james rojas latino urbanism james rojas latino urbanism

His art making workshops wrest communities vernacular knowledges to develop urban planning solutions . By James Rojas, John Kamp. By comparing Vicenza and ELA I realized that Latinos and Italians experienced public/private, indoor/ourdoor space the same way through their body and social habits. Ironically, this is the type of vibrancy that upscale pedestrian districts try so hard to create via a top-down control of scale, uses, consistent tree canopy, wide sidewalks, and public art. Architects are the brick and mortar of social cohesion. I think a lot of people of color these neighborhoods are more about social cohesion. The street vendors do a lot more to make LA more pedestrian friendly than the Metro can do. He has developed an innovative public-engagement and community-visioning method that uses art-making as its medium. I used to crack this open and spend hours creating structures and landscapes: Popsicle sticks were streets; salt and pepper shaker tops could be used as cupolas. When it occurred, however, I was blissfully unaware of it. Im not sure how much of that I can convey in []. Rojas and Kamp recently signed a contract with Island Press to co-write a book on creative, sensory-based, and hands-on ways of engaging diverse audiences in planning. I use every day familiar objects to make people feel comfortable. 1000 San Antonio, TX 78229 telephone (210)562-6500 email saludamerica@uthscsa.edu, https://laist.com/2020/10/23/race_in_la_how_an_outsider_found_identity_belonging_in_the_intangible_shared_spaces_of_a_redlined_city.php, https://commonedge.org/designers-and-planners-take-note-peoples-fondest-memories-rarely-involve-technology/, https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/06/05/what-we-can-learn-from-latino-urbanism/, https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/a-place-erased-family-latino-urbanism-and-displacement-on-las-eastside, http://norcalapa.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Latino-vernacular-is-transforming-American-streets.pdf?rel=outbound, https://www.lataco.com/james-rojas-latino-urbanism/, https://lagreatstreets.tumblr.com/post/116044977213/latino-urbanism-in-east-la-and-why-urban-planners, https://www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/why-urban-planners-should-work-with-artists, https://www.voicesactioncenter.org/walking_while_latino_build_your_ideal_latino_street?utm_campaign=it_feb_27_20_5_nongmail&utm_medium=email&utm_source=voicesactioncenter, We Need More Complete Data on Social Determinants of Health, Tell Leaders: Collect Better Crash Data to Guide Traffic Safety, #SaludTues 1/10/2023: American Roads Shouldnt be this Dangerous, Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR). In the unusual workshops of visionary Latino architect James Rojas, community members become urban planners, transforming everyday objects and memories into placards, streets and avenues of a city they would like to live in. Read more about his Rojas and Latino Urbanism in our Salud Hero story here. A lot of it involves walking and changing the scale of the landscape from more car oriented to more pedestrian oriented. Interiors begin where urban planning ends or should begin. The indigenous people had tianguis big market places where they sold things. Theyll host barbecues. Use of this Site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy. Then I would create a map and post it online, announcing it as a self-guided tour that people could navigate on their own. Urban planners work in an intellectual and rational tradition, and they take pride in knowing, not feeling. The work of urban planner James Rojas provides an example of the field's attention to Latinos as actors, agents of change and innovators. My practice called Place It! Its More Than Just Hair: Revitalization of Black Identity, Our Family Guide to a Puerto Rican Christmas Feast, Theres a Baby in My Cake! His Los Angeles-based planning firm is called Place It! In fact, some Latino modifications were even banned in existing city codes and zoning ordinances. This new type of plaza is not the typical plaza we see in Latin American or Europe, with strong defining street walls and a clearly defined public purpose. Colton, Calif. (69.3% Latino) was hit hard by poor transportation and land use decisions. And I now actually get invited by city agencies to offer workshops that can inform the development of projects and long-range plans. The front yard acts as a large foyer and becomes an active part of the housescape.. That meant American standards couldnt measure, explain, or create Latinos experiences, expressions, and adaptations. You can even use our reports to urge planners and decision-makers to ensure planning policies, practices, and projects are inclusive of Latino needs, representative of existing inequities, and responsibly measured and evaluated. Though planners deal with space a different scale than interior designers, the feeling of space is no less important. Latinos are the nation's largest racial/ethnic minority group, yet knowledge of their physical health is less well documented or understood relative to other groups. November 25, 2020. James Rojas