Embedded Planning Returns to ELARA
By: Jonathan Pacheco Bell, Maup, Mlis
Tags: Mentorship, Embedded Planning, Covid 19, Urban Planning, East Los Angeles

I got around the city by foot and bus. Sometimes solo, oftentimes with my fellow graffiti writers. You have to graduate from drawing in sketchbooks to writing in the streets. I consider this my inaugural “feet on the ground” experience.

Doing graffiti begat my love of engaging the city at the street level. However “illicit” it may have been, graffiti introduced me to LA’s multilayered urban politics. First Amendment debates about speech vs. vandalism. The territoriality of gangs. The patchwork of LA’s municipal jurisdictions. Aggressive policing in communities of color. These are a few examples of the civic lessons I learned as a writer on the streets.

I learned quickly, as well, that dangers lurk everywhere. CISCO from CBS crew, also known today as Dr. Stefano Bloch, aptly describes the ever-present threats writers face on the streets in his memoir, Going All City: Struggle and Survival in LA’s Graffiti Subculture. From antagonistic rivals and gang members to vigilantes and cops, a graffiti writer has to be ready at all times for when the shit goes down. It’s the price you pay to paint.

Like CISCO, I was chased by gang members and vigilantes, and like CISCO, I got gaffled up by the cops. The stress weighs on you. After five years, several foot races, too many close calls, and a couple of trips to city jails, I realized the risk was just too great. In 1994, I retired from graffiti.

But I didn’t retire my imagination.

Instead, I pivoted my artistic energies into architecture courses at Montebello High School, and that creative focus propelled me into community college. From there, I would eventually find my way to planning cities.

The author in 11th grade winning 1st Place at the 1994 Southern California Building Industry Association Annual Architectural Drafting & Model Building Competition. [Photo by author]

Throughout these decades, the love of the streets stayed with me. It would reemerge 20 years later when I conceived a new form of street-level praxis as an urban planner on the ground in South Central LA.

Embedded Planning is my original contribution to the field of urban planning. Embedded Planning situates the work of planners on the ground in the communities in situ where planners work. To understand a community, you have to be present in it. By embedding oneself in a neighborhood, by becoming part of the daily fabric of community life, by working as much as possible in and from the streets, the embedded planner is positioned to develop authentic, personal relationships with community members. The embedded planner gets to know the neighborhood, intimately. Get out from behind the desk and make the streets your office; you’ll understand what’s working and what needs improvement.

In bringing together people and resources to improve neighborhoods, the embedded planner works as an organizer. In acknowledging and helping to heal neighborhood trauma, the embedded planner is akin to a social worker. Through this intimate and proximate experience, the embedded planner is better equipped to craft plans, policies, ordinances and programs, but also strategies, tactics and actions, informed by people’s everyday lives and the conditions of neighborhoods in which they’re embedded. Embedded Planning advances equity by intentionally positioning planning practice within the daily lived spaces of community members, thereby bringing in more participants to the public planning process. Hence my maxim: “We Cannot Plan From Our Desks!”

Embedded Planning resonates with ELARA students. Their reflection assignments show that they appreciate this activist method during a time of increasingly vexing urban problems.

Graffiti-inspired “We Cannot Plan From Our Desks!” scrawled by CSUN Urban Planning students on the Equity, Diversity, Inclusion visioning wall at the American Planning Association National Planning Conference 2019 in San Francisco. [Photo by James A. Castañeda]

To enrich my talks, I bring in allies. These fellow activists help to connect the idea of Embedded Planning to the myriad planning problems affecting East LA. For instance, organizers from #NOlympicsLA joined me in the classroom to explain how sports-driven development incentivizes gentrification. An activist from Services Not Sweeps presented on the harms of aggressive cleanups of unhoused communities that worsen the physical and mental trauma of people experiencing homelessness. As part of the Housing Element Update, County housing planners engaged ELARA students on efforts in the works to strengthen affordable housing.

On many occasions, I’ve brought in my frequent collaborator, Mike The PoeT Sonksen. Mike wears many “hats” and they all holler “LA!” He’s a poet, journalist, tour guide, educator, publisher, public intellectual, and mentor to countless Angeleno scribes of all ages and from neighborhoods across the vast LA region. After finishing his bachelor’s at UCLA in the late 90s, Mike considered doing a master’s degree in urban planning but ultimately chose to hit the streets as a working poet. Years later, he was writing a regular column for KCET exploring LA neighborhoods. I started reading his LA Letters in 2015 and instantly loved how Mike’s prose fused urban planning and social history with a Hip Hop flavor. One day I tweeted at him to express some reader appreciation. He responded with an invitation to collaborate. This led to, among many collaborations, one of Mike’s most acclaimed essays, “Everyday Heroes of Florence-Firestone.”

Mike and I hit it off as kindred spirits engaged in our own forms of street-level practice. It all came together in our mutual aspiration to educate LA’s future city leaders. ELARA was an ideal venue. With the support of faculty, Mike and I have co-taught writing workshops with 11th and 12th graders using topics such as the Right to the City, Gentrification and Displacement, and the Theory/Practice Gap — topics that Mike and I didn’t engage until well into our college years.