JULY 2024_LJI Director Alison Hirsch and Research Assistant Kavya Gudihal participated in the inaugural Willowbrook Wealth Building event hosted by the Willowbrook Inclusion Network (WIN) at the Willowbrook Center for Public Health. Alison presented the progress of the Monuments Project and gathered valuable feedback on its design. The event was attended by many prominent entrepreneurs and community stakeholders and was a resounding success.
MAY 2024_LJI Director Alison Hirsch is named one of 13 Huntington Long term Research Fellows for 2024-2025. During this academic yearlong fellowship at the Huntington Library & Gardens, Alison will be writing a book on her work at in the Tulare Lake Basin and specifically in Allensworth, CA.
MAR 2024_LJI Director Alison Hirsch is a consultant to complete the Allensworth Community Plan with the Allensworth Progressive Association and to work on the California Strategic Growth Council grant for climate projects for frontline communities, awarded to Allensworth.
MAR 2024_LJI Director Alison Hirsch installs exhibit and gives lecture at Penn State on her work on Tulare Lake Basin/San Joaquin Valley. LJI research assistants Kavya Gudihal and Mark Reid contributed significantly to the exhibition.
FEB 2024_LJI Director Alison Hirsch, Prof Aroussiak Gabrielian and MLA+U student Kavya Gudihal are awarded an Arts in Action grant to continue the community monuments project in Willowbrook in partnership with the Willowbrook Inclusion Network and LA Commons . For this round of the funding, the support will go toward finalizing the design and planning for implementation in partnership with the community and local artists.
NOV 2023 and FEB 2024_LJI Director Alison Hirsch brought 3rd year MLA+U students to the Tulare Lake Basin to study the return of Tulare Lake and its impact on rural communities, agriculture and large-scale land transitions in the lower Central Valley. See project page [link to project page].
AUG 2023_LJI Research Assistant Kavya Gudihal and LJI Director Alison Hirsch worked with LA Commons and Willowbrook Inclusion Network (WIN) on the 3rd Annual Willowbrook Art Hop where Kavya and Alison presented the development of the monuments project and received feedback on the design development. The event was tremendously well-organized by Reginald Johnson, Director of WIN and we are so happy to be a consistent participant in the event.
MAY 2023_Allensworth Rising project and seminar are featured in Save As Podcast, Season 3, Episode 12: “Allensworth: The Past and Future of a Black Agrarian Utopia” (https://sites.usc.edu/saveas/category/season-3/). The episode particularly features LJI Research Assistant, Nina Weithorn.
MAY 2023_LJI Director Alison Hirsch’s students in the LJI service-learning seminar ‘Allensworth Rising Again’ presented the final contributions to the community plan with community leaders present. Students Lucia Bayley (MLA+U ’23), Shina Devon (B.S. Architecture ’23), Tracy Fenix (MUP/MA Curatorial Practice ’23), Luis Mota (MLA+U ’23), Dhriti Pangasa (M.Arch ’25), Eliana Ramirez (MLA+U ’23), Juansebastian Serrano-Negrin (M.Arch ’23), and Nina Weithorn (MLA+U ’24) worked closely with the Allensworth Progressive Association this term to make significant contributions to the historic town’s community plan that will serve as a roadmap for a future of climate readiness, environmental justice and cultural resilience. We are deeply indebted to the Allensworth Progressive Association and allies that contributed to this amazing learning opportunity for the students. And the program is so proud of and grateful to the students for their dedication and commitment to this effort.
APRIL 2023_LJI Director Alison Hirsch is interviewed by the Rural Futures Collaborative on her work in Allensworth and the greater San Joaquin Valley in their “Rural Dialogues” series: https://www.ruralfuturescollab.com/dialogues/alisonhirsch .
APRIL 2023_LJI Director Alison Hirsch presented rural justice work on the San Joaquin Valley in the Southern California Chapter of ASLA’s ‘Climate Action’ Symposium. https://socal-asla.org/2023-climate-action-symposium/
APRIL 2023_Test Plot Elephant Hill won the Pando Days Earth Hero Award for Process and Inclusion. Pando Days brings colleges and universities together from across Southern California to help meet the goals outlined in the LA County’s Sustainability Plan. Congratulations to LJI & MLA+U Prof. Jen Toy and her class! Big thank yous to community partners: TreePeople, Northeast Trees, California Native Plant Society, Mountain Recreation Conservation Authority, Coyotl+Macehualli, Save Elephant Hill, Heroes of Elephant Hill.
