Building Decarbonization

On behalf of the Leap LA Coalition and Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles, Pueblo Planning facilitated a series of education and listening sessions about building decarbonization with Indigenous peoples (Tongva Gabrielino, Fernandeno Tataviam, and Chumash) and Frontline Communities throughout the City of Los Angeles. This was a three part series that included education and listening sessions to discuss the meaning and the potential impacts of Building Decarbonization on communities, particularly Indigenous and Frontline communities, which have been most negatively impacted by environmental decisions in the past. As part of these efforts, Pueblo Planning worked with the Leap LA coalition to co-develop popular education materials to share with community members; and partnered with community-based organizations – Communities for a Better Environment in Wilmington, Esperanza Community Housing in South Los Angeles, Pacoima Beautiful in Pacoima, Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE) in South Los Angeles, Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA) in East and Central Los Angeles, and Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples (City-wide) – to facilitate a total of thirteen workshops which engaged Indigenous and Frontline communities throughout the City.

Community members engaged in a series of three community workshops. The first community workshop was a grounding and education session where community members became familiar with the concept of building decarbonization and the City’s process for developing a building decarbonization policy. The second community workshop was a listening session where the community had an opportunity to share their experiences with housing and energy, their concerns with the potential City policy and programs, and identify strategies to specifically address these concerns. The third community workshop was a feedback session in which the Pueblo Planning team shared the community-identified concerns and priorities with the participants to ensure the project team accurately documented the experiences and building decarbonization priorities that they heard. With This ethnographic effort, Indigenous and Frontline Communities were able to share their lived experience, concerns, priorities, and recommended building decarbonization strategies to inform future programs and policy decisions around Building Decarbonization and to ensure Indigenous and frontline communities are not further burdened by decisions made but instead receive the most benefits from policy decisions in Los Angeles.