James Rojas: Native Angelino James Rojas is a planning advocate who currently serves as a project manager for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, were he funds pedestrian and transportation enhancement projects. Prior to joining the MTA in 1997, he worked as a planner with the City of Santa Monica. Mr. Rojas interest in urban issues stems in part from his experiences living in Europe, first in Germany and Italy where he spent four years with the U.S. Army. Later, he served in the Peace Corps for three years in Budapest, Hungary organizing eastern European non-government organizations (NGOs) work on sustainable transportation. James Rojas is one of the few nationally recognized urban planners to examine U.S. Latino cultural influences on urban design. He holds a Master of City Planning and a Master of Science of Architecture Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His influential thesis on the Latino built environment has been widely cited. For the past 14 years Mr. Rojas has lectured extensively at universities, planning conferences, secondary schools, and grassroots community meetings on the impact of Latino populations on land use and transportation. Growing out of his research and writing on Latino land use, Mr. Rojas founded the Latino Urban Forum (LUF) in Los Angeles, dedicated to understanding and improving the built environment of Latino communities. LUF has recruited successful professionals to lend their knowledge and influence to innovate and address the issues of the underserved, and often underprivileged, Latino communities of Los Angeles. To date, over 300 volunteer architects, urban planners, public administrators, and lawyers have led the LUF to develop strategies and to provide technical expertise on numerous critical infrastructure and land-use issues in the Latino community. LUF publishes a weekly calendar of cultural and planning activities for over 700 national academic and media organizations, in addition to scores of local community organizers. A resident of the historic downtown Los Angeles, Mr. Rojas recently organized the Downtown Residents Association and founded the innovative Gallery 727, a leading downtown art gallery dedicated to highlighting and documenting LAs urban landscape to new audiences. www.latinourbanforum.com