Embedded Planning Praxis Keynote at APA Iowa Conference

[Collage by @mijacutsdeep on IG]

Feet on the ground in #Ottumwa for the Iowa APA Chapter Conference and my Friday 10/14 keynote:

𝘽𝙪𝙞𝙡𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝘾𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙪𝙣𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙋𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙣𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙝𝙞𝙥𝙨 𝙏𝙝𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝 𝙀𝙢𝙗𝙚𝙙𝙙𝙚𝙙 𝙋𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜

Community engagement must evolve. We planners engage the public when we need feedback. People are consulted; input is gathered; and plans, for the most part, incorporate public input — then the relationship concludes, only to restart with the next project. Such transactional planning does little to build long-term stakeholder relationships.

In a time of increasing interrogation of planning and its legacies of inequity, planners today are seeking better ways to build and sustain meaningful partnerships. Urban planner Jonathan Pacheco Bell (@c1typlann3r) proposes #EmbeddedPlanning as a way to fundamentally restructure community engagement and practice. Embedded Planning means planning from the street, not from a desk. Embedded Planners work in the spaces and places of community members. Embedded Planners build bridges with marginalized communities harmed by past planning practices. Embedded Planning is a praxis that puts theory into action to better this world. Since Bell declared Embedded Planning exists in 2018, it has grown into an international movement embraced by emerging planners.

Through storytelling and personal reflection, Bell will illustrate how Embedded Planning is being used to build lasting community partnerships that center engagement as an ongoing process. Attendees will learn the benefits and challenges of Embedded Planning, including takeaways for implementation, and understand why this #praxis is the future of planning.

[Collage by @mijacutsdeep on IG]

Embedded Planning Praxis Interview on Instagram Live

Infographic by Isabelle Soares @UrbanDesignProject

I enjoyed discussing Embedded Planning praxis on Instagram Live with Isabelle Soares @urbandesignproject. Planners and designers from Brazil, Germany, Netherlands, Canada and the US took part in the event, making it the first international conversation I’ve done on Embedded Planning. I learned a lot from Isabelle and the audience. Every chat advances the praxis. More to come.

Embedded Planning Keynote at APA Iowa Conference 2022

Image by APA Iowa Chapter

Honored to deliver the Friday, Oct 14 keynote at the APA Iowa Chapter Conference

Building Community Partnerships Through Embedded Planning

Community engagement must evolve. We planners engage the public when we need feedback. People are consulted; input is gathered; and plans, for the most part, incorporate public input — then the relationship concludes, only to restart with the next project. Such transactional planning does little to build long-term stakeholder relationships.

In a time of increasing interrogation of planning and its legacies of inequity, planners today are seeking better ways to build and sustain meaningful partnerships. Urban planner Jonathan Pacheco Bell (@c1typlann3r) proposes Embedded Planning as a way to fundamentally restructure community engagement and practice. Embedded Planning means planning from the street, not from a desk. Embedded Planners work in the spaces and places of community members. Embedded Planners build bridges with marginalized communities harmed by past planning practices. Embedded Planning is a praxis that puts theory into action to better this world. Since Bell declared Embedded Planning exists in 2018, it has grown into an international movement embraced by emerging planners.

Through storytelling and personal reflection, Bell will illustrate how #EmbeddedPlanning is being used to build lasting community partnerships that center engagement as an ongoing process. Attendees will learn the benefits and challenges of Embedded Planning, including takeaways for implementation, and understand why this #praxis is the future of planning.

South Central YLEAD

Infographic by South Central YLEAD at CDTech

This week I joined Youth Leaders Empowered Active & Diverse (YLEAD) at CDTech for a conversation on urban planning and gentrification in South Central LA. I shared my story of working on the ground supporting the community with tools and knowledge to preserve South Central history. We shed light on the importance of urban planning for a South Central future without displacement.

Modernism vs Postmodernism

I’m revising an early essay I wrote interrogating planning theory in practice. It’ll be the first entry in my Student Papers Archive. I needed to do some background research on the two theories under scrutiny: Rational Planning and Postmodern Planning. In addition to peer reviewed journals from the planning realm, I found this exceptionally helpful chart comparing Modernism and Postmodernism.

From the URL cited on page 2, I noted the author is Professor Martin Irvine at Georgetown. But a copy-paste of the URL didn’t take me to the chart; instead it forwarded me to the professor’s homepage. And I couldn’t find the chart there. The last revision is dated 2012, but this side-by-side certainly is relevant 10 years later — and will remain so.

I want this chart to live on. I don’t know if the host site’s future update(s) will retain it. So much web ephemera is lost without us knowing. So, I’m doing my part by sharing Professor Irvine’s Modernism vs Postmodernism resource here. Researchers, check it out and please be sure to cite the original author if using the chart.

We Saw Ourselves in Cypress Hill

Representing Cypress Hill in my 1992 yearbook photo at Montebello High School

I wrote about the impact of Cypress Hill’s trailblazing self-titled debut album that dropped 31 years ago today, and explained why I represented them to the fullest in my 1992 yearbook photo at Montebello High School.

