People’s Planning School On Tour!

Housing and Homelessness

County of Los Angeles

Expand existing project, program, or initiative

Often in our work with underserved communities, the general public is unaware of the co-benefits of developing progressive plans, projects, or policies. Additionally, we find that some people do have an understanding of these benefits, but lack the knowledge on how to effectively participate in decision-making processes. Unfortunately, the communities with the least access to this education are often low-income people of color, resulting in the perpetual marginalization of these communities and silencing of their collective community voice. Through our People’s Planning School, we have found that hundreds of our graduates are now well-equipped community leaders who have the tools they need to become active participants in progressive planning, policy, and politics, and possess a critical awareness of their built environment issues and opportunities. Taking People’s Planning School on the road can help to reach a broader audience who do not have a similar curriculum in their community.

City Fabrick plans to broaden the reach of our program, which originally started to educate and empower Long Beach residents, by taking People’s Planning School on tour. This will involve retrofitting a van to both transport curriculum materials and activities to schools, parks, libraries, resource fairs, and other gathering spaces as well as to promote the program in new communities we travel to. Through data analysis, we will identify an initial six communities throughout the greater Los Angeles region and host two free classes (on housing and transportation) to educate the community about the history, opportunities, and tools to get involved in local planning and policy. Pop-up educational material will be developed in multiple languages and designed to be highly visual, interactive, and fun, increasing accessibility to people of all ages. City Fabrick will work with local partners to identify a planning or policy issue going on in their community to increase public awareness and involvement. City Fabrick will also identify and stipend local experts and activists to support in this effort, providing local residents with increased knowledge about how cities form and evolve as well as the political and policy forces that effect those changes. City Fabrick staff, who are highly skilled in design, planning, and policy, will also support in curriculum development. Flyers, raffle prizes, and giveaways will be used to promote and attract people to these various pop-up events.

The direct impact of taking People’s Planning School on tour would be to educate six underserved Los Angeles communities around planning and policy, and present them opportunities and tools to positively impact their own neighborhoods and become community leaders around these issues. After this initial effort, City Fabrick and other partners will be able to continue mobile workshops and pop-ups throughout the region, as materials, including the van, will be made public to the broader Los Angeles community. The indirect impact will be the visibility the mobile van will get by traveling to these communities, encouraging the public to learn more about the program and hope to bring their van to their community in the future. Additionally, the program could help to encourage other government agencies and organizations to host a People’s Planning School in their own community, increasing public education and empowering residents.

Impact for this project will be measured in a few ways. First will be the number of people who participate in the pop-up activities, with a target goal of 100 people per each event. Another target metric would be the level of social media engagement for the program, which aims to be 10,000 followers and 50,000 impressions. Long-term success of the program will be measured by the number of local agencies or groups who decide to host their own People’s Planning School or invite us to come to their community (six organizations in 3 years), and by the number of community leaders who participate in the program and become involved in their local community (12 people).