Urban Center Grand Opening Special Programs
AGENTS OF CHANGE
SUMMER PROGRAMMING SERIES
Beginning on Tuesday, June 2—just a few days after the Urban Center’s grand opening—SPUR will kick-off an inaugural series of public programs to build on some of the stories, themes and events included in the opening exhibition, “Agents of Change: Civic Idealism and the Making of San Francisco.”
We'll kick off each two-week programming module with an opening symposium—a presentation and discussion exploring the legacy of each generation covered in the exhibition. Join us for this exciting crash-course in San Francisco history—where we will relate the past successes and failures of each generation to our own efforts to forge new movements in urban thinking.
With the exception of walking tours, all programs will take place at the SPUR Urban Center, 654 Mission Street (between Third & New Montgomery). Events are free for SPUR members and $5 for the general public.
June 2-16
A city built and controlled by private enterprise
EVENING SYMPOSIUM
The Private City: The Founding Oligarchy of San Francisco
Tuesday, June 2, 6-7:30 p.m.
Nineteenth-century San Francisco went from a rough-and-tumble boomtown to a Victorian city with cosmopolitan ambitions. Its development was controlled by a small group of oligarchs: miners, industrialists, financiers and real estate speculators who hoped to forge a world-class metropolis in a single generation, enriching themselves in the process. Join panelists Chris Carlsson, social historian; Chris VerPlanck, architectural historian; Jeannene Przyblyski, artist, historian and professor at the San Francisco Art Institute; and exhibition curator Benjamin Grant.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
The Bay: shorelines and timelines
Wednesday, June 3, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
The Bay's shoreline is a dynamic interface constantly reshaped by erosion, sedimentation, and new – often temporary – cultural strategies. Historically, land has moved Bayward through fill, but now the Bay is accelerating landward, suggesting new scenarios. Robin Grossinger of the San Francisco Estuary Institute explores the fascinating and ongoing transformation of the Bay’s geography.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
The Chinese Exclusion Act
Thursday, June 4, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
A dark theme of 19th century San Francisco was its racism, including the passing of anti-Chinese city ordinances, and the participation in demonstrations and Congressional hearings leading up to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Connie Young Yu, historian and vice president of the Chinese Historical Society of America, discusses how Chinese survived in San Francisco in the era of Exclusion with the help of American friends and business partners.
WALKING TOUR
Potrero Point/Pier 70: past and future
Tuesday, June 9, 3:30-5 p.m.
Limited to 20 SPUR members; RSVP to tours@spur.org.
Potrero Point, where Pier 70 sits on the eastern waterfront, was the most important center of heavy industry in the western U.S. for over 100 years. Today, the Port of San Francisco is leading the effort to create a Master Plan for the area that will accommodate ship repair, historic preservation, environmental cleanup, and new development and open space. Architectural historian Chris VerPlanck and Diane Oshima from the Port lead a walking tour of this dynamic site.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
San Francisco’s grid
Wednesday, June 10, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
The hills of San Francisco have always been eccentric – and charismatic – but the streets that cross and climb them are a legacy of 19th century planning. UC Berkeley professor Peter Bosselmann explores how the City’s original grid continues to shape contemporary urban planning and design.
WALKING TOUR
Golden Gate Park: an unnatural history
Thursday, June 11, 10-11:30 a.m.
Limited to 20 SPUR members; RSVP to tours@spur.org.
The nature of Golden Gate Park is deceptive: once an undesirable drift of sand dunes far from town, now the English-style sculpted landscape is one of the City's most treasured recreational grounds. Marina McDougall and Alison Sant of the Studio for Urban Projects lead a tour of the east side of the park, to explore how the park represents changing ideas of nature in the city.
THE PROGRESSIVES & CLASSICISTS
June 16-26
Reforming government and re-imagining the city
EVENING SYMPOSIUM
The Reformed City: Progressivism in the Wake of Disaster
Tuesday, June 16, 6-7:30 p.m.
