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.
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!
Join us at Whittier College Hartley House for “Embedded Planning is the Future,” a public talk on the present and future of street-level planning, followed by a feet on the street walking tour of Uptown Whittier.
Embedded Planning shifts the planner’s work from a desk to the streets. Created in the Florence-Firestone community in South Central LA, this praxis aims to rebuild trust and foster meaningful relationships with marginalized communities harmed by inequitable planning.
The talk features case studies, reflections, and personal experiences highlighting both the challenges and benefits of Embedded Planning in these times.
Coffee, tea, and pan dulce will be served. OUR EVENT IS FREE TO ALL.
When: Saturday, April 19, 2025, 10:30am to 1pm Where: Hartley House, Whittier College, 13741 Earlham Drive, Whittier, CA 90602
Thanks to Whittier College Hartley House Hub for Integrative and Applied Learning in Social Justice for event support!
Infographic by a UNC Chapel Hill Urban Planning student
Here’s an alternative flyer designed by Duke’s neighbor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Shout out to the urban planning student in Dr. Ashley Hernandez’s class who dreamed up this remix!
I love the subtle rivalry at play here ha. But for real, my virtual talk in Dr. Hernandez’s UNC class “Diversity & Inequality in Cities” in 2023 led to our in-person event at Duke on April 10, 2025. See how Embedded Planning praxis brings us together?
Students, planners, and community: if you’re in Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill on 4/10 come through.
Infographic courtesy of Duke’s undergraduate student group, Our Urban Future
On April 10th, I’m at Duke University with Our Urban Future for the invited public talk, “Embedded Planning is the Future.” I consider this Chapter 3 in the Embedded Planning speaking series. We’ll discuss Embedded Planning’s trajectory — including origins, challenges, and benefits — and examine why this praxis is the future of planning.
Photo: (from left) Jonathan Pacheco Bell and Steve Quinonez of FFCO with Matthew Shore of South Bronx Unite on a community walk in Florence-Firestone, April 28, 2024.
Following our 2025 Board election, I’ve humbly stepped into my new role as Co-President of the Florence-Firestone Community Organization (FFCO). This leadership restructuring creates a more balanced distribution of president duties while providing our tireless founder and inaugural Board President, Steve Quinonez, with needed flexibility.
In our new arrangement:
Steve continues overseeing daily operations, events, fundraisers, and facility management
I’m serving as leadership contact for county and state officials, project partners and community, with special focus on capacity building and grants development
FFCO remains an all-volunteer Board, supported by a dedicated part-time analyst and many passionate volunteers who serve because of our deep love for the Florence-Firestone community.
Interested in our food distributions, community walks, placemaking events, programs, or funded outreach? Hit me up or visit our facility at 6940 Compton Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90001.
I’m doing the guest lecture “Embedded Planning is the Future” at UC Irvine with the Urban Studies Students Association. The event is free to all on Tuesday, February 11, 2025.
Summary
Jonathan Pacheco Bell’s Embedded Planning approach revolutionizes planning practice by emphasizing street-level planning within the community rather than traditional desk-based methods. Developed by Bell in South Central LA and publicly introduced in 2018, this praxis seeks to rebuild trust and foster meaningful relationships with marginalized communities historically harmed by inequitable planning.
Embedded Planning involves planners working directly from community spaces and places, engaging residents in their everyday environments. This immersive approach helps planners gain a deeper understanding of local needs and aspirations, ensuring that community voices significantly shape planning decisions. By embedding themselves into neighborhoods, planners build strong, authentic relationships, moving beyond one-off, transactional, superficial consultations to create lasting and impactful partnerships.
Despite its support from communities, Embedded Planning has faced resistance from conventional planning practice and management, which has viewed this approach with skepticism. Working from the neighborhood to integrate community directly into planning processes challenges traditional methods and requires navigating complex dynamics between stakeholder expectations and regulatory constraints.
Since its inception, Embedded Planning has gained an international following among emerging planners who are eager to implement more inclusive practices. Bell’s talk will highlight real-world case studies, reflections, and personal experiences, while also showcasing the approach’s challenges and benefits. Attendees will learn how Embedded Planning fosters trust, informs better decision-making, and promotes more equitable community development. This emerging movement represents a crucial shift towards centering planning as an active and continuous process from within the community and represents the future of planning.