loved how his childhood home brought family and neighbors together. Through art-based three-dimensional modeling and interactive workshops, PLACE IT! He also wanted to help Latinos recognize these contributions and give them the tools to articulate their needs and aspirations to planners and decisionmakers. Perhaps a bad place, rationally speaking, but I felt a strong emotional attachment to it.. Since the protest, which ended in violent disbandment by Los Angeles County sheriffs, Chicano urbanists have . James is an award-winning planner anda native Angeleno, and he tells usabout how growing up in East LA and visiting his grandmothers house shaped the way he thinks about urban spaces and design. Sometimes it might be selling something from their front yard like a tag sale. For K-5 students, understanding how cities are put together starts by making urban space a personal experience. Where available, Latinos make heavy use of public parks, and furniture, fountains, and music pop up to transform front yards into personal statements, all contributing to the vivid, unique landscape of the new Latino urbanism. Stories are based on and told by real community members and are the opinions and views of the individuals whose stories are told. Growing up in ELA I spent most of time outside, the same way I spent my time in Vicenza. We will go beyond physical infrastructure, to focus on social infrastructureissues of access, local needs, the hopes and dreams of people living there. By building fences, they bind together adjacent homes. Rojas also organizes trainings and walking tours. provides a comfortable space to help community members understand and discuss the deeper meaning of place and mobility. James Rojas Combines Design and Engagement through Latino Urbanism Alumnus James Rojas (BS Interior Design '82) is an urban planner, community activist, and artist. 818 252 5221 |admissions@woodbury.edu. These different objects might trigger an emotion, a memory, or aspiration for the participants. read: windmills on market, our article on streetsblog sf. Youre using space in a more efficient way. By examining hundreds of small objects placed in front of them participants started to see, touch, and explore the materials they begin choosing pieces that they like, or help them build this memory. (The below has been lightly edited for space and clarity.). Rojas adapted quickly and found a solution: video content. Rasquache is a form of cultural expression in which you make do with or repurpose what is available. The Italian passeggiata was similar to car cruising in ELA. This inspires me to create activities that can help people to make sense of the city and to imagine how they can contribute to reshaping the place. It took a long time before anyone started to listen. However exercise-minded residents would go to walk or jog in the neighborhood. They will retrofit their front yard into a plaza. Thinking about everything from the point-of-view of the automobile is wrong, Rojas said. References to specific policymakers, individuals, schools, policies, or companies have been included solely to advance these purposes and do not constitute an endorsement, sponsorship, or recommendation. We worked on various pro-bono projects and took on issues in LA. He has developed an innovative public-engagement and community-visioning method that uses art-making as its medium. Here a front yard is transformed into a plaza, with a central fountain and lamppost lighting. Rojas, who coined the term "Latino Urbanism," has been researching and writing about it for 30 years. South Colton was the proverbial neighborhood on the wrong side of the tracks, according to South Colton Livable Corridor Plan. Most children outgrow playing with toys- not me! In the U.S., Latinos redesign their single-family houses to enable the kind of private-public life intersections they had back home. Dr. Michael Mendez is an assistant professor of environmental policy and planning at the University of California, Irvine. Many other family members lived nearby. By combining both these plazas and the courtyards of Mexico, residents created places for people to congregate in their own neighborhood. writer Sam Newberg) that talks about the real-life impact of the "new urbanist" approach to planning in that city, and the []. Before he coined Latino Urbanism, he studied architecture and city planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). To get in touch with us, please feel free to give the Admissions Office a call, send an email, or fill out the form. Through this creative approach, we were able to engage large audiences in participating and thinking about place in different ways, all the while uncovering new urban narratives. Activities aim to make planning less intimidating and reflect on gender, culture, history, and sensory experiences. Rojas is pounding the pavement and working the long-game, one presentation at a time. And fenced front yards are not so much about delineating private space as moving the private home space closer to the street. The network is a project of the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at UT Health San Antonio. How could he help apply this to the larger field of