CJ Gabbe
Ph.D., 2016, University of California, Los Angeles
Welcome! I’m C.J. Gabbe, an Associate Professor in ESS. I’m an interdisciplinary social scientist with a focus on urban planning and policy. I’m motivated to better understand how our cities work and how we can use urban planning to improve people’s lives and our environment more broadly.
My research agenda is largely focused on urban climate adaptation, particularly extreme heat. I organize my current research into three main areas: (1) heat governance, (2) heat vulnerability, and (3) land use, housing, and equity.
My heat governance research focuses on understanding how and why institutions are responding to rising temperatures. I’ve worked on it from several angles, co-authoring articles on planning in the largest California cities, in small and medium-sized cities across the Central Valley and Southern California, and in a national sample of major US cities, as well as on local government interventions for people who are unhoused. These research projects – which typically combine plan evaluation and semi-structured interviews – show considerable variation in the extent and nature of local heat responses, and clear opportunities to focus more systematically on evidence-based interventions.
Studying heat vulnerability means examining and explaining individuals’ exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity to heat. My co-authors and I have combined GIS and interviews with people who are unhoused in Santa Clara, created parcel-level data predicting air conditioning availability, and used national datasets to analyze housing and household factors correlated with heat-related health outcomes. My collaborators and I worked with the US Census Bureau to add a heat module to the 2023 American Housing Survey (AHS) and now I’m analyzing the resulting data.
My heat governance and vulnerability research has been funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the California Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation (LCI), the California Strategic Growth Council (SGC), and internal grants from SCU.
My research on land use, housing, and equity has been driven by interdisciplinary collaborations, novel datasets, and the chance to solve local problems. Recently, I have co-authored articles about why Santa Cruz, like many US cities, builds housing in flood-prone areas; how Oakland’s responses to homeless encampments shift unhoused residents around the city; and how San Jose’s urban village strategy affects how much and where housing is developed.
I am also passionate about teaching and our curriculum. I teach courses related to sustainable urban planning, environmental policy, research methods, and geographic information systems (GIS). I also serve as SCU’s Director of the Undergraduate Core Curriculum.
I have a Ph.D. in Urban Planning from UCLA, a Master of Urban Planning degree from the University of Washington, and a bachelor’s degree in Planning, Public Policy, and Management from the University of Oregon. I also bring more than 10 years of professional experience in planning and public policy to my research and teaching.
- ENVS 101: Capstone Seminar
- ENVS 111: Mixed Methods for the Environment
- ENVS 116: Introduction to GIS
- ENVS 117: Intermediate GIS
- ENVS 122: Environmental Politics and Policy
- ENVS 128: Sustainable Urban Planning
Selected Publications
Refereed journal articles
Gabbe, C. J., & Chang, J. (2026). Climate adaptation and people experiencing homelessness: Evaluating cross-sectoral and inter-jurisdictional collaborations to reduce extreme heat vulnerability. Journal of Urban Affairs.
Gabbe, C. J., Anderson, R., & Miranda, V. (2026). The drivers of planning and development in flood-prone areas: A case study of Santa Cruz, California. Journal of Flood Risk Management.
Gabbe, C. J., Pierce, G., Barnett, M. J., & Hughes, S. (2025). The multiple drivers of thermal disparities in US manufactured housing. Urban Studies.
Gabbe, C. J., Chang, J., Kamson, M., & Seo, E. (2023). Reducing heat risk for people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.
Gabbe, C. J., Mallen, E., & Varni, A. (2022). Housing and urban heat: Assessing risk disparities. Housing Policy Debate, 33(5), 1078-1099.
Gabbe, C. J., Pierce, G., Petermann, E., & Marecek, A. (2021). Why and how do cities plan for extreme heat? Journal of Planning Education and Research, 44(3), 1316-1330.
Gabbe, C. J., Kevane, M., & Sundstrom, W. (2021). The effects of an “urban village” planning and zoning strategy in San Jose, California. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 88, 103648.