Rate My Professor Nicholas Marantz

Nicholas Marantz is an associate professor and vice chair in the Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy at the University of California, Irvine's School of Social Ecology. He holds a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earned in 2014, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, obtained in 2009. Marantz joined the University of California, Irvine in 2014 as an assistant professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy and the School of Law, advancing to associate professor in both departments in 2019. He currently serves as Faculty Director of the Master of Urban and Regional Planning program and as a Faculty Associate at the Institute of Transportation Studies. His research addresses metropolitan governance, land-use and environmental law, and housing, with emphasis on local governance and the regulation of the built environment in relation to mobility and housing affordability. Marantz also examines the impacts of changes in environmental laws and local governance institutions on planning practices and metropolitan development patterns, as well as how non-lawyers, particularly urban planners, understand and utilize legal materials.

Marantz's scholarship has been published in prominent journals including the Journal of the American Planning Association, Urban Affairs Review, Housing Policy Debate, and Stanford Environmental Law Journal. Key works include the book Regional Governance and the Politics of Housing in the San Francisco Bay Area (2023, with Paul G. Lewis, Temple University Press); 'What Planners Know: Using Surveys About Local Land Use Regulation to Understand Housing Development' (2019, with Paul G. Lewis); 'What Do Community Benefits Agreements Deliver? Evidence From Los Angeles' (2015); 'Jurisdictional Size and Residential Development: Are Large-Scale Local Governments More Receptive to Multifamily Housing?' (2021, with Paul G. Lewis); and 'Small Suburbs, Large Lots: How the Scale of Land-Use Regulation Affects Housing Affordability, Equity, and the Climate' (2022, with Eric Biber, Giulia Gualco-Nelson, and Moira O’Neill). His contributions advance understanding of zoning reforms, state oversight of local land use, accessory dwelling units, and community benefits agreements, influencing urban planning and public policy discourse.