February 2006
Planning Magazine
Anyone searching for San Antonio's Hispanic roots need go no further than the Plaza de las Islas, a splash of grass and smattering of Spanish oaks sitting on less than an acre in the heart of the city.
By AnaIisa Nazareno
As prescribed by the Spanish master plan for colonial cities, Laws of the Indies, the plaza is surrounded by the city's most venerable buildings: the San Fernando Cathedral, the Bexar County Courthouse, and the Municipal Plaza Building.
Built by the Canary Islanders who settled the rough frontier in the 18th century for the Spanish king, the Plaza de las Islas, also known as Main Plaza, marks the last time in San Antonio's history that Hispanics wielded great influence on development-that is, until recent decades.
Over the centuries, as control over the city shifted from Spain to Mexico, to the Republic of Texas, and then finally to the U.S., the Hispanic population diminished in size and influence, and its stamp on city growth and development
was limited to the downtown core. A series of large-scale migrations from Mexico in the early 20th century and the civil rights movement of the 1960s helped to bring Hispanics back to the city's planning table.
Today, a renaissance of sorts is taking place for Hispanic urban design and Hispanic planners, who now head up many of the area's municipal planning departments.
"We're going full circle from the foundation of the city as a Spanish community," says Emil Moncivais, AICP, who has headed San Antonio's planning department since 1997.
Moncivais is a second-generation Mexican American who grew up picking cotton and working odd jobs alongside his father in Bryan, Texas. He attended Texas A&M University in the 1960s and '70s, first to earn an undergraduate
architecture degree and then a master's degree in urban and regional planning.
It was during the civil rights movement, he says, that "I realized that I have the opportunity through planning to make inroads to make things more equitable."
Grabbing the reins
Until World War II, San Antonio's urban core thrived as the city's commercial center, and neighboring residential areas were populated by Anglo, Hispanic, and African American workers.
After the war, with the advent of highways and affordable automobiles-coupled with an influx of Mexicans fleeing the revolution in their own country-the city started growing northward, with Anglo residents moving out of the center in substantial numbers.
And with that, "the city started moving its public assets away from the downtown core," says Char Miller, a history professor and director of the urban studies program at Trinity University in San Antonio.
The city's public universities-the University of Texas, San Antonio, and the University of Texas Health Science Center-and its medical and financial services companies settled outside the minority-populated downtown area.
"What you had was a white population that was fleeing the downtown core and a brown population that was staying and securing almost no economic benefit," says Miller.
Then came the civil rights era. That's when the decision was made to allow city council members to be elected by district rather than at-large, giving the historically Hispanic and African American neighborhoods in the city
cemer a chance to take their place at the council table.
"When that happened, Hispanics started having an influence on government," says Jesus Garza, AlCP, a San Antonio native and manager of the city's comprehensive planning division. "And that's when we started having representation by minorities on boards and commissions."
In the l960s, when today's South Texas planning leaders were still in high school or college, Hispanics were a minority, making up 41.4 percent of the population. That was a period when the heavily Hispanic downtown and
near-downtown neighborhoods were subject to regular flooding and local schools received less funding than those in more affluent white communities.
Change began with the 1970 census, which showed 52.2 percent of city residents identifying themselves as being of "Spanish origin," versus 39.2 percent identifying themselves as "Anglo."
While Garza studied political science, sociology, and later urban studies for his master's degree from Trinity University during the 1970s, activists in the impoverished West Side neighborhood where he grew up were organizing residents to demand infrastructure improvements for flood relief in the downtown area. And they were rallying behind efforts to create a more equitable distribution of public funds for education.
"It was a very influential and exciting time for me to see change in our community and to understand where our dollars went for street and drainage improvements, parks, and community centers," Garza says. "When you're growing up and you're walking through mud and puddles to get to school, you don't know why or think
that it's unfair. You just think that's how it is. I started understanding how things came to be and wanted to do something about it."
Another turning point came when urban planner Henry Cisneros was elected mayor of San Antonio in 1981. Garza says that event marked a "rebirth" for Hispanics as a significant political power. More Hispanics began to take
the lead in city government.
