I’m speaking about #EmbeddedPlanning praxis at the AARP Livable Communities Workshop, Wednesday, September 22, 2021 at 10am Pacific. We’re exploring ways to engage older adults and community elders in these times. The virtual event is FREE TO ALL. Come through.
Register here.
With Supervisor Janice Hahn’s fine-free library motion going to the Board of Supervisors tomorrow, I wrote a piece urging Supervisors to abolish fines at LA County Library.
Shout out to Laura Scarano and UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs for spotlighting my work and C1TYPLANN3RCo in Luskin Forum Summer 2021, “Alumnus Founds Company to Promote Embedded Planning.”
WE CANNOT PLAN FROM OUR DESKS.
Recorded January 18, 2019 at American Planning Association HQ amidst our work on the national Social Equity Task Force. Since then, #EmbeddedPlanning has exploded onto the scene. And as my mentees will attest, I continue to big up Mike Davis’s City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (1990). Start with the Fortress LA chapter. It’s a groundbreaking critique of #HostileArchitecture ⚔️
In November 2020, I was interviewed by grad students from the UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative. Their research methods seminar examined LA urban theory + praxis through the lens of Reyner Banham’s Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971).
I spoke at length about @EmbeddedPlanning praxis, west coast hip hop origins, and South Central LA.
The group distilled our conversation into a dope podcast called, “Flatlands: We Cannot Pod From Our Desks.”
Listen to my podcast interview and view the companion Thick Map of South Central LA — portion of it is this post’s image. Check out all project podcasts and infographics.
Thank you to Samantha Solis, Miranda Hirujo-Rincon, Carrie Gammell, and Celia Sanchez Zelaya.
On April 20, 2021, I delivered the guest lecture, “Creating Equitable Public Spaces Through Embedded Planning.”
It was originally scheduled for one graduate class at UCLA. By day’s end I added a second talk for undergraduates at Cal Poly Pomona.
The talk was created for the UP 279: Public Space Seminar at UCLA Urban Planning. This was one of my favorite courses when I was a student there. Professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris invited me to return as a speaker. She was my advisor in the MAUP (now MURP) program at UCLA, and taught this course back then too.
The presentation traced my work since graduation in 2005. I explained how I’ve created inclusive public spaces, and interrogated exclusionary hostile architecture, through street-level planning praxis.
The second talk was an evening presentation in Professor Alvaro Huerta’s course, Planning for Minority Communities, at Cal Poly Pomona Urban & Regional Planning. I appreciated the students welcoming this unscheduled event. Fun fact: I met Alvaro when we were both MAUP students in Anastasia’s Introduction to the History of the Built Environment course at UCLA Urban Planning.
Many students said that this was their introduction to the concept of #HostileArchitecture. Students continue to show excitement for the idea of Embedded Planning — planning practice on the ground. As always, I learned a lot from both Q & A sessions. Every question, comment, and critique advances Embedded Planning.
I did a guest talk last night on #EmbeddedPlanning praxis in Prof. Alejandra Reyes’s Public Policy & Governance class at UC Irvine. I shared space with my colleague Lucero Mondragon who presented on THRIVE Santa Ana Community Land Trust. It was the last class of the quarter so we aimed to inspire!
WE CANNOT PLAN FROM OUR DESKS 📢
Just wrapped a presentation on Embedded Planning praxis with planners and city staff at the City of South Bend in support of the Linden Avenue Greenhouse Project ✔️ Shout out to my South Bend colleagues for the conversation and help growing #EmbeddedPlanning. And huge thank you to Dominique D. Edwards for organizing today’s talk 🙌🏽 💙 🏁
Let’s take planning to the streets.
We Cannot Plan From Our Desks!
Stoked to announce that I’m delivering the keynote address for the Internalizing Equity series at the University of Utah Department of City & Metropolitan Planning:
“𝙒𝙚 𝘾𝙖𝙣𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙋𝙡𝙖𝙣 𝙁𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙊𝙪𝙧 𝘿𝙚𝙨𝙠𝙨: 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙉𝙚𝙚𝙙 𝙁𝙤𝙧 𝙀𝙢𝙗𝙚𝙙𝙙𝙚𝙙 𝙋𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜,” Thursday, April 8, 2021.