Cal Poly Pomona MURP students on a community walk in Florence-Firestone, September 7, 2024. Photo: Richard Belmudez
In Spring 2025, the Florence-Firestone Community Organization (FFCO) — where I proudly serve as Co-President — is partnering with Scripps and Pitzer colleges to integrate the Florence-Firestone neighborhood into these Environmental Analysis courses:
EA 086 SC: Environmental Justice (Scripps College)
MS 090: Ecodocumentary (Pitzer College)
Building on our past efforts, FFCO will host walking tours and discussions, conduct in-class guest lectures, and provide readings and resources to learn about our Florence-Firestone community in South Central LA.
Local news coverage of Florence-Firestone lamentably focuses on social ills. While the community endures challenges and struggles, there is more to it than the clickbait headlines. Our decades-long community-driven work proves it. The creation of Embedded Planning in Florence-Firestone, now a worldwide movement, proves it. The birth of FFCO as a community advocacy voice during COVID proves it. Florence-Firestone is a vibrant and historic community. Students will experience it.
Below is a variety of key resources on Florence-Firestone. I am proud to have worked on nearly all of these projects. These help reframe the narrative about our community. They tell a fuller story of partnerships, solidarity, and hope.
Florence-Firestone Community Organization Latin Labic & Expo Kermesse:
Florence-Firestone Community Organization and SELA Collaborative interview, including Embedded Planning origins in Florence-Firestone (starts at 5:25 min mark):
How a Tire Shop in South L.A. Became a Community Hub for Locals:
Cal Poly Pomona MURP student Abby Urquiza found some conspicuous Hostile Architecture in Tokyo. Last semester, we examined Hostile Architecture in the Planning & Control module in our course, URP 5120: Planning Ideas & Action. From our readings:
The city is engaged in a merciless struggle to make public facilities and spaces as ‘unlivable’ as possible for the homeless and the poor.
In 2024, what began in Florence-Firestone transformed into an international movement. Embedded Planning won.
When I started this praxis in South Central LA, some planning figureheads viewed street-level planning work with skepticism. Today, planning organizations are implementing Embedded Planning praxis as official policy. The City of Fort Wayne didn’t just adopt our approach — they embraced it fully, showing what’s possible when management supports planners working directly from community spaces.
This year validated what our community knew all along: We Cannot Plan From Our Desks.
Key transformations: • Fort Wayne’s formal implementation of Embedded Planning with full institutional support • Florence-Firestone Community Organization’s expansion of street-level programs • FFCO’s Latin Labic + Expo Kermesse bringing creative placemaking to South Central LA • Growing recognition through APA Planning Advocate and Pioneer awards • Cal Poly Pomona Urban and Regional Planning students advancing community-centered research
Looking ahead: As Embedded Planning expands globally in 2025, our focus remains clear — rebuilding trust through street-level planning while keeping our trailblazing work in Florence-Firestone as our north star.
To every planner now embedding themselves in communities, and to every community member who showed us the way: this transformation belongs to all of us. The future of planning isn’t in our offices. It’s on the streets, in the neighborhoods, with the people.
Jonathan Pacheco Bell’s Embedded Planning approach revolutionizes planning practice by emphasizing street-level planning within the community rather than traditional desk-based methods. Developed by Bell in South Central LA and publicly introduced in 2018, this praxis seeks to rebuild trust and foster meaningful relationships with marginalized communities historically harmed by inequitable planning.
Embedded Planning involves planners working directly from community spaces and places, engaging residents in their everyday environments. This immersive approach helps planners gain a deeper understanding of local needs and aspirations, ensuring that community voices significantly shape planning decisions. By embedding themselves into neighborhoods, planners build strong, authentic relationships, moving beyond one-off, transactional, superficial consultations to create lasting and impactful partnerships.
Despite its support from communities, Embedded Planning has faced resistance from conventional planning practice and management, which has viewed this approach with skepticism. Working from the neighborhood to integrate community directly into planning processes challenges traditional methods and requires navigating complex dynamics between stakeholder expectations and regulatory constraints.
Since its inception, Embedded Planning has gained an international following among emerging planners who are eager to implement more inclusive practices. Bell’s talk will highlight real-world case studies, reflections, and personal experiences, while also showcasing the approach’s challenges and benefits. Attendees will learn how Embedded Planning fosters trust, informs better decision-making, and promotes more equitable community development. This emerging movement represents a crucial shift towards centering planning as an active and continuous process from within the community and represents the future of planning.
Jonathan Pacheco Bell is a Senior Embedded Planner at 4LEAF, Inc., Lecturer in Urban & Regional Planning at Cal Poly Pomona, and Vice President/Public Information Officer of the nonprofit Florence-Firestone Community Organization in South Central Los Angeles.