The disaster of 1906 lent new urgency to existing debates about the future of San Francisco. How would the city grow and compete with rivals? What should be the role of the voting public, political parties, government officials, planners, business and labor? Out of these debates and associated social conflicts would rise a new city and a unique San Francisco version of American progressivism and urban form. Join panelists William Issel, professor of history emeritus at San Francisco State University; Richard Walker, chair of the California Studies Center at UC Berkeley; and exhibition curator Benjamin Grant.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
The City Beautiful movement
Wednesday, June 17, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
The Progressive era’s issues echo those of today: government reform was paramount, expansion of public services was stressed, and new city agencies and philanthropic foundations were created to address social ills. Architectural historian and author Sally Woodbridge discusses how civic reform was tied to civic design, as the City Beautiful movement embraced Classical architecture.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
The Burnham Plan and its legacy
Thursday, June 18, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
Stephen Tobriner, professor of architecture emeritus at UC Berkeley, explores Daniel Burnham’s 1905 master plan for San Francisco, a vision for the “Paris of America” that went unrealized in the wake of the 1906 disaster.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
The story of Hetch Hetchy
Tuesday, June 23, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
Ever since the movie "Chinatown," Los Angeles has gotten bad press for "stealing" the Owens River to urbanize the San Fernando Valley. But why did San Francisco's leaders choose an expensive alternative, the Tuolumne River, to augment our local water supply, and then dam Hetch Hetchy Valley despite a nationwide outcry? Gray Brechin, historical geographer and author, explains the process by which arid land can be made to yield its most lucrative crop – a megalopolis.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
Saving Chinatown after 1906
Wednesday, June 24, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
The relationship between the City and its Chinese community has often depended on the economic climate. Sue Lee, executive director of the Chinese Historical Society of America, discusses how efforts by the establishment to move Chinatown out of the city after the earthquake and fire were resisted – and led to the adoption of chinoiserie as an architectural strategy to define territory. Today, with liberalized immigration laws, new populations are adopting their own strategies for survival.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
The Progressive origins of good government
Thursday, June 25, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
Charter reform, civil service, and settlement houses are all part of the intriguing tale of how progressive reformers responded to big-city “bossism.” Buck Delventhal, deputy city attorney for San Francisco, and Phil Ginsburg, former director of the San Francisco Department of Human Resources, explore the origins and legacy of these turn-of-the-century reform efforts.
THE REGIONALISTS
June 30-July 10
Grappling with growth, connecting the region, conserving open spaces
EVENING SYMPOSIUM
Beyond the City: Turning toward Regional Challenges
Tuesday, June 30, 6-7:30 p.m.
True regional planning has been the elusive goal of many generations of Bay Area planners. While the region boasts some great successes – saving the Bay, preserving the greenbelt and the building of BART – we still struggle to adequately manage regional land use. This symposium will trace the current state of regional planning, and assess how new climate change laws give hope for greater regional coordination. Join panelists Radhika Fox of PolicyLink; Mike Teitz, professor emeritus in regional planning at UC Berkeley; Will Travis, executive director of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission; Egon Terplan, SPUR's regional planning director; and exhibition curator Benjamin Grant.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
Mapping the Bay region
Wednesday, July 1, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
How we understand and visualize our region is shaped by the very maps and images we use to represent our environment. Familiar maps of urbanized areas often fail to distinguish between cities and suburbs or detail the connections between them. The ubiquitous BART map, for example, does little to show how to connect with other transit systems. GreenInfo Network’s Larry Orman, former executive director of Greenbelt Alliance, along with Mike Reilly, manager at Stanford University Spatial Analysis Center, and Brian Stokle of Nelson\Nygaard, examine how the various approaches to mapping the Bay Area influence our definition of the “region" itself.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
Silicon Valley & our regional economy
Thursday, July 2, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
Unique among U.S. cities, the key economic driver of San Francisco and the Bay Area developed not in its urban center but in the agricultural countryside to the south. Yet as Silicon Valley has evolved from the land of innovative start-ups to become home to the largest and most established business headquarters in the region, less clear is where the Silicon Valley economy begins and ends – and what its long-term prospects will be for the entire Bay Area. Two leading economists – Russ Hancock, CEO and president of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley, and Ted Egan, chief economist for the City and County of San Francisco – discuss whether the Silicon Valley economy is becoming the Bay Area economy.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
The long arc of Bay Area industrial development
Tuesday, July 7, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
Although the Bay Area's industrial economy boomed during the military-based shipbuilding days of WWII, its role as an industrial center began much earlier, and continued well after the war with the rise of high-tech manufacturing in the South Bay. Richard Walker, leading economic geographer and chair of the California Studies Center at UC Berkeley, traces the history of industrialization in the Bay Area, discusses how different sub-regions of the Bay Area developed their own particular industrial specialization, and explains what impact this has on our current industrial landscape.
WALKING TOUR
Edge cities: redefining suburbia
Wednesday, July 8, Time TBD.
Limited to 20 SPUR members; RSVP to tours@spur.org.