MARCH 2023_LJI Director Alison Hirsch’s chapter “Urban Markets, Rural Slums: Segregation and Resistance in California’s ‘Unincorporated’ Landscape” on the racialized spatial inequalities and histories of resistance in the San Joaquin Valley was just published in Segregation and Resistance in the Landscapes of the Americas (edited by Eric Avila and Thaïsa Way; Harvard University/Dumbarton Oaks 2023).
FEBRUARY 2023_LJI Director Alison Hirsch participated in a symposium titled “Transgressive Practices to Transformative Policies: Landscape Change, Fast & Slow.” The symposium was organized by Prof Maggie Hansen, Meadows Foundation Centennial Fellow, and sponsored by the Center for American Architecture and Design at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. Invited speakers were a group of remarkable women working across landscape practice and scholarship: Catherine Seavitt Nordenson, Diane Jones Allen, and Margie Ruddick.
FEBRUARY 2023_Students from LJI Director Alison Hirsch’s seminar ‘Allensworth Rising Again’ spent time at the Allensworth State Historic Park and the Allensworth community. With the Allensworth Progressive Association and their allies, students will be working on the Allensworth Community Plan this semester. This course is part of LJI’s focus on rural communities and environmental justice in the San Joaquin Valley. The seminar is working with the APA and other organizations to envision and contribute to the realization of Allensworth’s aspired future.
DECEMBER 2022_LJI Director Alison Hirsch was included in the series on “Design Activism” curated by Places Journal. Her contribution is in installment 5 and features work through the Landscape Justice Initiative.
NOVEMBER 2022_Over 70 people came out to plant 240 native plants at the newest Test Plot, located at Elephant Hill / “The Heavens” in El Sereno. This is a special area in Northeast Los Angeles known as ‘Ochuunga, land of the wild rose in the Tongva language. Together with 10 students from the ARCH 546 course, a diverse group of volunteers including neighbors, caretakers of the other Test Plot sites, artists, and activists came together to dig, plant, mulch and start the process of habitat restoration in a highly degraded area covered with the invasive Black mustard. Instrumental partners included TreePeople, Northeast Trees, the California Native Plant Society, MRCA, Save Elephant Hill, Heroes of Elephant Hill, and Coyotl + Macehualli.
NOVEMBER 2022_LJI Director Alison Hirsch’s chapter “Reinstating Landscapes of Urban Resistance” on the landscapes of the 1992 Uprisings just published in Just Urban Design (edited by Kian Goh, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Vinit Mukhija; MIT Press, 2022). It is available for open access here.
NOVEMBER 2022_The student team – Sarina Vega (LJI Fellow), Zoe Detweiler, Dae Elliott and Viraj Chauhan – represented the MLA+U program at the Transit to Parks Summit last week sponsored by LA County Dept of Rec and Parks and LA Metro. Zoe, Sarina, Dae and Viraj presented the outcomes of the Willowbrook Community Monuments MLA+U/LJI charrette with partners, Reginald Johnson of the Willowbrook Inclusion Network and Beth Peterson of LA Commons.
NOVEMBER 2022_LJI Research Assistant Nina Weithorn is the inaugural graduate recipient of the national Edward Lyons Pryce Scholarship organized by the Black Landscape Architects’ Network recognizing the important role Black landscape architects have played and still play in the profession. Congratulations Nina!
NOVEMBER 2022_Friday, November 11, 2022, USC MLA+U Alum Jared Edgar McKnight (’21), Senior Associate + Designer at WRT will be in conversation with Jerome Chou, Senior Planning Principal at Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) and Rayne Laborde Ruiz, Associate Director of cityLAB at UCLA at the 2022 ASLA Conference on Landscape Architecture. As part of ASLA’s 2022 Designing a Better Future conference, the three will participate on a panel in the Planning, Urban Design, and Infrastructure track of the conference from 3:30-4:30pm in the Moscone Center (Session: FRI-D10, Room 205-206). The session will outline how landscape architects can address homelessness in their regions. Through the lens of case study projects underway in Los Angeles, panelists will outline four categories of action – design research, engagement, partnerships, and interventions – that landscape architects are well-equipped to take to support unhoused residents and their allies.
