About Gian-Claudia Sciara (Edit profile)

Gian-Claudia Sciara received her PhD in Urban Planning at the University of California, Berkeley; currently a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Urban Land Use and Transportation Center (ULTRANS) at the University of California, Davis (sciara@ucdavis.edu).

The First Big-Box Store in Davis

Susan L. Handy, Kristin Lovejoy, Gian-Claudia Sciara, Deborah Salon, and Patricia Mokhtarian

Davis, California, is well-known in transportation circles for having the highest share of bicycle commuters in the US, due in large part to pioneering efforts starting in the 1960s that created an extensive bicycling network. Less well-known is the substantial effort Davis has made to avert the kind of sprawl found in most US cities. Multi-family housing is distributed throughout the city, neighborhood shopping centers are within a short bike ride for most residents, and the city has improved sidewalks, landscaping, and public spaces to promote its traditional downtown. Davis restricts development beyond the current urban boundary while at the same time encouraging infill development within the boundary. As a result, Davis is the sixth densest urbanized area in the US and an exemplar of what small cities can achieve with coordinated policies and careful planning.

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Peering Inside the Pork Barrel

Gian-Claudia Sciara

During the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Congressional earmarking played a larger role in federal transportation funding bills than ever before. Through earmarks, the US Congress directs federal funding to selected transport projects in specific places. Between 1994 and 2006, highway earmarks more than doubled. Notorious earmarks like Alaska’s Bridge to Nowhere and Florida’s Coconut Road together with fiscal pressures from the 2008 US economic crisis have led both the House and the Senate to adopt temporary earmark moratoria, calling time-out in the game of pork barrel politics. Download the PDF.

Making Communities Safe for Bicycles

Gian-Claudia Sciara

To those who use a bicycle for transportation, it’s a simple but important machine—cheap, flexible, reliable, and environmentally friendly. Moreover, bicycles are convenient. Someone traveling by bike can usually make a trip door to door, choose among various routes, and easily add stops along the way.

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