tamika l. butler (she/her or they/them) is a PhD candidate in Urban Planning at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her research employs a critical race, historical, legal, and policy-based approach to examine how transportation policy and infrastructure have been used to segregate, isolate, and prevent the mobility of Black and other historically oppressed groups of people.

Prior to pursuing her PhD, tamika consulted, wrote, and spoke as a national expert on issues related to public policy, the built environment, equity, anti-racism, diversity and inclusion, organizational behavior, and change management. She transitioned to policy work after litigating for three years as an employment lawyer at Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center. tamika has a diverse background in law, community organizing and nonprofit leadership.

tamika received her J.D. from Stanford Law School, and received her B.A. in Psychology and B.S. in Sociology from Creighton University in her hometown of Omaha, Nebraska.

Current Projects

reparative Transportation Planning

I explore how transportation decisions, policies, funding, and infrastructure have negatively impacted Black and Indigenous communities. I seek to understand how the relatively new field of reparative planning can be applied to the transportation planning context. In particular, I utilize Mimi Sheller’s (2018) “five types of justice” paradigm to evaluate if different transportation planning interventions are just. I then employ the recent framework put forth by Williams and Steil (2023) to investigate rather reparative planning can center transportation in the pursuit of anti-racist futures.

This research seeks to bridge the gap in understanding if various levels of government have the ability to facilitate or hinder reparations to Black and Indigenous communities in the context of transportation planning decisions, programs, or policies.  It centers on the following overarching research question: What is reparative transportation planning and to what extent do government institutions facilitate or prevent reparative transportation planning?

Publications

• butler, tamika l., Ullmann, L., Lugo, A. E., Lassos, G., D’Arcy, A. M., & Patterson, R. (2025). Reconnecting Communities: Recommendations for Caltrans Excess Land.

• butler, tamika. "Book Review: Megan Kimble, City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America's Highways." Critical Planning 28, no. 1 (2025).

• Brozen, Madeline, and tamika l. butler. "Prioritizing Black Lives in LA’s Traffic Safety Efforts, Revisited." (2024).

• butler, tamika l. "Trust the people: a lesson in listening, learning and following the lead of Black people in The City after Property." (2024): 896-901.

Research for Publication in Progress

• butler, tamika l., Lilith Winkler-Schor, and Regan Patterson. “The Route Towards Repair: Transportation Departments Reparatively Addressing Planning Harms.”

universal basic mobility

Universal basic mobility is an emerging transportation concept predicated on the belief that all people should have the ability to get to where they need and want to go in a way that best suits them and their households. People with adequate transportation access are provided with a greater ability to live a high-quality life. Transportation barriers most acutely affect low-income travelers of color who, relative to higher-income white travelers, often struggle to afford transportation costs and so are less likely to own cars and more likely to rely on public transit. In 2023, Los Angeles joined a small but growing number of cities in piloting a Mobility Wallet program.

As a researcher with the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, tamika is part of a team completing a comprehensive mixed-methods evaluation examining travel trends, experiences, and spending for L.A.’s Mobility Wallet program. The team is analyzing wallet spending, conducting surveys with recipients and non-recipients in the project area, and conducting in-depth interviews with a small group of wallet recipients. The evaluation seeks to understand whether and how receiving the mobility wallet changes people’s transportation patterns, experiences, and short-term outcomes like changes in stress or sense of belonging.

Publications

• butler, tamika l., Sang-O Kim, Madeline Wander, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Madeline Brozen. 2026. “Transportation and Quality-of-Life Effects of Los Angeles’s Mobility Wallet Program.” Journal of the American Planning Association, June, 1–13. doi:10.1080/01944363.2026.2675964.

• butler, tamika l., Madeline Wander, Madeline Brozen, and Evelyn Blumenberg. "Transportation challenges of low-income households with children: A case study in south Los Angeles." Journal of Planning Education and Research (2026): 0739456X261420396.

• butler, tamika l., Madeline Wander, Madeline Brozen, and Evelyn Blumenberg. "The Costs of Traveling With Children: Transportation Challenges for Low-Income Families [Policy Brief]." (2026).

• butler, tamika l., Sang-O. Kim, Madeline Wander, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Madeline Brozen. "Mobility Wallets Expand Opportunity and Quality of Lifefor Low-Income Travelers." (2026).

• Wander, Madeline, Evelyn Blumenberg, Madeline Brozen, and tamika l. butler. "The promise of Universal Basic Mobility." Transport Reviews (2025): 1-21.

• Brozen, Madeline, tamika l. butler, Madeline Wander, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Sang-O. Kim. "Early Results on Individual Life Outcomes from the LA Mobility Wallet Phase I Pilot Program." (2025). https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6zs4q8ck

• Kim, Sang-O., Madeline Brozen, Madeline Wander, tamika l. butler, and Evelyn Blumenberg. "Beyond Transit Discounts: Comparing LA Mobility Wallet and Low-Income Fare is Easy (LIFE) Programs." (2025). https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2hs038b3

Conference Participation

• tamika l. butler (presenter), Madeline Brozen, Madeline Wander, and Evelyn Blumenberg. “The Effects of Transportation Subsidies on Stress and Quality of Life for Low-Income Households.” March 25, 2025. The American Association of Geographers 2025 Annual Meeting. Detroit, MI.

