Archinect - News

The Chicano Moratorium and the Making of Latino Urbanism

2020-11-18T15:01:00-05:00

In 1970, Los Angeles was a sort of modern utopia-in-progress. At the same time—and for the first time, really—Mexican Americans were becoming an economic, cultural and political force. East Los Angeles became the center of the Chicano Movement, Whittier Boulevard its bustling “Main Street.”

Los Angeles urban planner, artist, community activist, and educator, James Rojas pens a brief history of "Latino Urbanism" tracing through his own life, the community, and the physical space of East Los Angeles. Mr. Rojas coined the word Latino Urbanism and a strong advocate of its meaning, using community gatherings and discussions via his artfully created wood blocks as buildings enabling non architects create imaginary city blocks, civic centers and neighborhoods under his story telling guidance..

"In the late 1960’s, Frank Villalobos, Raul Escobedo, David Angelo, and Manual Orozco, a team of young architects, urban planners, and landscape designers, formed a community design center called Barrio Planners. This politically active group focused their practice on building a Chicano utopia, designing El Mercado as a community event space based on the design of a market in Guadalajara, Mexico. El Mercado was financed through a community collective and was originally designed as a tw...

James Rojas Combines Design and Engagement through Latino Urbanism

2020-03-12T11:44:00-04:00

Architects are no longer builders but healers. They have to get off their computers and out of their cars to heal the social, physical and environmental aspects of our landscape. What architects build is not a finished product but a part of a city’s changing eco-system.

James Rojas as an urbanist with close ties to his home, from its community values, feel, art to neighborhood stories and legends. All materializing in his inimitable urban visioning. His brand of Latino Urbanism via his beloved East LA neighborhood are series of performances, installations, lectures, community based urban design workshops.developed work in unison for better urban life for people at its core. His ideas are assembled and launched as artful visuals, help people recognize Latino LA's own cultural wealth, influencing its current and future environments proposing something joyful and beneficial at the end.

Listen to our interview with James Rojas, recorded in 2016:

'How do you survive here?': James Rojas on Latino Urbanism

2019-06-10T13:48:00-04:00

These are all elements of what planner James Rojas calls “Latino Urbanism,” an informal reordering of public and private space that reflects traditions from Spanish colonialism or even going back to indigenous Central and South American culture. Rojas, who coined the term “Latino Urbanism,” has been researching and writing about it for 30 years. His Los Angeles-based planning firm is called Place It!

Streetsblog interviews MIT-trained, LA-based urban planner James Rojas. When asked if and how principles of Latino Urbanism are being applied to traditional, tactical urbanism, Rojas says: "A lot of it is based on values. As a Latino planner, our whole value towards place is, 'How do you survive here?' I think more planners grew up more in places of perfection. If you grow up in communities of color, there is no wrong or right, there’s just how to get by."

To hear more from James Rojas, listen to Archinect Session's 2016 podcast conversation with him and designer S. Surface about the use of space by the Latinx and queer community following the Pulse nightclub mass shooting.

Latino Placemaking: How the Civil Rights Movement Reshaped East LA

2014-03-25T15:08:00-04:00

Latino Placemaking goes beyond creating great public spaces. It also includes cultural identity, which is shaped by needs, desires, and imagination. The Latino quest for cultural identity parallels the African-American Civil Rights Movement of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, which has its genesis in protests – many of which were carried out in public spaces.