Los Angeles-based planner, educator, and activist James Rojas vigorously promotes the values discoverable in what he terms “Latino urbanism”—the influences of Latino culture on urban design and sustainability. He works across the United States using hands-on, art-based community engagement practices to help individuals and communities reflect, collaborate, and find their core values. Rojas spoke with Delirious LA in early February 2021 to discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced Latino neighborhoods in Los Angeles and beyond. Read the interview here.
A few months earlier, Rojas penned “The Education—and Miseducation—of an Urban Planner” for COMMON|EDGE, in which he declares, “A large part of my career has been spent reconciling my formal education with my lived experience as a Gay Chicano. Looking back now, I feel as if I’ve had to relearn much of what I was born into. My journey is in some sense a circular one leading back home.” Read his article here.
For more on Rojas’s urban planning practice, Place It!, visit placeit.org.