In the 1980s, edge cities pulled jobs from the central cities and remade the suburbs as car-oriented employment centers. Today, those edge cities are in the middle of the region and often have major transit lines running through them. What happens next to remake suburbia and the transit stations within it? Leading this tour along the Pittsburgh/Baypoint BART line are John Rennels from BART; Gary Craft, principal and founder of Craft Consulting Group and a Contra Costa Council board member; and Jim Kennedy, redevelopment director for Contra Costa County, who will explore transit-oriented development in the county and assess the future of suburbia – for both jobs and housing.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
The future of open space
Thursday, July 9, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
The Bay Area leads the nation in open space preservation near its urban core. But the region sits next to the country's most threatened farmland and the urban sprawl of the San Joaquin Valley. Is the future of the open space movement in the Bay Area to look beyond the nine counties to address watershed and farmland preservation in the Delta and Central Valley, or is it to shift to new strategies that make our current preserved land more accessible? Join the discussion with two of the leading open space activists in the region – Jeremy Madsen, executive director of Greenbelt Alliance, and John Cain, director of restoration programs at the Natural Heritage Institute.
THE MODERNS
July 14-24
Destroying the city in order to save it, and other rational ideas
EVENING SYMPOSIUM
The Rational City: The Complex Legacy of Top-Down Planning
Tuesday, July 14, 6-7:30 p.m.
The Moderns sought to address substandard housing conditions and provide light, air and green space through urban planning and design. Yet in creating the "City of Tomorrow," they destroyed many of the places they tried to save. What can we learn from the Moderns' vision – and its pitfalls – today? Join panelists Dan Solomon, architect with Solomon E.T.C., a WRT Company; Anthea Hartig of the National Trust for Historic Preservation; Fred Blackwell, director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency; and exhibition curator Benjamin Grant.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
Optimism, Modernism, and the cult of expertise
Wednesday, July 15, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
Modernism was defined by a faith in the transformative capacity of expertise. Organizations like CIAM and Telesis produced manifestos and visionary schemes for urban transformation. Architect Dan Solomon of Solomon E.T.C., a WRT Company, and Peter Allen, urban historian and UC Berkeley doctoral candidate, explore this crucial characteristic of the modernist vision: an optimistic belief in humanity's power to shape the future.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
Federal housing legislation and the built environment
Thursday, July 16, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
From the creation of the Federal Housing Administration in 1934 through the HOPE VI program of the last decade, federal housing legislation has had a tremendous impact on cities and regions. Doug Shoemaker of San Francisco's Mayor's Office of Housing, Dianne Spaulding of the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California, John Stewart of John Stewart Company, and Victor Rubin from PolicyLink explore the role the federal government has played in housing over the past century.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
From class war to class coalition
Tuesday, July 21, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
Labor strife and class conflict characterized much of San Francisco's early history. But the post-war period saw the emergence of pro-growth coalitions of business, government and labor. William Issel, professor of history emeritus at San Francisco State University, discusses the emergence of growth liberalism in San Francisco.
WALKING TOUR
High Modernism in San Francisco
Wednesday, July 22, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
Limited to 20 SPUR members; RSVP to tours@spur.org.
John Kriken of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill leads a tour of some of the most distinctive and emblematic examples of Modernist architecture and urban design in San Francisco, including the Crown-Zellerbach Building and the Golden Gateway development.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
From urban renewal to contextual planning
Thursday, July 23, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
Urban renewal, the result of top-down planning by government entities with extraordinary land use powers, left deep political and physical scars in San Francisco. In response, a variety of efforts to assert community control and preserve the physical qualities of the city defined development politics for a generation or more. Redevelopment Agency Director Fred Blackwell, Planning Director John Rahaim, architect Bob Herman, Steve Nakajo, executive director of Kimochi, Inc, and Regina Davis, executive director of the San Francisco Housing Development Corporation, discuss this troubled chapter in the City’s history.
THE CONTEXTUALISTS
July 28-August 7
Protecting San Francisco’s historical values
EVENING SYMPOSIUM
The Protected City: Localism, History and Preserving the City Fabric
Tuesday, July 28, 6-7:30 p.m.
