FRI-FS-07: Displacement and Defiance: Queer and Marginalized Histories of Downtown Los Angeles

Field Session Leader(s)

• 

  John Lambert Pearson, ASLA, PLA

  Senior Landscape Architect
  RIOS
  Los Angeles, CA
• 

  Mark Reid, Assoc. ASLA

  Landscape Designer
  EPTDESIGN
  Los Angeles, CA

Field Session Presenter(s)

• 

  Zoe Grace Detweiler, Associate ASLA

  Architectural historian/preservation planner
  Architectural Resources Group
  Culver City, California

Pershing Square/ UCLA Library Digital Collection

This walking tour explores how marginalized communities transformed Downtown LA's public spaces through protest, resilience, and cultural expression. Stops highlight queer activism, Indigenous displacement, Japanese American internment, Black land ownership, and the histories of Chinese American, working-class, and immigrant communities, tracing resistance and joy across the urban landscape.

Extensive walking.

Accessibility: This session is a long walking tour across downtown Los Angeles. Participants will be walking for an extended period on city streets, and individuals with mobility challenges may find portions of the route difficult to traverse.

Learning Outcomes:

• Interpret Downtown LA’s landscape through the lens of racial, gendered, and sexual oppression, including settler colonialism, incarceration, and the policing of public space.
• Identify specific sites and planning decisions that reflect histories of displacement, containment, and cultural erasure.
• Recognize the spatial contributions of marginalized communities and the public spaces they shaped for joy, safety, and resistance.
• Learn methods for uncovering erased histories through archival research, site interpretation, and community-engaged design.