Adam Millard-Ball
I am a professor of urban planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, and affiliated faculty at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. My research and teaching focus on transportation and climate change. Trained as an economist, a geographer, and an urban planner, I analyze the environmental consequences of transportation and land-use decisions, and the effectiveness of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I use large-scale geospatial data analysis tools as well as econometric and qualitative methods. I am also the Review Editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association.
Before joining UCLA, I taught in the Environmental Studies Department at UC Santa Cruz, and in the Department of Geography and McGill School of Environment at McGill University. Before entering academia, I was a Principal with transportation planning firm Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates. I hold a PhD in Environment and Resources from Stanford University and an MA in Geography from the University of Edinburgh.
What’s new?
January 2025. A high-resolution global time series of street-network sprawl. With Chris Barrington-Leigh. Check out the data and interactive map.
October 2024. Should environmentalists support the gasoline tax? With Erick Guerra in the Journal of the American Planning Association.
July 2024: I am director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, succeeding Prof. Brian Taylor. Read more about the transition.
May 2024: How highways divide neighborhoods. Explore the interactive website or read the paper.
Spring 2024: I’m on sabbatical in Berlin, at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC). I’m supported by a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
How land use patterns keep driving cheap: Geographic support for transportation taxes. Urban Studies, December 2023. Or read the blog post here.
Urban Data Science. All the materials – lectures, exercises, quizzes, and more – from my UCLA course are online
Are streets too wide?
Global street-network sprawl
Diversity on course syllabi
Highways divide neighborhoods
Contact
Adam Millard-Ball
Luskin School of Public Affairs
University of California Los Angeles
3250 Public Affairs Building
Box 951666
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1656
adammb [at] ucla.edu
Office hours: Sign up here
Recent publications