The #HipHopHistory microessay is on my Instagram (private but I add): https://www.instagram.com/c1typlann3r/

Excerpt:

“We saw ourselves in Cypress. They talked like us. We looked like them. Or tried, if you could grow a goatee.

This foolio went all in. I wore out that cassette tape. I grew a whiskery #brocha. I joined the Cypress Hill fan club, scoring stickers, newsletters, and the OG Cypress Hill t-shirt with the skull, weed, & globe in compass album cover on the front, and on the back it read: “The Phuncky Cypress Hill Shit.” The iconic gear got me suspended from Montebello High and gaffeled up by Magic Mountain security —“harassed by a pig real fast,” to quote B-Real.

When it came time for my 1992 yearbook photo, I had to represent. Vatos don’t smile ey. But I was moody too. The night before I’d phucked up my mustache trim. I cut it all off rather than leave it #chueco in the yearbook. I told myself that I was still down for mine. That’s not Johnny, it’s SKUZ ONE.”

Quoted in LAist on Student Debt

Image: LAist

I’m interviewed about the history of student debt in this excellent long form reporting by Julia Barajas at LAist. I thought about my urban planning students at Cal Poly Pomona and Pitzer College for this one.

Excerpt:

In May 2022, the Washington Post reported that White House officials were exploring the promised cancellation of $10,000 in student debt per borrower, but limiting efforts to people who earned less than $150,000 last year.

Opponents to this proposal can be found across the political spectrum.

Jonathan Pacheco Bell, an urban planner and adjunct professor at Cal Poly Pomona and Pitzer College, said he appreciates that Biden has not forgotten his campaign promise, but $10,000 is insufficient.

“It’s a way to split the difference so that you make some people happy and some people mad, but you’re not going to piss off the other side of the aisle, because you didn’t wipe away all the debt. It’s a very comfortable and extremely safe position,” he said.

Some of his students have taken on tens of thousands of dollars in debt, he added. “Meanwhile, the U.S. seems to be endlessly funding wars and other priorities with almost no hesitation, but it hesitates to invest in its own workforce.”

Student Papers Archive to Launch

Detail of my original student paper. Photo by Jonathan Pacheco Bell

Eight months after announcement, I’m ready to launch my #StudentPapersArchive series on Medium: c1typlann3r.medium.com.

Coming very soon, the first publication is titled, “What’s Theory Got to Do With It? An Examination of the Utility of Planning Theory in Planning Practice.”

I wrote the original in March 2004 for Professor Evelyn Blumenberg’s course UP 222A Introduction to Planning History and Theory at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Stay tuned.

Embedded Planning Cited in Planning Theory & Practice

I appreciate UC Irvine Professor Michael Mendez citing me and Embedded Planning in his article, “The Reflective Practitioner in the Context of Racial and Environmental Justice” in Planning Theory & Practice 2022. This is the Repair and Healing issue co-edited by Professor Courtney Knapp.

This is the first mention of Embedded Planning praxis in a peer-reviewed journal! The entire issue is Open Access. Read Dr Méndez and all the insightful articles.

Here’s the excerpt:

“Allowing time for critical reflective practice can be a powerful tool for planners to think purposively about their prior actions and to learn how in the future they can better challenge multiple forms of inequality embedded in the urban planning profession. Such an approach has led one county planner, Jonathan Pacheco Bell, to advocate broadly for planners to step away from their office desks and embed themselves in local communities, in what he calls, “Embedded Planning.” He believes that “for planning to achieve equity in communities, planners need to see the realities of community life…[and] connect with the people we serve” (Pacheco Bell, 2018). While he still works in an office and attends community meetings, he argues for prioritizing street-level engagement. Pacheco Bell often goes directly to constituents’ localized spaces: homes, churches, businesses, and bus stops to perform plain language outreach, conduct neighborhood organizing, give walking tours, mentor students, do empathetic code enforcement, and more. Pacheco Bell argues that working in such a manner helps produce more equitable plans, policies, and ordinances.

This type of emerging embedded planning offers a multidimensional view of the interactions between people’s well-being and the varying contexts of climate or environment or community shaped by wider political, institutional, economic, and social structures (Goldsmith et al., 2021; Mendez et al., 2020). For practitioners, in particular, such an approach can provide valuable contextual analysis and reflection on what hinders racial and environmental justice reform within the planning and regulatory institutions.”

MLIS 2012 Thesis Proposal on Libraries in Florence-Firestone

Graham Library in Florence-Firestone on February 18, 2012. Photo by Jonathan Pacheco Bell

I recently stumbled upon the fact that my SJSU bepress page was deleted along with the link to my 2012 MLIS thesis proposal, “Libraries in the ‘Hood: A Social History of the Florence and Graham Branch Libraries in the Community of Florence-Firestone, 1912-2012.”

That’s a damn shame.

This work served as the basis for my 2015 chapter “Library History as Community History: Florence and Graham” in the book, A Paseo Through Time in Florence-Firestone, and it remains a local history resource for those who have it.

But it should be an accessible resource for any community member who goes looking for it. They shouldn’t hit a 404 error.

This was the impetus I needed.

I’ve added my Florence-Firestone MLIS thesis proposal to my Writings section on here.

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