Cities where Hispanics are a voting majority and are political leaders will, not surprisingly, have more Hispanic planners, according to Leonardo Vazquez, AICP, an instructor at the Edward Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University.
"If you have Hispanic leaders, you're far more likely to find Hispanic professionals and people given more opportunities, not because of racism, and not necessarily because Hispanic planners like Hispanic planners more, or white planners like white planners more," he says. "It's the nature of leadership. You tend to surround yourself or give more opportunities to people who are like you, who think like you, and who share your values."
Vazquez led discussions around the country last year with Hispanic planners. He was interested both in community issues and in the challenges the planners faced professionally. He also coauthored a study on ethnic diversity in December 2001 for APA'sNew York Metro chapter. He found that of all the area's major ethnic groups, Hispanics were the least represented in the planning profession.
According to his findings, Hispanics made up six percent of planners in the region, although they accounted for nearly 22 percent of the general population in the year 2000.
"At least in the Northeast, you have very few Hispanic planners in leadership positions in the public or the private sector," Vazquez says. "They into the nonprofit sector instead, but then they stop thinking of themselves as planners."
The representation is only somewhat better in Texas. According to an American Planning Association membership survey conducted in 2004, 7.7 percent, or 37 of 480 respondents, identified themselves as Hispanic (as opposed
to 32 percent of the general population in the 2000 census).
One factor influencing the low numbers is the pressure on college-bound Hispanics to enter higher paying professions. Nationally, Hispanics are less likely to be college educated, with 11.4 percent earning at least a bachelor's degree versus 29.4 percent of non- Hispanicwhites. And they are more likely to live in poverty, with 21.4
percent living below the poverty level versus 7.8 percent of whites.
"There's a lot of family pressure to go into the recognized professions, to become a lawyer, doctor, an engineer," says Veronica Rosales, AlCIP. "If you're the first to go to college, the pressure is to go to a job that pays well. And planning is not one of those jobs."
Rosales served as professional development chair of APA's Texas chapter last year. She recently moved from El Paso's planning department to head the community development department in Sunland Park, New Mexico.
Like all the Hispanic planners interviewed for this story, Rosales says she entered the planning profession somewhat by accident. As an undergraduate at Harvard University, she studied engineering, but didn't find it the right fit. Mter considering and then dropping the idea of a legal career, she finally earned a degree in government with the thought of becoming a housing advocate.
But then, in graduate school at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, Rosales started taking urban planning classes.
"I fell in love with planning and maps and the information that maps portrayed," she says. "That's when I realized that planning as a career would be very fulfilling and would encompass a lot of different things."
Rosales notes that she was one of only three Hispanics among dozens of classmates at Princeton, and the only Hispanic female.
"It's a big mystery why more people aren't pursuing the field, especially with the growing number of minorities in our population," says Jesus Hinojosa, professor emeritus of landscape architecture and urban planning at Texas A&M
University's School of Architecture and Planning.
"I've been involved with the profession for a long [enough] time to know that the profession and schools have tried to attract minorities," says Hinojosa, who started teaching at Texas A&M in 1960.
While "there was a lot more discrimination when I was going to school than there is today," he adds, efforts to diversify universities have been hampered by legislation limiting affirmative action programs, and there is less outreach to minority students, particularly in Texas and California.
Still, outreach remains a key strategy for those seeking to increase diversity in the profession.
"It's important to reach students at an early age," says Fernando Costa, AlCP, the planning director of Ft. Worth and the co-chair of APA's diversity subcommittee. He recommends going into high schools and colleges to educate young people about the field.
"I think it's fair to say that the planning profession doesn't have a very high profile," he says. "Many planners today didn't learn much about the profession per se until they were in college or even beyond."
Among the suggestions for chapters seeking greater diversity:
• Reach out to minority communities through the AICP community assistance program.
• Increase outreach efforts to high schools and universities with high numbers of minorities.
• Send materials to high school and college career counselors to encourage students to consider planning as a profession.
For a full copy of this story, e-mail Analisa and she will send you a clip via e-mail or snail mail.