OCTOBER 2022_MLA+U students participated in this year’s Vertical Workshop, a one-week design charrette that focuses on an ongoing Landscape Justice Initiative project. This year the focus was on the community of Willowbrook and shifting the narrative of Willowbrook from one constructed by the media over generations to one that acknowledges and celebrates the stories and memories that make this place unique. With the design workshop focused on creating monuments as scaffolds that let the community tell their stories led by MLA+U Professors Aroussiak Gabrielian and Alison Hirsch, as part of a Landscape Justice Initiative and Landscape Futures Lab joint effort, the USC team partnered with LA Commons, the Willowbrook Inclusion Network and artist George Evans. The USC team had a chance to meet with Willowbrook Youth Artists organized by LA Commons to talk about their experiences growing up in Willowbrook. Final presentations to the partners were tremendous and the proposals will be integrated into final schemes to be constructed in the community.
AUGUST 2022_Landscape Justice Initiative welcomes Sarina Vega, the inaugural Landscape Justice Initiative Fellow. Sarina (MLA+U ’25) is an incoming student with a background in consulting with Native American tribes towards climate change adaptation and resilience, and working at Casa Familiar as Environmental Programs Associate. She, with new LJI Associate Zehra Rizvi (MLA+U ’22) will be working on water planning, environmental justice and equitable development in the San Joaquin Valley. Sarina will also be assisting in the community history workshops being held in Willowbrook this Fall term.
AUGUST 2022_LJI faculty Jen Toy has been awarded grants from the California State Parks Foundation to support research in building climate resilient parks through community-based stewardship. The grant provides an opportunity to research models of community-based land care, conduct interviews with similar organizations, and pilot stewardship ideas at Rio de Los Angeles State Park and Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook.
AUGUST 2022_LJI faculty Jen Toy has been selected to participate in PANDO DAYS ’22 to support a new TEST PLOT site at Elephant Hill in El Sereno. Pando Days is a program that brings colleges and universities together from across the California Southland to help implement LA County’s ambitious sustainability goals. LA is a biodiversity hotspot and experiencing a crisis in habitat destruction. One of the major contributing challenges (that doesn’t grab headlines) is that the ongoing management of our parks and open spaces is rarely considered with equal attention to that of the initial design. Test Plot seeks to address these challenges by partnering with community members to plant native habitat and steward public lands.
AUGUST 2022_LJI Professors Alison Hirsch and Aroussiak Gabrielian – with MLA+U students Daniela Velazco, Leslie Dinkin and Cinema student Jonathan Tolentino participated in the second annual Willowbrook Art Hop where the team continued workshopping around the Willowbrook Monuments project with a focus on building the interactive community archive. LJI Partners LACMA and Willowbrook Inclusion Network organized a tremendous event.
JULY 2022_LJI Director Alison Hirsch, with LJI associates Jade Orr and Yuliang Jiang, completed an extensive fieldwork visit to the San Joaquin Valley where they met with the Mayor of Huron, Rey Leon; General Manager of Kern Water Bank Jon Parker; Manager of the Tulare Drainage District Dustin Fuller; Allensworth Progressive Association director Denise Kadara, among others; while documenting the drought and its impacts on small rural communities. The team is working as consultants to the Environmental Defense Fund on their multi-benefit land repurposing programs with a particular focus on equity and climate change.
JUNE 2022_Alison Hirsch, Jade Orr and Yuliang Jiang have begun work with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) on multibenefit land repurposing scenario visualization for the more equitable future of the San Joaquin Valley. The summer also involves student efforts in the research on Food + Climate Justice in the San Joaquin Valley by LJI students Nina Weithorn and Eliana Ramirez.