The Downtown Plan and the Plan for Mission Bay were among the first schemes in a new era of urban planning that responded to the excesses of the Moderns. Newly powerful neighborhood and community groups insisted that planners consider their needs and values, and promoted a planning agenda characterized by sensitivity to context, historic preservation, localism and inclusivity. Join panelists Dean Macris, former San Francisco planning director; Aaron Peskin, preservationist and former Board of Supervisors president; and exhibition curator Benjamin Grant.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
From trafficways to livable streets
Wednesday, July 29, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
San Francisco's famous freeway revolt stopped many projects that seem outrageous today, but not before miles of freeways destroyed many neighborhoods, and one-way streets and expressways turned relatively livable streets into dangerous traffic sewers. Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City, discusses contextualist urban transportation, the initial freeway revolt of the 1960s, and the ongoing movement in San Francisco and elsewhere to remove freeways and convert existing trafficways into livable streets.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
The rise of counter-institutions
Thursday, July 30, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
Community-based antidotes to the anti-humanist mega-schemes of the Moderns flourished in the 1960s and 1970s, and some morphed into sustainable new models of community organization. Join a discussion with James Tracy, San Francisco Community Land Trust Board of Directors president; Rene Cazenave, executive director of the San Francisco Information Clearing House; Pam Peirce, author and founder of the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners; and Gabriel Metcalf SPUR’s executive director, to learn about the origins of urban gardens, land trusts, and community development corporations.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
Contextual urban design
Tuesday, August 4, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
The contextualist movement in San Francisco arose following the simultaneous realization of Modernist projects like the Embarcadero Center and the loss of historic buildings like the City of Paris. David Baker of David Baker + Partners takes a critical look at the strengths and weaknesses of the movement, from the early historic rehabilitation of sites such as Ghirardelli Square to the various forms of buildings that are designed to fit in, and assesses the wisdom of legal guidelines that enforce the movement.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
Assessing district elections
Wednesday, August 5, Time TBD
District elections brought a new era of local representation to City Hall, including the city's first Asian Supervisor and first gay Supervisor. The tragic City Hall assassinations of 1978 ended district elections until they came back in 2000. This forum examines the positive and negative aspects of district elections, and what other methods jurisdictions use to elect their representatives. Speaker TBD.
WALKING TOUR
A tour of the Downtown Plan
Thursday, August 6, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
Limited to 20 SPUR members; RSVP to tours@spur.org.
This tour will focus on highlights of the City’s 1985 plan to address and control high-rise development. Two authors of the Downtown Plan – Dean Macris, former San Francisco planning director, 1980-1992, and George Williams, former deputy planning director – discuss the history of the plan and its implications for a future in which the skyline can evolve but still fit into the familiar context of the existing city.
THE ECO-URBANISTS
August 11-21
Forging a green metropolis for the post-carbon age
EVENING SYMPOSIUM
The Post-Carbon City: Planning for Abundance in an Era of Dwindling Resources
Tuesday, August 11, 6-7:30 p.m.
Eco-Urbanism is a movement that emphasizes sustainability, as planners promote green buildings, "closed-loop" architecture and neighborhood planning, and seek to build robust transit systems that can play a role in reducing emissions. Join panelists Carl Anthony, founder of Urban Habitat; Jeff Tumlin of Nelson\Nygaard; Leah Shahum, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition; Harrison Fraker, former dean of UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design; and exhibition curator Benjamin Grant.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
The architecture of Eco-Urbanism
Wednesday, August 12, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
Unparalleled in its commitment to sustainability, the Treasure Island redevelopment project establishes relationships between buildings, open space, transportation, views and natural forces. Craig Hartman of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Kevin Conger of CMG Landscape Architecture discuss the creation of this compact, transit-oriented community.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
Rising tides: the challenge for city planners
Thursday, August 13, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
The issue of sea-level rise is one of the main climate challenges faced by city planners today. The Bay Conservation and Development Commission held an international design competition for ideas responding to sea-level rise in San Francisco and other cities. The BCDC’s Brad McCrea, manager of the competition, presents some of the most compelling entries.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
New Orleans: rebuilding in an era of climate change
Tuesday August 18, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
New Orleans is a natural case study for examining the consequences of global climate change up close and personal. Edward Blakely, former recovery chief for the City of New Orleans, focuses on the inter-relationships of ecological, social, economic and environmental re-planning in one of America's most important regions.
LUNCHTIME FORUM
The future of energy
Wednesday August 19, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
Should energy policy be a local or a state issue? Molly Sterkel, program manager for the California Public Utilities Commission, David Hochschild of Solaria, and Dan Kammen, director of UC Berkeley’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, consider what progress we are making toward renewables, and what kind of innovations will change the way we use energy.
WALKING TOUR
EcoCenter at Heron's Head Park
Thursday August 20, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
Limited to 20 SPUR members; RSVP to tours@spur.org.
Now under construction, the EcoCenter at Heron's Head Park will be the first environmental education facility in southeast San Francisco, and San Francisco’s first 100 percent “off-grid” building. This tour, with Laurie Schoeman from Literacy for Environmental Justice and David Beaupre of the Port of San Francisco, also visits the site of the planned Eco-Industrial Park in the backlands of Piers 90-94.