Planning Magazine
Anyone searching for San Antonio's Hispanic roots need go no further than the Plaza de las Islas, a splash of grass and smattering of Spanish oaks sitting on less than an acre in the heart of the city.
By AnaIisa Nazareno
As prescribed by the Spanish master plan for colonial cities, Laws of the Indies, the plaza is surrounded by the city's most venerable buildings: the San Fernando Cathedral, the Bexar County Courthouse, and the Municipal Plaza Building.
Built by the Canary Islanders who settled the rough frontier in the 18th century for the Spanish king, the Plaza de las Islas, also known as Main Plaza, marks the last time in San Antonio's history that Hispanics wielded great influence on development-that is, until recent decades.
Over the centuries, as control over the city shifted from Spain to Mexico, to the Republic of Texas, and then finally to the U.S., the Hispanic population diminished in size and influence, and its stamp on city growth and development
was limited to the downtown core. A series of large-scale migrations from Mexico in the early 20th century and the civil rights movement of the 1960s helped to bring Hispanics back to the city's planning table.
Today, a renaissance of sorts is taking place for Hispanic urban design and Hispanic planners, who now head up many of the area's municipal planning departments.
"We're going full circle from the foundation of the city as a Spanish community," says Emil Moncivais, AICP, who has headed San Antonio's planning department since 1997.
Moncivais is a second-generation Mexican American who grew up picking cotton and working odd jobs alongside his father in Bryan, Texas. He attended Texas A&M University in the 1960s and '70s, first to earn an undergraduate
architecture degree and then a master's degree in urban and regional planning.
It was during the civil rights movement, he says, that "I realized that I have the opportunity through planning to make inroads to make things more equitable."
Grabbing the reins
Until World War II, San Antonio's urban core thrived as the city's commercial center, and neighboring residential areas were populated by Anglo, Hispanic, and African American workers.
After the war, with the advent of highways and affordable automobiles-coupled with an influx of Mexicans fleeing the revolution in their own country-the city started growing northward, with Anglo residents moving out of the center in substantial numbers.
And with that, "the city started moving its public assets away from the downtown core," says Char Miller, a history professor and director of the urban studies program at Trinity University in San Antonio.
The city's public universities-the University of Texas, San Antonio, and the University of Texas Health Science Center-and its medical and financial services companies settled outside the minority-populated downtown area.
"What you had was a white population that was fleeing the downtown core and a brown population that was staying and securing almost no economic benefit," says Miller.
Then came the civil rights era. That's when the decision was made to allow city council members to be elected by district rather than at-large, giving the historically Hispanic and African American neighborhoods in the city
cemer a chance to take their place at the council table.
"When that happened, Hispanics started having an influence on government," says Jesus Garza, AlCP, a San Antonio native and manager of the city's comprehensive planning division. "And that's when we started having representation by minorities on boards and commissions."
In the l960s, when today's South Texas planning leaders were still in high school or college, Hispanics were a minority, making up 41.4 percent of the population. That was a period when the heavily Hispanic downtown and
near-downtown neighborhoods were subject to regular flooding and local schools received less funding than those in more affluent white communities.
Change began with the 1970 census, which showed 52.2 percent of city residents identifying themselves as being of "Spanish origin," versus 39.2 percent identifying themselves as "Anglo."
While Garza studied political science, sociology, and later urban studies for his master's degree from Trinity University during the 1970s, activists in the impoverished West Side neighborhood where he grew up were organizing residents to demand infrastructure improvements for flood relief in the downtown area. And they were rallying behind efforts to create a more equitable distribution of public funds for education.
"It was a very influential and exciting time for me to see change in our community and to understand where our dollars went for street and drainage improvements, parks, and community centers," Garza says. "When you're growing up and you're walking through mud and puddles to get to school, you don't know why or think
that it's unfair. You just think that's how it is. I started understanding how things came to be and wanted to do something about it."
Another turning point came when urban planner Henry Cisneros was elected mayor of San Antonio in 1981. Garza says that event marked a "rebirth" for Hispanics as a significant political power. More Hispanics began to take
the lead in city government.