urban planning? Few outward signs or landmarks indicate a Latino community in the United States, but you know instantly when youre in one because of the large number of people on the streets. I had entered a harsh, Puritanical world, Rojas wrote in an essay. James Rojas is an urban planner, community activist, and artist. Although Rojas has educated and converted numerous community members and decisionmakers, the critiques of the 1980s still remain today. They have to get off their computers and out of their cars to heal the social, physical and environmental aspects of our landscape. This side yard became the center of our family lifea multi-generational and multi-cultural plaza, seemingly always abuzz with celebrations and birthday parties, Rojas said. Merchandise may be arranged outside on the sidewalkdrawing people inside from the street. Its really more decorative. I am inspired by the vernacular landscapes of East L.A.the streetscapes of its commercial strips and residential areas. Rojas went on to launch the Latino Urbanism movement that empowers community members and planners to inject the Latino experience into the urban planning process. He holds a degree in city planning and architecture studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he wrote his thesis The Enacted Environment: The Creation of Place by Mexican and Mexican Americans in East Los Angeles (1991). The ephemeral nature of these temporary retail outlets, which are run from the trunks of cars, push carts, and blankets tossed on sidewalks, activates the street and bonds people and place. It later got organized as a bike tourwith people riding and visiting the sites as a group during a scheduled time. Michael has more than a decade of senior-level . It is an unconventional and new form of plaza but with all the social activity of a plaza nonetheless. In Mexico, a lot of homes have interior courtyards, right? But for most people, the city is a physical and emotional experience. They are less prescriptive and instead facilitate residents do-it-yourself (DIY) or rasquache nature of claiming and improving the public realm. In Latino neighborhoods in Los Angeles and Chicago and Minneapolis, you might notice a few common elements: A front fence, maybe statue of the Virgin Mary, a table and chairs, even a fountain and perhaps a concrete or tile floor. Gone was the side yard that brought us all together and, facing the street, kept us abreast with the outside world, Rojas wrote. Rojas grew up in the East L.A. (96.4% Latino) neighborhood Boyle Heights. Encouraged by community support for the project, Councilmember Pacheco secured $800,000 from the County Department of Parks and Recreation to build a continuous jogging path that would be safe and comfortable for pedestrians and joggers. Sojin Kim is a curator at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. The Latino landscape is part memory, but more importantly, its about self-determination.. explores the participants relationship through lived experiences, needs, and aspirations.. They gained approval as part of a team of subcontractors. I went home for the six-week Christmas break and walked my childhood streets and photographed the life I saw unfolding before me with a handheld camera. So, he came up with Latino vernacular, which morphed into Latino Urbanism.. I wanted a greater part of the L.A. public to recognize these public displays and decorations as local cultural assets, as important as murals and monuments. His installation work has been shown at the Los Museum of Contemporary Art, The Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston, the Venice Biennale, the Exploratorium, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Bronx Museum of Art, and the Getty. Rojas was shocked to find some would look down on this neighborhood. Ill be working with students on applied critical thinking about equity. What distinguishes a plaza from a front yard? Black plumes of smoke covered LA as far as the eye could see as I drove on Hollywood freeway fleeing the city to the San Gabriel Valley. I began to reconsider my city models as a tool for increasing joyous participation by giving the public artistic license to imagine, investigate, construct, and reflect on their community. Unlike the great Italian streets and piazzas which have been designed for strolling, Latinos [in America] are forced to retrofit the suburban street for walking, Rojas later wrote. The treads are found in everyday routines in our Latino communities.. Healing allows communities to take a holistic approach, or a deeper level of thinking, that restores the social, mental, physical and environmental aspects of their community. I tell the students that the way Latinos use space and create community is not based on conforming to modern, land-use standards or the commodification of land, Rojas said. Art became my new muse, and I became fascinated by how artists used their imagination, emotion, and bodies to capture the sensual experience of landscapes. Mexican elderswith their sternness and house dressessocialized with their American-born descendantswith their Beatles albums and mini-skirts. They illustrate how Latinos create a place, Rojas said. In more