My 2003 Admissions Essay to UCLA Urban Planning

From my Student Papers Archive on Medium, here is My 2003 Admissions Essay to UCLA Urban Planning: https://medium.com/@c1typlann3r/my-2003-admissions-essay-to-ucla-urban-planning-8af1b1f44f09?sk=6acf3497d606ce72eb6b7577ada72205

Excerpt:

My background in architecture and political science has made me particularly interested in researching issues of equality, justice, and security in the built environment. As an urban planning student, I aim to bridge my previous work in architectural design with my more recent study of politics in order to comprehend the interrelated social, political, economic, and cultural forces that shape the built environment. To this end, I propose to research the following subjects: 1) the process of ghettoization, particularly in the communities of East and South Central Los Angeles; 2) the impact of de facto and de jure segregation on residential housing patterns in Los Angeles; 3) the effectiveness of urban design strategies in revitalizing inner city communities; 4) the privatization and gentrification of downtown public space; 5) the history of Oscar Newman’s Defensible Space crime-prevention theory and the effectiveness of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) methods in reducing crime in inner city communities; and 6) the development of Urban Realism, Richard Carson’s post-New Urbanist theory that calls for increased urban security design in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. I anticipate working with Professors Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Vinit Mukhija, whose research on privatization and security in inner city communities, spatial structures and economic inequality, and urban design and neighborhood revitalization, respectively, compliments my own interests.