James Rojas
Recent Posts
Reimagining a Healthy and Sustainable Streets in Monterey Park/Alhambra Hands-on Place It Workshop
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Monterey Park and Alhambra’s commercial streets are a physical and mental assault to the human body. People don’t enjoy walking or using public transit on them. The solution to this problem has traditionally been for people to buy bigger cars and these cities widen the roads exacerbating the problem. The Asian Pacific Islander Forward Movement […]
Latino Active Transportation: Reinvigorating Walking in U.S. Suburbs
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Latinos make purposeful meaningful changes to their streets, representing their struggles, triumphs, everyday mobility habits, and beliefs. Many urban designers poo-poo the Latino pedestrian vernacular as messy, informal, and spontaneous, but these grassroots solutions represent a resource that non-Latinos should draw from.
Vision Zero L.A.: Using Art To Make Streets Safer For Everyone
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(Streetsblog Los Angeles, L.A. Walks and Place It! are competing for your vote for an #la2050 grant to bring a Vision Zero street safety campaign to Los Angeles. James Rojas, Place It’s founder, explains why his interactive planning model is key to helping people realize what Vision Zero would mean to their day to day […]
Op/Ed: Lessons from Minneapolis for Bike Planning in Los Angeles
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Biking in Minneapolis is a rejuvenating experience because it allows me to think. By integrating the natural environment into the biking experience, the city sets a high standard for developing urban bike infrastructure that allows for stress-free travel around town. Like Los Angeles, Minneapolis has horrible commercial streets for biking. But most of the city’s tree-lined residential […]
A Long History of Creating a Sense of Place at LA’s Latino Triangle Parks: Mariachi Plaza
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Twenty years ago when I started documenting Latino’s use of public space, the triangle site of today’s Mariachi Plaza was a donut shop. Mariachis would hang out at the donut shop waiting for work. People would park their cars and negotiate with Mariachis to play for their events, while fruit carts would sell to the […]
Butterscotch Line: Eastside High School Students Re-design Gold Line Stations
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(If you’re not familiar with James Rojas’ interactive modeling workshops, click here.) Over one hundred tenth graders from Esteban Torres High School’s Renaissance Academy had a chance to redesign the Gold Line Eastside Extension Station areas as part of a series of interactive modeling sessions designed to introduce them to urban planning. Rather than introducing them […]
Rethinking Glendale Boulevard Interactive Workshop: A new approach to Community Visioning!
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Join us for an innovative approach for the rethinking semi-industrial, mix use, Glendale Boulevard in Echo Park from the 2 fwy to Sunset. Participants will be asked to create their ideal street in 20 minutes. Using recycled objects participants will build small dioramas to help think through their ideas. Because there are no limitations, and right or […]
Rethinking Streets in Northeast Los Angeles; An new Comprehensive Approach to Transportation Planning
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Nowhere else in LA area are individual street routes as important than in the Northeast. Because of the area’s hills there is no grid. Streets wind their way up hills and cut through valleys creating public space and connecting the community to places beyond. Sixteen Occidental College students are rethinking designs for York Boulevard in Highland Park […]
See the World’s Largest Interactive Urban Diorama in Long Beach!
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Architect Giacomo Gastagnola and I created the world’s largest interactive city diorama right here in the City of Long Beach. This interactive diorama taps into the mental and physical ways people understand the city and transfer information through their body. The diorama is designed to make participants physically interact with it through various positions and […]
Highlighting a sense of Place in Leimert Park
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The Leimert Park model is a thought provoking interactive diorama of this community that the public can use as tool to facilitate their urban planning ideas and fantasies for transportation, open space, housing, architecture and design. Through creating this model I was able to explore the unique topography, vide, and urban form of Leimert Park, […]
Urban Planning in a Tijuana Colonia
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On August 5th and 6th I facilitated a high-energy, successful community visioning activity for Camino Verde, a colonia in Tijuana organized by Reacciona Tijuana. This project started as a collaboration between Giacomo Castagnola, architect/artist and myself as part of an urban planning art exhibition being organized in October for the Museum of Latin American Art. I wanted […]
James Rojas Visists Baltimore: Open Baltimore Interactive Model
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(Note: This is the second installment in our four-year series about how Baltimore, Maryland. Our first installment, “Baltimore Getting Serious About Bikes” appeared in May, 2008. – DN) The Baltimore Interactive model is a thought provoking; birds eye view of this city. The model is designed for the participant to ponder, explore, and participate in […]