• Madeline Wander (presenter), tamika l. butler, Madeline Brozen, Evelyn Blumenberg, and Alejandra Rios Gutierrez. “Transportation Challenges Facing Low-Income Households with Children: A Case Study in South Los Angeles.” March 11-12, 2024. The University Transportation Center's Pacific Southwest Region Annual Congress – Moving Forward: Improving Transportation in Region 9. Las Vegas, NV.

• Madeline Wander (presenter), tamika l. butler, Madeline Brozen, and Evelyn Blumenberg. “Transportation Challenges Facing Low-Income Households with Children: A Case Study in South Los Angeles.” January 8, 2024. Presentation in the 2024 Dwight D. Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program Research Showcase at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting. Washington, D.C.

• Madeline Wander, Madeline Brozen (presenter), tamika l. butler, and Evelyn Blumenberg. “Deepening the Understanding of Households with Children and Their Transportation Challenges: A Case Study in South Los Angeles.” October 20, 2023. Presentation at the Annual Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning Conference. Chicago, IL.

Lawsuits, Consent Decrees, and Critical Theory: Tools for Mobility Justice?

This research looks at the history of transportation-based civil rights cases and the way that legal remedies are proving increasingly difficult to access with a politicized Supreme Court and changing civil rights case law. I explore the historical context for centering racial equity and civil rights in transportation planning policy and case law. Legal research and semi-structured interviews with technical transportation planning experts, legal experts, civil rights lawsuits’ plaintiffs, and current transportation justice advocates will be employed to determine if legal mechanisms are effective tools for successfully effectuating long-term movement building and creating more equitable public transit. The purpose of the proposed research is to better understand legal avenues for fighting transit injustices and to offer guidance to transit agencies and advocates as they look to advance reparative, racial justice-centered transportation solutions.

Publications

• butler, tamika l. "Arrested Mobility: Overcoming the Threat to Black Movement: Charles T. Brown.(2025). Island Press, 200 pages. $34 (paperback)." (2026): 1-2.

• Madeline Brozen, Silvia R. González, and tamika l. butler. METRANS Transportation Center (Calif.), & Pacific Southwest Region 9 UTC, U. of S. C. (2022). Measuring Equity in Public Transit Service: LA Metro and the Post-Decree Era (PSR-21-51TO054). https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/67539

Research for Publication in Progress

• tamika l. butler. “Lawsuits for Mobility Justice: An Examination of Legally Codified Racism in Transportation and a Roadmap for Reparations.”

Conference Participation

• tamika l. butler (presenter), Maddie Brozen, and Silvia R. González “Lawsuits and Consent Decrees: Tools for Transit Equity?” January 9, 2023. Presentation in the 2023 Dwight D. Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program Research Showcase at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting. Washington, D.C.

Mobility Justice + Community-Led Planning

People cannot be economically mobile if they are not able to be mobile. Without reliable ways to get around, people cannot access the jobs, healthcare, and education that make a good life possible. Yet transportation policy and decision-making has long been dominated by white, male, able-bodied, cisgender engineers (Frisch, 2002; Lowe, 2021), and as a result, many of the decisions made by transportation policymakers lack grounding in racial justice or the lived experience of the most vulnerable users (Barajas, 2021; Frisch, 2002; Lowe, 2021; Lowe et al., 2023; Vigar, 2017).

As a student researcher with UCLA's Institute of Transportation Studies, tamika has worked on a number of mobility justice and community-centered research projects. Her background as a nonprofit leader and practicing planner brings on-the-ground, real-world expertise to this work, grounding her research in the practical realities facing the communities most affected by transportation decisions.

Publications

• Millard-Ball, Adam, Juan Matute, Monisha Reginald, Carolyn Pugh, and Chase Engelhardt, and tamika l. butler. "TRACtion: A collaborative, community-researcher agenda-setting approach." Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives 29 (2025): 101291.

• butler, tamika l. and Hana Creger. (2024). Beyond Engagement: Equity Principles to Guide State Department of Transportation and Community Collaboration.

• butler, tamika l., Chiu, Phoebe, Hao Ding, John Gahbauer, J. D. Mark Garrett, Juan Matute, and Gian-Claudia Sciara. "Aligning Metropolitan Transportation Planning and Investments with California’s Climate and Equity Goals: An Assessment." (2024).

• Matute, Juan, Chase Engelhardt, Carolyn Pugh, Monisha Reginald, tamika l. butler, Adam Millard-Ball, and Sustainable LA UCLA. "TRACtion: A Research Agenda for Just and Sustainable Transportation." (2024).

• butler, tamika l. and Naomi Iwasaki (2021). Addressing Inequities in Our Streets: Community Partnerships Leading Recovery and Planning.

• ACT-LA, A. C. L. U. "of Southern California, CoDesign at Harvard Graduate School of Design, Public Counsel—Statewide Education Rights Project, and tamika l. butler consulting." Metro as a Sanctuary: Reimagining Safety on Public Transit. (2019).

Research for Publication in Progress

• Sciara, Gian-Claudia, tamika l. butler, and Phoebe Chiu (2026). “Advancing Climate and Equity Goals in Regional Transportation Planning: Learning from California.”

Conference Participation

• tamika l. butler (presenter), Phoebe Chiu, and Gian-Claudia Sciara. “Tales from the Trenches: Advancing Climate Action and Equity in Regional Transportation Planning.” January 9, 2024. Presentation in the 2024 Dwight D. Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program Poster Session at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting. Washington, D.C.

Curriculum Vitae

To see my full CV, click below.