and Director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. Dr. Pincetl conducts research on environmental policies and governance and analyzes how institutional rules construct how natural resources and energy are used to support human activities. She is expert in bringing together interdisciplinary teams of researchers across the biophysical and engineering sciences and social sciences to address problems of complex urban systems and environmental management.
Dr. Pincetl has written extensively about land use in California, environmental justice, habitat conservation efforts, water, and energy policy. She has received funding from the National Science Foundation to conduct collaborative research with biophysical scientists on urban ecology and water management in Los Angeles, as well as from the California Energy Commission PIER program to develop a methodology to understand energy use in communities in California using urban metabolism methods coupled with social policy considerations. Her book, Transforming California, the Political History of Land Use in the State, is the definitive work on land use politics and policies of California. She was the lead author of the urban section of the Southwest Technical Report to the National Climate Assessment and a contributing author of the urban section of the National Climate Assessment.
Dr. Pincetl has a PhD in Urban Planning from UCLA. She spent 10 years working in the nonprofit environmental justice sector and has taught in the Masters of Public Affairs at the Institut de Sciences Politiques in Paris. Pincetl is the Faculty Director of the Los Angeles Regional Collaborative for Climate Action and Sustainability (LARC), a Los Angeles regional organization dedicated to working across jurisdictions to achieve a better future. She was instrumental in making the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA its institutional home.
Contributions to Humans & Nature:
- Urban Nature, Is There Anything Else?
A response to “How is nature critical to a 21st century urban ethic?”
Noteworthy Links:
- The Nature of Cities
Read Stephanie Pincetl’s posts on The Nature of Cities blog.
