Embedded Planning Returns to ELARA
Part 1 in a series on the author’s return to guest speaking at East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy after the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Esteban E. Torres High School in East Los Angeles has the distinction of being one of three public high schools in the U.S. with an urban planning program. Launched in 2010, the East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy Department of Urban Planning and Design (ELARA) at Torres High teaches students the fundamentals of city planning practice. Community activism is core to its curriculum. The teachers who organized ELARA drew inspiration from the community’s legacy of Chicano/a-led civil rights struggle. Today, East LA and the larger LA Region serve as learning laboratories.
I’ve been a guest speaker at ELARA since 2017. The community engagement studio Public Matters brought me in as a speaker-in-practice for their flagship Greetings from East LA program, and I stayed on as a returning guest in the classrooms of Scott Cody, EdD, and Ana Tenorio. These talks allow me to motivate high schoolers by recounting my route to activist urban planning practice, a journey they’re considering taking too.
Our shared histories connect us. I grew up in the same community as them. That bridges the “lived experience gap” that can exist between well-meaning presenters and students. I was born in Boyle Heights — a longtime…
