Transfers Magazine wins APA award

For the last four years, Transfers Magazine has tackled pressing transportation questions in academia — Is congestion pricing equitable? Can skateboards serve an essential travel function? How can journalists do a better job covering car crashes?  —  with nuance, humor and clarity. At a virtual ceremony Sept. 15, the California chapter of the American Planning Association validated this work by presenting Transfers with the Communications Initiative Award of Merit.

The Communications Initiative Award is given to an organization in honor of their “efforts to ‘tell the planning story’ and increase awareness and understanding about the planning profession.” For their application, Transfers submitted a host of materials, including featured graphs, bespoke GIFs, and a blog post on the 25th anniversary of the classic bus movie Speed, starring Keanu Reeves.

Oftentimes, the insights of academic research can be difficult for policymakers and students to access. Transfers articles, at their best, morph a dense piece of research into a digestible piece of journalism. Since 2018, Transfers has published 38 of these articles, with contributions from professors at eight different universities in Hawaii, Arizona, and California.

Transfers’ latest issue, published in the spring of 2021, features stories from academics in five different states. The issue took on the detrimental effects of distracted driving, the relationship between Latino identity and cycling choices, and how we should think about transportation in the uncertain age of the anthropocene.