Category Archives: In Memoriam

In the Spirit of Frank Gehry

Architect Frank Gehry passed away on December 5, 2025 in Santa Monica. He was 96. I wrote about Frank Gehry’s influence on me as a 90s architecture student at East Los Angeles College and SCI-Arc.

Excerpt:

Thirty years later, Gehry’s ideas challenging form, challenging materiality, challenging function, challenging convention, challenging orthodoxy, challenging the architecture establishment, challenging one’s own profession, remain with me as an urban planner.

Gehry was a driving inspiration in my early development. I’m taking time to reflect on his impact and work. Meantime, check out my 1996 three bedroom residence designed in the spirit of Frank Gehry.

Building Embedded Planning Praxis at USC Architecture

Scenes from USC Architecture from my 4/3 guest talk, “Building Embedded Planning Praxis.” The invited lecture was delivered in the USC Master of Heritage Conservation graduate course, Heritage Conservation Policy and Planning.

This is chapter 1 in the story of Embedded Planning praxis.

I lay out my path to Embedded Planning which includes coming up as graffiti writer and hip hop kid in the 80s & 90s, dropping out of architecture school in ‘98, and then finding urban planning thanks to Mike Davis and Edward W. Soja (both rest in power). Embedded Planning was co-created with community members in Florence-Firestone in South Central LA.

Who’s the cat in the photo?! In 2003 in the MAUP program at UCLA Luskin Department of Urban Planning, I took an architecture theory course where I learned Professor Gregory Ulmer’s CATTt method for writing a manifesto. I would go on to use the CATTt to write my 1-page manifesto on Embedded Planning titled, “We Cannot Plan From Our Desks,” published in the October 2018 issue of APA’s Planning Magazine.

And now we’re a worldwide movement in planning theories and practices.

Photos by Meredith Drake Reitan, Professor & Associate Dean. Thanks for the invite to speak with your MHC students!

Cited in Mike Davis Tribute

I thank Professor Genevieve Carpio for citing me in her article on Mike Davis’s enduring impact and City of Quartz. Mike lives on in us.

“Now, as a teacher, I introduce his work to my own students. As one example, with Davis’s words, I try to open my students’ eyes to how our built environment shapes what is possible and what is unlikely, or at least discouraged. I ask them to look for what he calls “Carceral Architecture”: the Twin Towers or dividers on park benches or glass smashed into walls. In this way, I’m among other educators, like Jonathan Pacheco Bell and his work on hostile architecture, who continue to draw on Davis for our pedagogical interventions, especially among future urban planners, architects, and even developers. Indeed, I think one of Davis’s greatest contributions is the ways he underscores the power of the built environment in urban processes, his attention to which has shaped a generation of urban planners and urban historians.”

Dr. Genevieve Carpio. “Mike Davis’s Enduring Impact: A Reflection on Sunshine and Noir in the Junkyard of Dreams.” 105, no. 4, Southern California Quarterly (Winter 2023): 404-408.

With Edward Soja on Graduation Day at UCLA 17 Years Ago Today

Edward W. Soja and me on graduation day June 17, 2005 at UCLA Urban Planning. Photo by Jonathan Pacheco Bell

Edward Soja and me on graduation day 17 years ago today. Grad school was tough. I felt the weight of the neighborhood on my shoulders. I nearly dropped out 5 times, but Ed inspired me to stay and keep at it. My work with Soja would help me create Embedded Planning years later. The moral of the story: Find mentors who inspire you.

Keep the Flame Lit

The office of Edward W. Soja at UCLA Urban Planning after the 2015 In Memoriam celebration of Ed’s life. Before going home, I posted my “Epitaph for Edward W. Soja” to say goodbye, and to promise Ed that I would keep the flame lit. Photo: Jonathan Pacheco Bell

Congratulations to my fellow UCLA Bruin planners graduating today 👏🏽 You’re the next generation of planning. We’re in good hands.

Draw on our past to inform (y)our future. See the work of Edward W. Soja, Jackie Leavitt, Leo Estrada, VC Powe, Marty Wachs, John Friedmann and many others who rest in power.

Keep the flame lit.

In solidarity,
JPB @c1typlann3r

We Said Goodbye to Mary Rose Cortese of Florence-Firestone

2015 launch of the “Everyday Heroes” LA County Library project, Florence-Firestone Constituent Service Center, 7807 Compton Avenue, LA 90001. Featured: Mary Rose Cortese, Joseph Titus, and Jonathan Pacheco Bell [Photo by author]

Thank you to AARP Livable Communities Workshop organizers and my fellow panelists for this week’s conversation on engaging older adults.

On September 13th, we lost Ms. Mary Rose Cortese, one of our community elders in South Central LA’s Florence-Firestone community. Mary has joined her brother Joe Titus in the next chapter. I know they’re up there still advocating for Florence-Firestone.

Mary and Joe welcomed me into the community on Day 1 in 2009. They were honorary abuelitos to me and many others. Hug your elders. Ask them to tell you stories. Document their lives. Cherish them every day.

At the end of this #AARP session, I dedicated my presentation to Mary Rose Cortese 🙏🏽💛

In Memoriam: Jacqueline Leavitt (1939 – 2015), Professor Emerita of Urban Planning

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This has been a difficult autumn for the UCLA Luskin family.

Professor Jackie Leavitt passed away on November 27, 2015. I am lucky to have been one of her students. A tireless advocate for urbanized communities of color, Jackie is deeply missed but forever loved and respected.

UCLA Urban Planning will hold a gathering in celebration of Jackie’s life and work on Monday, March 7, 2016 at UCLA.

In Memoriam: Edward Soja (1940-2015), Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning

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Dr. Edward W. Soja. Photo courtesy of UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs

I declined a scholarship at another university to study urban planning under Edward W. Soja at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Ed will be greatly missed.

His legacy lives on in us.

In Memoriam: Edward Soja (1940-2015), Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning

A celebration of Ed’s life and work will be held Monday, January 25, 2016, from 4:00PM-6:00PM at the UCLA Faculty Center, Sequoia Room.