Note the different Timezone start times: 11am Los Angeles / 12pm Salt Lake City.
RSVP to join here: http://plan.cap.utah.edu/2021/02/internalizing-equity-series/
️Thanks to Bianca Paulino, Claudia Loayza, and Professor Stacy Harwood!
Bio:
Jonathan Pacheco Bell is a practicing urban planner with over 20 years of experience in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors spanning the fields of urban planning, architecture, and library/information science. He is the creator of #EmbeddedPlanning, a praxis that situates the work of planners on the ground to advance equity, build authentic relationships, and increase public participation for historically marginalized communities through street-level engagement. Its maxim is: We Cannot Plan From Our Desks! After 14 years as an Embedded Planner in South Central LA for local government and community-based organizations, he recently launched C1TYPLANN3R Company, a workshop to produce new thought and action in his intersecting fields. Jonathan holds an MA in Urban Planning from UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, an MLIS from SJSU iSchool, and undergraduate degrees in political science and architecture.
On February 25th, I launched my new virtual speaking series on #EmbeddedPlanning. It was only right to inaugurate this public talk at UCLA Urban Planning, where I was a student of Edward Soja and Jackie Leavitt in 2003-2005. Much of the DNA of Embedded Planning traces back to their courses.
This talk covered the origins of the idea, defined the praxis, showed what Embedded Planning looks like on the ground, offered some benefits and critiques, and concluded with takeaways for theory and practice. A lively discussion followed, and from there I was able to advance my thinking about the praxis. I also took that opportunity to announce my pivot to freelance practice with the newly launched C1TYPLANN3R Company.
Huge shout outs to our event’s co-sponsors: PRAXIS, Planners of Color for Social Equity, and the UCLA Institute on Inequality and Democracy. Thanks so much for bringing everyone together here. And thank you to everyone who joined from across different time zones, geographies, and hemispheres! The talk was recorded and archived for later viewing. Please contact me if you’d like to see it.
Are you interested in hosting an Embedded Planning talk in your community? Please hit me up.
My Embedded Planning work at @LANLT is spotlighted in AARP’s Livable Communities Interview Series. I made sure to give a shout out to my hero, Ron Finley, South Central LA’s Gangsta Gardener.
Article link: https://www.aarp.org/livable-communities/livable-in-action/info-2021/jonathan-pacheco-bell-los-angeles.html
Thanks to Danielle Arigoni and Melissa Stanton at AARP, and writer Ken Miller.
I trace Embedded Planning back to my high school days as a 90s graffiti writer in LA, and tell the story of Embedded Planning’s origins and evolution, all while situating it within an 11th grade classroom of future planners in East LA, in “Embedded Planning Returns to ELARA.”
Published on December 18, 2020 at c1typlann3r.medium.com.
Big up to my Secret Santa for creating this Embedded Planning portrait for me!
2021 will be a game changer for Embedded Planning.
Stay close.
I’ve been doing more talks about Embedded Planning in high school and college classes, as well as meeting students for one-on-one conversations about my praxis, all through Zoom during this Coronavirus pandemic. I realized that I was sending lots of follow up emails providing links to my writings. After copy-pasting the same content several times, it became apparent that there was a more efficient way. This is it.
This post serves as the first compilation of my public works (writings, interviews, and more) on Embedded Planning. As my work on this street-level planning praxis evolves, I’ll share updated compilations as new posts on this infrequently updated blog.
Questions about Embedded Planning? Hit me up here.
We Cannot Plan From Our Desks, Planning. October 2018.
“We Are a Movement”: Students Advance Embedded Planning at the 2019 National Planning Conference, UrbDeZine. May 2019.
The Unforgettable Role of Cal Poly Pomona in the Development of Embedded Planning, Medium. June 2020.
An Urban Planner on the Ground in South Central Los Angeles, UrbDeZine. January 2018.
Mutual Aid at Lunchtime, Cultural Weekly. December 2017.
The Invisibility of Code Enforcement in Planning Praxis: The Case of Informal Housing in Southern California, Focus. 2016.
You Are Planning podcast interview. May 2020.
I published my essay “The Unforgettable Role of Cal Poly Pomona in the Development of Embedded Planning” on June 13th at Medium.
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