Check out this spotlight video on our nonprofit Florence-Firestone Community Organization (501c3).
We’re honored to be featured by Southeast Los Angeles Collaborative in the #OurSELARegion campaign.
FFCO is a bottom up Embedded Planning organization, a natural progression of the work we started in this community nearly 20 years ago!
Cal Poly Pomona Communications is recording a short video about my creation of Embedded Planning praxis. Students and community members are invited to join! It’s in South Central LA’s Florence-Firestone community, where this street-level praxis was born.
Come through Sunday, July 30, 2023, 9am to 12pm at the Florence-Firestone Community Organization, 6940 Compton Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90001.
In support of Vision Zero, join us for a community walk in Florence-Firestone Sunday, July 23rd from 10am to 1pm. FFCO’s Ramsey Nicholson and I will highlight landmarks, social history, and community issues on the route. No registration required! Just come through.
Meeting place:
Florence-Firestone Community Organization (501c3)
6940 Compton Avenue, Los Angeles 90001
Route includes:
Compton Avenue, Florence Avenue, Maie Avenue, Graham Avenue, Miramonte Boulevard, E. 66th Street
Florence-Firestone Community Organization in partnership with Estolano Advisors, BikeLA, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, & California Office of Traffic Safety
Join our 6/3 pancake + BBQ fundraiser for Jocelyn Borrayo Baltazar, UCLA MURP ‘23! As her master’s capstone client project, Jocelyn prepared “A Strategic Plan for Praxis” for our nonprofit Florence-Firestone Community Organization. 𝘼𝙡𝙡 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙘𝙚𝙚𝙙𝙨 𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙨𝙚𝙙 𝙜𝙤 𝙩𝙤 𝙅𝙤𝙘𝙚𝙡𝙮𝙣’𝙨 𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙙!
Everyone is invited! Thank you❣️
In community,
Jonathan Pacheco Bell, MAUP+MLIS
Vice President
Florence-Firestone Community Organization (501c3)
6940 Compton Avenue, Los Angeles 90001
Last month I returned to UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs to deliver my annual talk, “Creating Equitable Public Spaces Through Embedded Planning.”
This new version of the talk traces my trajectory in planning that has always included having feet on the street. With my background as a high school 90s graffiti writer as the jumping off point, the story follows my path after UCLA Urban Planning: creating #EmbeddedPlanning praxis in Florence-Firestone as an LA County Planner, advancing park equity at the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust, returning to South Central LA to help launch the Florence-Firestone Community Organization (501c3), continuing my 20+ years of critiquing #HostileArchitecture, and now educating emerging critical planners at Cal Poly Pomona Department of Urban and Regional Planning.
My talk concludes with this message: Critical practice is possible. Move with intention to do it as a planner. How?
1/ Develop your own praxis
2/ Embed yourself in communities
3/ Reclaim public space
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.
The 1992 Los Angeles Uprising began thirty years ago today — April 29, 1992.
I was interviewed for “Reflections of the LA Uprising” 30 years later. This is a collaboration by JOVRNALISM, USC Annenberg, KCET, and LA Times.
I shared how the unrest led me on a path toward urban planning in/for South Central LA. And I testified this path would inspire me to create Embedded Planning as an LA County planner on the ground in Florence-Firestone.
Rightfully, this interview was done at the landmark Roosevelt Park pedestrian bridge over the Blue Line.
Many community voices are part of this project. Check out the immersive video “Echoes of the Uprising” where we share our memories and oral histories.
Three decades later, we still have work to do.
I’m interviewed in the New York Times about the human dimensions of informal housing enforcement in South Central Los Angeles. I’m grateful to the family in @FlorenceFirestone who trusted me to share their story.
Conor Dougherty’s December 18, 2021 article is here: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/18/business/economy/california-housing.html
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.
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