Professor Loukaitou-Sideris is Department Chair and professor of Urban Planning at UCLA.  Her research focuses on the public environment of the city, its physical representation, aesthetics, social meaning and impact on the urban resident. Her work integrates social and physical issues in urban planning and architecture. An underlying theme is its "user focus"; that is, she seeks to analyze and understand the built environment from the perspective of those who live and work there.

    Dr. Loukaitou-Sideris research includes documentation and analysis of the social and physical changes that have occurred in the public realm; cultural determinants of design and planning and their implications for public policy; quality-of-life issues for inner city residents; transit security, and urban design and transportation issues.

    Recent and ongoing projects, funded in part by the U.S. and California Departments of Transportation, the Haynes Foundation and the Mineta Transportation Institute, include: an examination of the privatization of public open space in major American downtown areas to document the effects of redevelopment on their built form and social context; documentation of varying patterns of use of neighborhood parks among different ethnic groups; proposals for the physical and economic retrofit of blighted inner city commercial corridors, examination of the impacts of new rail transit lines, creation of guidelines for the development of transit station neighborhoods; and studies of transit security.

    She has served as a consultant to the Transportation Research Board, Federal Highway Administration, Southern California Association of Governments, South Bay Cities Council of Government, Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative, the Greek Government, and many municipal governments on issues of urban design, open space development, land use and transportation.  She has been commissioned to author research papers by the National Academies and the Roger Wood Johnson Foundation.