traditional tactical urbanism, they put their name to it. Taco trucks, for example, now they see it as reviving the street. how latino urbanism is changing life in american neighborhoods. listen here. The numerous, often improvised neighborhood mom-and-pop shops that line commercial and residential streets in Latino neighborhoods indicated that most customers walk to these stores. Every change, no matter how small, has meaning and purpose. Latinos bring their traditions and activities to the existing built environment and American spatial forms and produce a Latino urbanism, or a vernacular. How a seminal event in . This highlights the hidden pattern language of the street that is not apparent because Latino cultural spatial and visual elements are superimposed on the American landscape of order and perfection. Join our mailing list and help us with a tax-deductible donation today. View full entry I give them a way to understand their spatial and mobility needs so they can argue for them, Rojas said. Today hundreds of residents us this jogging path daily. A lot of it is based on values. DIY orrasquacheLatino mobility interventions focus on the moment or journey, Rojas said according to LA Taco. This goes back to before the Spanish arrived in Latin America. To bring Latino Urbanism into urban planning, Rojas founded the Latino Urban Forum in 2005. Despite . l experience of landscapes. I used nuts, bolts, and a shoebox of small objects my grandmother had given me to build furniture. He released the videos in April 2020. For me, this local event marked the beginning of the Latino transformation of the American landscape. His grandmothers new home, a small Spanish colonial revival house, sat on a conventional suburban lot designed for automobile access, with a small front yard and big backyard. How a seminal event in Los Angeles shaped the thinking of an urban designer. We want to give a better experience to people outside their cars, Rojas said. James Rojas (1991) has described, the residents have developed a working peoples' manipulation and adaptation is a national Latino-focused organization that creates culturally relevant and research-based stories and tools to inspire people to drive healthy changes to policies, systems, and environments for Latino children and families. Rojas, in grad school, learned that neighborhood planners focused far more on automobiles in their designs than they did on the human experience or Latino cultural influences. Generally its not really utilized. It was a poor mans European vacation. But as a native Angeleno, I am mostly inspired by my experiences in L.A., a place with a really complicated built environment of natural geographical fragments interwoven with the current urban infrastructure. From the Me Too movement to Black Lives Matter, feelings are less-tangible, but no-less-integral, elements of a city that transform mere infrastructure into place. From vibrant graffiti to extravagant murals and store advertisements, blank walls offer another opportunity for cultural expression. In addition to wrangling up some warm clothes, he had to pull together about a dozen boxes containing Lego pieces, empty wooden and Styrofoam spools, colored beads, and plastic bottles. Latinos have something good. These places and activities tell a story of survival and identity that every Latino in the US has either created, or experienced. By allowing participants to tell their stories through these images, they placed a value on these everyday activities and places. The use of paint helps Latinos to inexpensively claim ownership of a place. He wanted to better understand how Mexicans and Mexican Americans use the places around them. If you grow up in communities of color there is no wrong or right, theres just how to get by. In New York, I worked with the health department and some schools to imagine physically active schools. Maybe theres a garden or a lawn. Because of the workshop and their efforts, today there is the new 50th Street light rail station serving Ability 360 center, complete with a special design aimed to be a model of accessibility for individuals with disabilities. Local interior designer Michael Walker create a logo of a skeleton jogging with a tag that said Run In Peace, which everyone loved. The network is a project of the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at UT Health San Antonio. Planners have long overlooked benefits in Latino neighborhoods, like walkability and social cohesion. Latinos walk with feeling. Urban planners use abstract tools like maps, numbers, and words, which people often dont understand.. In Minneapolis, I worked with African American youth on planning around the Mississippi River. Latinos build fences for these same reasons, but they have an added twist in Latino neighborhoods. Social cohesion is the number one priority in Latino neighborhoods, Rojas said. I designed an art-deco, bank lobby, a pink shoe store, and a Spanish room addition. Essays; The Chicano Moratorium and the Making of Latino Urbanism. Through these early, hands-on activities I learned that vacant spaces became buildings, big buildings replaced small ones, and landscapes always changed. Rojas has spent decades