Next American City went to San Francisco on February 22-23,2010 and hosted three spectacular events with terrific local partners. This audio slideshow was created by Sarah Kate Kramer, Next American City’s multimedia producer. Click on the image below to start the slideshow.
First Next American City headed to the AIA’s San Francisco offices for a lecture entitled “Community Benefit Districts: The Future of San Francisco Development?”
Community Benefit Districts (CBDs) are San Francisco’s version of special assessment districts, a tool of localized governance designed to augment traditional city services. Next American City sponsored a panel presented by City Hall Fellows and the Craigslist Foundation that explored what implications CBDs may have beyond streetscape improvement and beautification. Panelists included Lisa Pagan, Project Manager, Office of Economic and Workforce Development, City and County of San Francisco; Robert Stokes, Assist. Professor of Urban Environmental Studies, Drexel University; and Kate Sofis, Executive Director, Urban Innovation SF.
Then Next American City joined ITVS and more than 100 guests at the Jellyfish Gallery in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood to co-host a screening of two new short films and listen to a salon panel discussion. The two films screened, Tent City and Silver Sling, were part of the upcoming short film series “Futurestates: Imagining a New Brave New World.” The series consists of 11 mini-features (each about 15 minutes in length) created by both established independent filmmakers and emerging talents. The short films present a collection of visions about what life in America will be like in the decades and centuries to come.The films were followed by a provocative panel discussion with Karim Ahmad, the Futurestates Series Manager for ITVS; Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist credited with first using the term “virtual reality”; Diana Lind, Editor and Publisher of Next American City; Tanu Sankalia, Assistant Professor of Art and Architecture at the University of San Francisco; and Piero Scaruffi, a cognitive scientist, software architect and cultural historian.
Last but certainly not least, Next American City, SPUR and AIASF hosted an interactive charrette about building a better Market Street. Jeff Tumlin of Nelson Nygaard provided an overview of what makes a great street, then the crowd broke up into small groups focused on different aspects of street planning. Kim Havens of Wilson Meany Sullivan led the Commerce (Planning and Development) discussion and Karin Flood Eklund of MJM Management led Commerce (Shopping). Tim Papandreou of the SF Municipal Transportation Agency and Neal Patel of the SF Bike Coalition facilitated the transit and bike conversations, and Jill Manton of the Public Arts Commission and Kit Hodge of the Great Streets Project took on public art and public space. SPUR’s recap of the event is available here.
