*Update 5.15.22: We are pleased to announce the rescheduled date of June 7th at 4pm Eastern time. If you previously registered, you should have received a new confirmation email with the updated Zoom link. If you haven’t registered yet, please do so below.
Island Press has extended a 30% off on Ali Sant’s book From the Ground Up. Use discount code WEBINAR at https://islandpress.org/books/ground . We hope you enjoy this background reading in advance of the panel.
Thank you!
In the Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs wrote, “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody”. Today, the tactics of reclaiming the street with Parklets, Slow Streets, and Shared Spaces has exploded during the COVID Pandemic. However, these street interventions are not equally distributed. As they have spread in cities throughout the United States, they have exacerbated growing spatial inequalities. How do we reclaim streets from cars to create public spaces that serve everyone? Roads account for more than 25% of urban areas. What are they best used for and how should they be programmed? Join a panel discussion with Tamika Butler, a national expert on the built environment and equity; Dani Simons, the Director of Public Affairs for the USDOT; and urbanist John Bela, one of the creators of Park(ing) Day, in conversation with Alison Sant, author of From the Ground Up."
Space is limited but the event will be recorded and available on our website and YouTube channel afterwards.
The Jane Jacobs Lecture Series is free and open to the public, but your support makes our work possible. Please consider donating to support future lectures. A special thank you to Marywood University’s School of Architecture and AIA NEPA for sponsoring this lecture.
Panelists
TAMIKA L. BUTLER
TAMIKA L. BUTLER, ESQ., is a national expert on the built environment and equity. She is the founder of Tamika L. Butler Consulting, LLC and previously served as the director of equity and inclusion at Toole Design and as executive director of both the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust and the Los Angeles Bicycle Coalition. She is currently pursuing her PhD in urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles.
JOHN BELA
John is an urbanist, designer and artist whose work spans city-wide public realm strategy and neighborhood design to parklets and placemaking. His practice as a designer and facilitator is to elicit fundamental values and inspire a strong sense of purpose. John co-founded the Rebar Art and Design Studio in 2005 and was a partner and director at Gehl from 2013-2022. John formed Bela Urbanism & Design in 2021. Current work includes the SF Downtown Public Realm action plan with Sitelab, urban design advising for Google's neighborhood creation efforts in Silicon Valley, and consulting with a number of municipalities on their parklet and public space programs. johnbela.com
DANI SIMONS
Dani Simons serves as the Assistant to the Secretary and Director of Public Affairs at the USDOT. Over the past two decades, Simons has held leadership roles in advocacy, government, and the private sector, using communications to advance sustainable transportation. She served as Director of Strategic Communications at NYCDOT, was part of the launch team for Citi Bike, and then served as Head of Communications for its parent company, Motivate. Most recently she was Global Head of Public Partnerships at Waze.
ALISON SANT
Alison Sant is a partner and co-founder of the Studio for Urban Projects, an interdisciplinary design collaborative based in San Francisco that works at the intersection of architecture, urbanism, art, and social activism. For more than 15 years, the Studio has focused on public programming, urban prototyping, and civic dialog – aiming to bring social justice and sustainability to the design of cities. Sant is the author of From the Ground Up: Local Efforts to Create Resilient Cities (Island Press, 2022) a book that examines how American cities are mitigating and adapting to climate change while creating greater equity and livability. She has taught at the California College of the Arts, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the College of Environmental Design, University of California Berkeley.
2022 Jane Jacobs Lecture Series Sponsors