promoting his unique concept, "Latino Urbanism," which empowers community members and planners to inject the Latino experience into the urban planning process. It has to do with how Latinos are transforming urban spaces. A much more welcoming one, where citizens don't have to adapt to the asphalt and bustle, but is made to fit the people. These objects include colorful hair rollers, pipe cleaners, buttons, artificial flowers, etc. He recognized that the street corners and front yards in East Los Angeles served a similar purpose to the plazas in Germany and Italy. Its more urban design focused. Moreover, solutions neglect the human experience. Our claim is that rasquache, as a form of life, is the social practice of social reproduction, the creative work of holding together the social fabric of a community or society, according to a discussion forum post by Magally Miranda and Kyle Lane-McKinley. to talk about art in planning and Latino urbanism. In an essay, Rojas wrote that Latino single-family houses communicate with each other by sharing a cultural understanding expressed through the built environment.. In an informal way. There is a general lack of understanding of how Latinos use, value, and retrofit the existing US landscape in order to survive, thrive, and create a sense of belonging. Studying urban planning took the joy out of cities because the program was based on rational thinking, numbers and a pseudoscience. Rojas wanted to better understand the Latino needs and aspirations that led to these adaptations and contributions and ensure they were accounted for in formal planning and decision-making processes. We can move people from place to place, but what are we doing with them when they get there? Do issues often come up where authorities, maybe with cultural biases, try to ban Latino Urbanism on the basis of zoning or vending licenses? You reframe the built environment around you to support that kind of mobility. Since James Rojas was child, he has been fascinated with urban spaces like streets, sidewalks, plazas, storefronts, yards, and porches. Therefore I use street photography and objects to help Latinos and non-Latinos to reflect, visualize, and articulate the rich visual, spatial, and sensory landscape. Small towns, rural towns. I think a lot of it is just how we use our front yard. It required paving over Rojas childhood home, displacing his immediate and extended family. We conducted a short interview with him by phone to find out what the wider planning field could learn from it. The new facility is adjacent to an existing light rail line, but there was no nearby rail station for accessing the center. The L.A. home had a big side yard facing the street where families celebrated birthdays and holidays. Overall, Rojas felt that the planning process was intimidating and too focused on infrastructure for people driving. Thank you. Through these interventions based on memory, needs, and aspirations, many Latinos transform auto-centric streets into pedestrian-friendly zones for community interaction, and cultural expression. Building small cities became my hobby as I continued to find objects with which to express architecture and landscapes in new ways. For example, the metrics used to determine transportation impacts are often automobile-oriented and neglect walking, biking, and transit, thus solutions encourage more driving. Street vendors, plazas, and benches are all part of the Latin American streetscape. So do you think these principles would be beneficial for more communities to adopt? 11.16.2020. Now lets make it better.. Rojas wanted to create a common language for planners and community members. Streetsblog: What would you say are the key principles of Latino Urbanism? Its very informal. During this time I visited many others cities by train and would spend hours exploring them by foot. Like my research our approach was celebratory and enhanced the community. Used as an urban planning tool, it investigates how cities feel to us and how we create belonging. Woodburys interior design education prepared me to examine the impacts of geography and urban design of how I felt in various European cities. However, Latino adaptations and contributions like these werent being looked at in an urban planning context. He learned how Latinos in East Los Angeles would reorder and retrofit public and private space based on traditional indigenous roots and Spanish colonialism from Latin America. James Rojas is busy. After the presentations, they asked me, Whats next? We all wanted to be involved in city planning. However its the scale and level of design we put into public spaces that makes them work or not. Orange County also saw . Others build enormous installationslike an old woman I knew who used to transform her entire living room into the landscape of Bethlehem. It would culminate with a party at my apartment on Three Kings Day. In 2013 I facilitated a Place It! So Rojas created a series of one- to two-minute videos from his experiences documenting the Latino built environment in many of these communities. Why werent their voices being heard? year-long workgroup exploring recommendations to address transportation inequities in Latino communities.