A practicing urban planner with over 20 years of experience spanning the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, Jonathan has expertise in community engagement, participatory design, inclusive public space, long-range plans, zoning enforcement, ordinance development, planning studies, and project management.
During his tenure as a County planner in South Central LA’s Florence-Firestone community, Jonathan created Embedded Planning. This praxis situates the work of planners on the street-level, not behind a desk, to increase equity and participation for historically marginalized populations harmed by inequitable planning. What began in South Central is now an international movement of Embedded Planners with feet on the street. Jonathan has guest lectured widely on Embedded Planning praxis. His speaking engagements include Columbia University, UCLA, Ohio State, University of Utah, Pratt Institute, Stanford Engineering, Woodbury University, and East LA College Architecture; state and national APA Conferences in California, Iowa, and Louisiana; and public forums such as AARP Livable Communities, City Parks Alliance, and the SF Urban Film Fest.
Jonathan has been a leader in the American Planning Association for over a decade. He’s a member of the Latinos and Planning Division and is published in APA’s practitioner magazine, Planning. He previously served as APA Los Angeles Social Media Director and was the Southern California representative on the APA National Social Equity Task Force. This year, Jonathan proudly received the Planning Advocate Award of Excellence from APA Los Angeles and the Planning Pioneer Award of Excellence from APA Inland Empire.
Born and raised in LA’s Latino/a Eastside, Jonathan serves as a mentor to First Gen students and emerging planners. A product of the California public school system from kindergarten to graduate school, he holds an M.A. in Urban Planning from UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and additional degrees in library and information science, political science, and architecture. Connect at c1typlann3r.blog.
Identifying the Constraints to Implementing a Vegetation Barrier along Valley Boulevard. By: Taylor Galindo
Celebrating the graduates in my 2024 Senior Project class at Cal Poly Pomona Department of Urban and Regional Planning. Today we uplift this researcher:
Identifying the Constraints to Implementing a Vegetation Barrier along Valley Boulevard
By: Taylor Francis Galindo
Abstract:
Ambient air pollution is a significant health concern where industrial zones directly border residential zones. Numerous studies suggest the effectiveness of implementing vegetation to serve as a mitigative strategy in addressing ambient air pollution. This paper will examine the complexities of implementing vegetation as a barrier to mitigate air pollution in an environmental justice community located along Valley Boulevard in Southern California’s San Gabriel Valley. The qualitative data featured in the study collected interviews with local community stakeholders and professionals from various professional backgrounds. These insights provide a foundation of what agencies would need to overcome to implement a vegetation barrier along Valley Boulevard.
Keywords: Public Health, Environmental Injustice, Tree Canopy, Green Barriers, Sustainable Solutions, Ambient Air Pollution, and Industrial Zoning
Taylor presenting at the 2024 Cal Poly Pomona Urban & Regional Planning Senior Projects Day. Photo: Jonathan Pacheco Bell
Multi-use Trails: A Path to a Third Place at The Tracks at Brea Trail. By: David Pascual
Celebrating the graduates in my 2024 Senior Project class at Cal Poly Pomona Department of Urban and Regional Planning. Today we uplift this researcher:
Multi-use Trails: A Path to a Third Place at The Tracks at Brea Trail
By: David Pascual
Abstract:
This research examines the role of The Tracks at Brea Trail (TAB trail), a multi-use trail located in Brea, California, in Orange County, as a new Third Place among the existing Third Places that Americans identify, such as coffee shops, restaurants, libraries, shops, and even local community centers. Currently, the American adult population is experiencing high stress levels and sedentary lifestyles, increasing mental health problems and fatalities. With rising concerns about mental well-being among adults, there are limited Third Places to improve well-being, which is difficult to do outside peaceful environments.
Eleven walking tours were conducted with thirteen participants and photo evidence was taken, documenting how individuals perceive the greenspace and trail design elements TAB trail offers. The participants’ commentary highlighted their limited knowledge of Third Places, awareness of wildflowers and treescapes along the trail, and sense of isolation in certain trail sections. Participants who experienced distress commented that the trail helped improve their current emotions.
Multi-use trails shed awareness on how transportation planners must consider the greenspaces that individuals use to enhance their well-being while preserving the natural environment for local wildlife and plants and creating sections along those greenspaces. Cities and planners need to move forward in promoting spaces in and among multi-use trails to improve an individual’s social and mental well-being.
David presenting at the 2024 Cal Poly Pomona Urban & Regional Planning Senior Projects Day. Photo: Jonathan Pacheco Bell
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