Ecocity World Summit
- Conference Venues
- April 22-23
- Academic & Talent Scouting Sessions: UC Berkeley Extension South of Market Center, 95 Third Street (at Mission), San Francisco. 415-284-1081. www.unex.berkeley.edu
- April 24-26
- Ecocity World Summit Main Conference: Nob Hill Masonic Center, 1111 California Street, San Francisco, CA 94108. 415-292-4702. www.masonicauditorium.com
Located atop Nob Hill in one of San Francisco's oldest and most celebrated neighborhoods, the Nob Hill Masonic Center is a versatile facility hosting a variety of events. Its intimate auditorium and convenient location have made it the concert hall of choice for performing artists. The cable car runs outside the front door, and the views are spectacular. There's no other facility in the city quite like it.
2008 Sessions Presentation Archive
Here you will find a growing library of Ecocity World Summit Main Conference and Academic Sessions slideshows. We will be adding to this archive and updating it frequently over the next few weeks. We hope this archive will serve as a useful resource to those who attended Ecocity Summit 08, and also for those who were unable to attend but are interested in the information presented.
- SATURDAY, APRIL 26, MAIN CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS (keep checking back as we complete the inventory)
- Nature in the City. Saturday
- Just how much "nature" can there be in the city? In creeks running through, shorelines along, birds visiting rooftop native plants, views to development-free ridgelines and hills? Can natural areas appear in expanding parks and corridors open up along new pedestrian and bicycle paths as we withdraw from low-density development? Is the bottom line biodiversity or attractive planting or both? Is it even possible to have real nature in the city or is nature in the city mostly pest invaders? Peter Brastow, Director of Nature in the City, in San Francisco, has experience and perspectives and plans for his city's nature. Kemba Shakur plants trees — hundreds of them — in Oakland for Urban Releaf, making sure especially that the lower income areas are not left out. Josiah Cain of Rana Creek landscape architects of Carmel Valley, California, brings native plants to rooftops in places not well known and spectacular places too, such as the roof of the new California Academy of Sciences Building in Golden Gate Park.
- Moderator: Isabel Wade, founder, SF Neighborhood Parks Council.
- 1. Kemba Shakur, Urban Releaf, Oakland, CA
- 2. Peter Brastow, Nature in the City, San Francisco, CA
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- Designing and Planning the Experience of Nature
- We all plan and design in varied ways, down to and including voting for changes we want others to carry out that change our environment. The title here may seem a stretch, but it's a good stretch to exercise the mind around three remarkable approaches to addressing nature in its diversity, beauty and healthiness, two in the activist vein and one in professional design. Geoff Warn is a professor of architecture at Curtin University, in Perth, Australia, an in his practice has designed a beautiful pedestrian bridge into the canopy of the tall dryland hardwood forest there and other structures celebrating nature. Matt Clifford, Staff Attorney for the Clark Fork (River) Coalition, has been working since 2001 for the removal of the Milltown Dam just upstream from Missoula, Montana and its enormous load of mine-poisoned silt. And it was removed in March, 2008, another river flowing free. Dominika Zareba gets people out into the natural world and into nature on her Central and Eastern European Greenways, the world's most graceful way to travel -- bicycling and walking in the country on a system of rural roads completely free of motor traffic connecting dozens of cities, lined with occasional small hotels. Moderator: Paul Miller, Professor Emeritus, University of Montana, Missoula.
- 1. Dominika Zareba, Polish Environmental Partnership Foundation
- The Ecocity Future of San Francisco
- San Francisco, says Mayor Gavin Newsom, is going to be green city par excellence come tomorrow. So description please! Jared Blumenfeld, Direction of the Department of the Environment can give us a very good outline. Isabel Wade has been fighting for the urban forest since head of the State of California's urban forestry program under Jerry Brown in the late 1970s and early 1980s. What are prospects for expanding San Francisco open spaces —parks, playgrounds, even wild areas and maybe nature corridors? As founder, San Francisco Neighborhood Parks Council, what does she imagine for the city's future? If ever there was a basic sin qua non for ecological health it's recycling and recycling organic matter in particular since humans are organic matter and of course organic matter makes the soils we grow food in. So how is that doing in San Francisco? Jack Macy, SF Department of the Environment, is in charge. Moderator: Sarah Karlinsky, Policy Director, San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR).
- 1. Isabel Wade, San Francisco Neighborhood Parks Council
Thursday 1 - Friday 1 - 2 - 3 - Saturday 1- 2 - 3 - Academic Sessions 1 - 2 - 3 - 4