MAY 2022_LJI faculty Alison Hirsch and Aroussiak Gabrielian designed “In Kinship of the Oak” for LJI partner organization, LA Commons, as part of their participation in We Rise 2022, a series of community-led events that support health and healing across Los Angeles County. The installation, which included 72 live oaks, was created through LA Commons’ consultation with Tongva partners, and served as a scaffold for the integration of artwork by participating artists, including Sonia Romero (butterflies), Kalli Arte Collective, and Kelly Caballero. The trees celebrated the vibrant, culturally active lifeways of the land’s original stewards and their entanglement with the robust oak ecosystems of the region, as well as create a consistent gridded infrastructure to receive the shifting accretion of art made by creatives that keep our city vibrant. The month-long project culminated with a seed-sharing event. While some trees will stayed in Grand Park to be planted, the majority are on their way to Commonwealth Nursery in Griffith Park to contribute to the city’s urban tree canopy.
MAY 2022_USC Architecture covers thermal burden in Skid Row, LJI’s climate justice project Cooling Time, and the MLA+U program’s related Vertical Workshop. LJI has continued to work with community partners and Jose “Che” Ramirez, Deputy Mayor for City Homeless Initiatives, to determine how the team’s ideas for cooling centers can best be implemented.
APRIL 2022_LJI Director Alison Hirsch presented research on Food + Climate Justice in the San Joaquin Valley project at TU Delft. The talk, titled “Urban Markets/Rural Slums,” addressed the spatial and environmental racism that has resulted from 150 years of industrial agriculture in California. It introduced research Hirsch has conducted with LJI student teams and the beginnings of proposals for the future.
JANUARY 2022_LJI team won first place out of 10 schools for its project Cooling Time in Pando Days ’21. Pando Days is the program that brings colleges and universities together from across the California Southland to help implement LA County’s ambitious sustainability goals. The team is composed of LJI’s Jared Edgar McKnight, Alison Hirsch, Andrea Binz, Lara Lebeiko, Zehra Baneen Rizvi, Eva Malis. Work will continue in partnership with the City Office of Homelessness Initiatives.
DECEMBER 2021_MLA+U students Zehra Baneen Rizvi (’22), Lara Lebeiko (’22), Andrea Binz (’22), and Eva Malis (’24), and MLA+U alum Jared Edgar McKnight (’21) presented their proposal Cooling Time at the Pando Days ’21 Premiere featuring finalist projects to be judged for further funding. The presentation included work done by the whole graduate program during the Vertical Workshop on urban cooling and climate justice in Skid Row and has been a priority of LJI this year.
NOVEMBER 2021_LJI faculty Aroussiak Gabrielian and Alison Hirsch and students Leslie Dinkin (MLA/MHC ’23) and Jonathan Tolentino (BA, School of Cinematic Arts, ’22) complete USC Arts in Action grant cycle with a memory procession through Willowbrook as part of the ‘Monuments and the Future of Memory’ project. The procession included prototypes of memory markers integrating drawings by Willowbrook youth artists and augmented reality that brings to life the memory archive of Willowbrook.
NOVEMBER 2021_First planting day at the new Test Plot site in Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook. Students planted with community volunteers from LA Audubon and Nature Nexus Institute. Professor Jen Toy’s studio on the future of land care continues in collaboration with Jenny Jones of Terremoto.
OCTOBER 2021_In collaboration with LA’s Office of Homeless Initiatives and supported by Pando Days, MLA+U students completed a workshop focused on climate justice, urban cooling, and multi-benefit infrastructures that engage local organizations providing services on the ground in Skid Row. Final outcomes will be developed into cooling infrastructure innovations for Skid Row. The workshop was a Landscape Justice Initiative effort coordinated and co-led by Jared Edgar McKnight, Alison Hirsch, and Lauren Elachi.
OCTOBER 2021_The Landscape Justice Initiative appeared in the October issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine. LJI, Test Plot, and Jared Edgar McKnight’s Student ASLA Awards were featured in the October 2021 issue. Hannah Michael Flynn ’23, alumna Yiyi Peng ’21, and Professors Jen Toy and Alison Hirsch were referenced and quoted in the articles. Link to October 2021 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine.
