West Hollywood Climate Action and Adaptation Plan
Pueblo Planning worked with the City of West Hollywood to create their Climate Adaptation and Action Plan with two communities in the area: the general West Hollywood community and the Tongva and Urban Indigenous community. For the general population, Pueblo Planning intentionally focused its engagement efforts on older adults, low-wealth families with children, people with disabilities, the unhoused and previously unhoused, and monolingual Russian and Spanish speaking populations. Pueblo Planning relied upon the trust and strength of relationships with local community partners and their relationships with community members to connect with dozens of community members to hear their stories. Pueblo Planning utilized in-depth one-on-one storytelling sessions with Tongva people over the phone to understand their lived experiences, needs, ideas, and vision for the future. With consent, Pueblo Planning recorded these interviews and then created an audio collage of the participants via Soundcloud to represent the community’s voice.
These engagement strategies translated into community members being able to actively help shape and inform the City of West Hollywood’s Climate Action and Adaptation Plan to address climate change. Through conversations with the West Hollywood community members, strengths and vulnerability of the West Hollywood community systems for providing food, water, energy, transportation, housing, jobs, social services, and civic preparedness were evaluated. The community voiced areas of special concern such as extreme heat, flood and storms, drought and wildfires and strategic actions were created to address these impacts. For the Tongva and non-Tongva Urban Indigenous People, the engagement process allowed the City of West Hollywood to learn key practices, principles, and actionable steps towards a restorative relationship to both places and people whose homelands West Hollywood is on.
American Planning Association Award 2021 Innovative Use of Technology (Los Angeles Chapter)
Ethnographic Art | Community Engagement | Policy and Planning
PROJECT TEAM
Monique G. López
Social Justice Planner | Ethnographic Artist
Danny Gonzalez
Community Engagement Specialist
Jenny Seneor
Relationship Cultivator