Cities where Hispanics are a voting majority and are political leaders will, not surprisingly, have more Hispanic planners, according to Leonardo Vazquez, AICP, an instructor at the Edward Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University.
"If you have Hispanic leaders, you're far more likely to find Hispanic professionals and people given more opportunities, not because of racism, and not necessarily because Hispanic planners like Hispanic planners more, or white planners like white planners more," he says. "It's the nature of leadership. You tend to surround yourself or give more opportunities to people who are like you, who think like you, and who share your values."
Vazquez led discussions around the country last year with Hispanic planners. He was interested both in community issues and in the challenges the planners faced professionally. He also coauthored a study on ethnic diversity in December 2001 for APA'sNew York Metro chapter. He found that of all the area's major ethnic groups, Hispanics were the least represented in the planning profession.
According to his findings, Hispanics made up six percent of planners in the region, although they accounted for nearly 22 percent of the general population in the year 2000.
"At least in the Northeast, you have very few Hispanic planners in leadership positions in the public or the private sector," Vazquez says. "They into the nonprofit sector instead, but then they stop thinking of themselves as planners."
The representation is only somewhat better in Texas. According to an American Planning Association membership survey conducted in 2004, 7.7 percent, or 37 of 480 respondents, identified themselves as Hispanic (as opposed
to 32 percent of the general population in the 2000 census).
One factor influencing the low numbers is the pressure on college-bound Hispanics to enter higher paying professions. Nationally, Hispanics are less likely to be college educated, with 11.4 percent earning at least a bachelor's degree versus 29.4 percent of non- Hispanicwhites. And they are more likely to live in poverty, with 21.4
percent living below the poverty level versus 7.8 percent of whites.
"There's a lot of family pressure to go into the recognized professions, to become a lawyer, doctor, an engineer," says Veronica Rosales, AlCIP. "If you're the first to go to college, the pressure is to go to a job that pays well. And planning is not one of those jobs."
Rosales served as professional development chair of APA's Texas chapter last year. She recently moved from El Paso's planning department to head the community development department in Sunland Park, New Mexico.
Like all the Hispanic planners interviewed for this story, Rosales says she entered the planning profession somewhat by accident. As an undergraduate at Harvard University, she studied engineering, but didn't find it the right fit. Mter considering and then dropping the idea of a legal career, she finally earned a degree in government with the thought of becoming a housing advocate.
But then, in graduate school at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, Rosales started taking urban planning classes.
"I fell in love with planning and maps and the information that maps portrayed," she says. "That's when I realized that planning as a career would be very fulfilling and would encompass a lot of different things."
Rosales notes that she was one of only three Hispanics among dozens of classmates at Princeton, and the only Hispanic female.
"It's a big mystery why more people aren't pursuing the field, especially with the growing number of minorities in our population," says Jesus Hinojosa, professor emeritus of landscape architecture and urban planning at Texas A&M
University's School of Architecture and Planning.
"I've been involved with the profession for a long [enough] time to know that the profession and schools have tried to attract minorities," says Hinojosa, who started teaching at Texas A&M in 1960.
While "there was a lot more discrimination when I was going to school than there is today," he adds, efforts to diversify universities have been hampered by legislation limiting affirmative action programs, and there is less outreach to minority students, particularly in Texas and California.
Still, outreach remains a key strategy for those seeking to increase diversity in the profession.
"It's important to reach students at an early age," says Fernando Costa, AlCP, the planning director of Ft. Worth and the co-chair of APA's diversity subcommittee. He recommends going into high schools and colleges to educate young people about the field.
"I think it's fair to say that the planning profession doesn't have a very high profile," he says. "Many planners today didn't learn much about the profession per se until they were in college or even beyond."
Among the suggestions for chapters seeking greater diversity:
• Reach out to minority communities through the AICP community assistance program.
• Increase outreach efforts to high schools and universities with high numbers of minorities.
• Send materials to high school and college career counselors to encourage students to consider planning as a profession.
For a full copy of this story, e-mail Analisa and she will send you a clip via e-mail or snail mail.
Résumé