OCTOBER 2021_LJI Assistant Director Jared Edgar McKnight was awarded the ASLA Award of Excellence in Research for his project “Criminalized for their very existence: The Spatial Politics of Homelessness” and an Honor Award in General Design for his project “Dam/m/n)ed Earth”. ASLA Student Awards represent the highest level of achievement among future landscape architects.
AUGUST 2021_MLA+U Students Leslie Dinkin ’23 and Diana Nightingale ’22 worked with Professors Aroussiak Gabrielian and Alison Hirsch at the Willowbrook Art Hop on continued work with the Willowbrook communities around ‘Monuments and the Future of Memory’ funded by USC Arts in Action. The Art Hop was organized by the Willowbrook Inclusion Network in partnership with LACMA, LA Commons, USC School of Architecture (supported by USC Arts in Action), LA County Department of Arts and Culture, LA County Department of Recreation and Parks, and Self-Help Graphics.
JUNE 2021_Alison Hirsch presents her work at the 2021 LAF Arts + Leadership Symposium, an event to showcase leading-edge thinking in landscape architecture to address a breadth of pressing issues. Her fellowship project interprets the San Joaquin Valley’s environmental and cultural histories/practices through sustained action research in an effort to develop visions for a future landscape ethic. Watch the recording of Alison’s presentation here.
JUNE 2021_USC team Jared Edgar McKnight, PI, and Alison Hirsch, co-PI, are selected to advance to next round of Pando Days 2021 which will include creating an LJI team of students to prototype “Cooling Time: spaces to recharge your humanity” in Skid Row.
MAY 2021_LJI faculty Aroussiak Gabrielian and Alison Hirsch are leading a “Maymester” course on the future of memorials and monuments with a focus on the amazing Willowbrook community. With partner organization LA Commons and the Willowbrook Inclusion Network, the students are starting to develop ideas around a memory infrastructure dedicated to Black Lives. Visit the webpage for this project here.
MAY 2021_Test Plot is an ongoing, hands-on experiment in community based ecological restoration. Our purpose is to celebrate the labor involved in land care and build a stronger land ethic in our community of Los Angeles, CA. Test Plots are open to all. We invite you to visit and get involved. There are currently two Test Plots in Los Angeles, at Rio de Los Angeles State Park and Elysian Park. The Test Plot website is now live and actively being updated with monitoring data that is being collected by USC graduate students for the first few years of establishment. Visit the Test Plot website here.
APRIL 2021_“Landscape Justice Initiative aims to be a home for solving big urban design problems“: USC News speaks with LJI Director Alison Hirsch, Assistant Director Jared Edgar McKnight, and LJI funder Grant Kirkpatrick about how LJI “bridges the gap” between academic inquiry and change on the ground.
SAVE THE DATE_GROUND: an interdisciplinary series on the ground’s many manifestations and meanings will begin February 25, 2021 with our first conversation on Material Grounds (including Emily Eliza Scott, Ryan Dewey, Aroussiak Gabrielian, and others). Click here to register for the Ground Series. More soon…
JAN 2021_Robert Andrade and Hector Covarrubias Del Cueto (MLA‘21) are selected as Thriving Earth Exchange Community Scientists to contribute to the design of Beyer Park in San Ysidro spearheaded by the San Ysidro non-profit Casa Familiar. San Ysidro is framed by three active freeways and is adjacent to the U.S.-Mexico Port of Entry (POE), which create poor air quality outcomes due to extreme vehicular wait times and industrial truck exhaust. Beyer Park will integrate innovative design and carbon sequestration strategies and best practices for the urban landscape of Southern California to reduce air pollution and address environmental justice issues. Andrade and Covarrubias Del Cueto will be supported by LJI in their contributions to this exciting project.
JAN 2021_ Jared McKnight, LJI Assistant Director and MLA‘21, with team members John Gerard Perez and Christina Shin (both B.Arch ‘21), won second prize in the USC Architectural Guild Design Charette for their proposal Welcome Mat in Bunker Hill. WELCOME mat extends parcel sizes for existing buildings into the public realm, incentivizing building owners to extend meaningful programs and services for all citizens into redistributed lot sizes, enhancing the public realm with bonus incentives for opportunities created for small and minority-owned businesses and public social services focused on unhoused and other disenfranchised communities. See gallery of proposals which include others from MLA+U here!