Cal Poly Pomona Seeks Dean of College of Environmental Design

Cal Poly Pomona seeks a Dean of the College of Environmental Design

The new Dean must be an innovative, strategic, and collegial academic leader who embraces the mission of Cal Poly Pomona, is committed to student success, and will be a champion for CPPENV. Ideally, the new Dean of ENV will take office in the spring but is expected to do so no later than June 2022. Review of applications will begin December 6, 2021.

Academic Search is assisting Cal Poly Pomona in this search. Please see the profile for the position here:

ASI-CPP-Dean-College-of-Environmental-Design-Profilep4NONADA1Download

To ensure full consideration, inquiries, nominations, and applications (PDF preferred) should be submitted electronically, in confidence, to: CPPENVDEAN@academicsearch.org

Nominations are encouraged. If you have a nomination for the position, please send the name, position, and institution along with an email address if you have it, to: CPPENVDEAN@academicsearch.org

Nominators and prospective candidates may also arrange a confidential conversation about this opportunity with the senior consultant leading this search, Cynthia M. Patterson, at: Cynthia.Patterson@academicsearch.org

Embedded Planning at AARP Livable Communities Workshop

I spoke about #EmbeddedPlanning praxis at the 2021 AARP Livable Communities Workshop on engaging older adults. Shout out to my co-panelists. And big up to AARP organizers for the session transcript and video. Check it out.

Transcript and video together: https://www.aarp.org/livable-communities/about/info-2021/2021-Livable-Workshop-Collaborating-With-Community.html

We Said Goodbye to Mary Rose Cortese of Florence-Firestone

2015 launch of the β€œEveryday 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 πŸ™πŸ½πŸ’›

Boyz N The Hood Turns 30

The Boyz N The Hood film and years of street reporting on NWA albums helped me become an urban planner in/for South Central LA.

I learned the word β€œgentrification” from Furious Styles’s speech on the street corner in Compton.

Bringing Together My Passions in Librarianship and Urban Planning Through Online Tutoring

Photo by David Iskander on Unsplash

I started tutoring students online during the COVID-19 pandemic and brought together my passions in Librarianship and Urban Planning. In this Medium article, I wrote about becoming a Virtual Librarian with specializations in Urban Studies, Urban Planning, and Library & Information Science.

Voices of Equity and Embedded Planning

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 βš”οΈ


Podcast: Embedded Planning in the Plains of Id

Excerpt of South Central LA Thick Map for “Flatlands: We Cannot Pod From Our Desks”

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, β€œFlatlands: We Cannot Pod From Our Desks.”

Listen to my podcast interview and view the companion Thick Map of South Central LA β€” 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.

Support My Writing and Publishing Through Ko-Fi

For a micro-donations platform, I use Ko-fi (coffee, but it rhymes with “No Fee”)

Ko-fi enables folks to support my writing and publishing passion projects.

A key feature of the platform is that Ko-fi sends 100% of the donations to me as creator β˜•οΈ

As my work on Embedded Planning praxis progresses, I’m now starting, in earnest, to write on more topics close to my heart. This includes reflective autobiography, critical analysis of public space, Los Angeles and Southern California history, and profiles of community leaders written from my on-the-ground perspective.

Donations help fund many aspects in my creative process, such as research, printing, database access, copyediting fees, and of course, the iterative and emotional part of writing.

Anything helps.

If you support my writing, please consider donating through Ko-fi so I can bring these stories to the people.

Thank you,

Jonathan Pacheco Bell, MAUP, MLIS @c1typlann3r

https://ko-fi.com/c1typlann3r

Creating Equitable Public Spaces Through Embedded Planning

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.