Unpacking Latino urbanisms: a four-part thematic framework around culturally relevant responses to structural forces

ABSTRACT

This article unpacks literature on Latino Urbanism to identify a holistic, thematically organized framework for understanding Latina/o sociospatial practices and to suggest how planners might plan for and/or better support Latino Urbanisms. Cultural expressions in response to structural forces that have and continue to challenge, oppress, and marginalize Latino communities in the U.S. form four thematic fundamental to Latino Urbanisms – spatializing translocal economies, embedding mobility, functionalizing housing, and enacting place. Through education and training, planners come to accept Anglocentric practices and aesthetics as normative, in contrast to the sociospatial practices of Latino communities, which become otherized and marginalized as Latino Urbanisms. Additionally, as “enacted environments,” Latino Urbanisms appear relatively unamenable to a formal paradigm. There are nonetheless planning and policy responses that planners can take to support Latino communities and in the enactment of Latino Urbanisms, and to enhance the qualities of sustainability and resilience inherent to Latino Urbanisms.

KEYWORDS:

• Enacted environments
• translocal
• culturally relevant
• placemaking
• resilience sociospatial practices

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Traditionally, Latino or Hispanic has been used to refer to people of Latin American descent. Preference in the use of the terms Latino and Hispanic varies by nation of origin, immigration status, and other factors (Pew Hispanic Center 2009). Latinx is a newer term that: (1) recognizes the diversity a pan-Latin American identity; (2) offers a more gender-inclusive terminology; (3) aligns with forms of critical analysis of oppression (i.e. sexism, racism, classism, and heteroism) (Padilla 2016). Garcia (2020) adds new clarity to the terms planners and scholars can and do use.

2. A note about practice: for the purposes of this work, practice is used as a generic term to describe activities carried out by individuals. While culturally informed, they are not necessarily governed by cultural rules or expectation; they represent individual responses, adaptations, and approaches. These practices may be learned or innovated but are not necessarily part of a shared cultural practice (Sherri Ellis 2019, personal correspondence).

3. Transpire: The Latin roots mean trans: through, spirare: breath; the late Middle English meaning emit as vapor through the surface; by mid-18^th century the meaning connotes to leak out. The most common contemporary meaning is occur or happen (Oxford Dictionaries 2019). All of these fit, given Latino Urbanisms’ occasional ephemerality as well as its tendency to be (re)produced informally. Where it is more organized, it is nonetheless unique in its manifestation, being place-, time-, and context-dependent.

Additional information

Funding

This research project did not receive any funding.

Notes on contributors

Andrea Garfinkel-Castro

Andrea Garfinkel-Castro is a doctoral candidate at the University of Utah. Her doctoral research probes planning culture – the ideas and beliefs planners hold in their minds about what the work planners is and how it should be carried out. She takes a critical approach to asking how planning culture fits in with the other cultural tribes that planners belong to. She is initiating a long-term transportation research project engaging planning faculty and students throughout the U.S. and around the world intended to address a research gap on low cost pedestrian safety measures by developing a collaborative research protocol to use in a wide range of cultural and economic settings.