Mirle Rabinowitz Bussell is a Teaching Professor and Chair of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning where she currently serves as the Director of Undergraduate Education. She is also the founding Faculty Director of the Homelessness Hub. Established in 2022, Homelessness Hub is a non-partisan hub for research, education, policy, and action on homelessness that is dedicated to critical, unbiased and data-driven research in order to inform local policy and action aimed at reducing homelessness in the San Diego region.

Rabinowitz Bussell's research focuses on five core areas: affordable housing, homelessness, local community development, the intersection between planning and real estate and development, and the role of philanthropy in community economic development. She has co-authored/co-edited two books on place-based philanthropy including the award-winning Catalysts for Change: 21st Century Philanthropy and Community Development (Routledge, 2013) and the recently published A New Look at Place-Based Philanthropy: Insights from Canada and the U.S. (FriesenPress 2023).

She recently completed a three year mixed-methods evaluation of the Jewish Family Service of San Diego Safe Parking Program. It is the most comprehensive evaluation to date of a safe parking program, a critical intervention that provides a safe place and access to services for people who live out of their vehicles. The research resulted in two policy reports and a forthcoming journal article.

As a member of the NAIOP Research Foundation’s Distinguished Fellows Program, she recently completed a study that identified best practices and challenges in promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in commercial real estate.  

A recipient of UC San Diego’s Paul D. and Barbara J. Saltman Distinguished Teaching Award, she teaches a range of courses including land use planning, San Diego community research, history of urban planning and design, and housing and community development policy and practice. She has co-developed and co-taught two experiential learning course sequences: Life Course Scholars and Urban Challenges: Homelessness in San Diego. She also teach a summer global seminar focused on sustainable planning, development and design in the Netherlands. 

Community engagement and community service are important to Rabinowitz Bussell; she currently serves as a board member and secretary of the California Planning Foundation. She frequently serve on local juries and committees and am also a member of the California Planning Roundtable. 

She received her undergraduate degree in architecture, with a minor in city planning, from UC Berkeley, a master’s in regional planning from Cornell University, and a PhD in urban planning from UCLA.