Urban Refuge

TIME : 7:00 pm
LOCATION: Studio for Urban Projects, 917 Bryant Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
REGISTRATION: Please RSVP to info@studioforurbanprojects.org. Suggested donation $5-$15
TRANSIT: Served by Market Street transit lines to Civic Center or MUNI lines 19, 27 and 47 to SOMA. Secure bike parking available.

Birds-Eye View

An evening exploring the unique relationship of birds to our urban environment with Filmmaker Judy Irving in conversation with Megan Prelinger

TIME: 7:00 pm
LOCATION: Studio for Urban Projects, 917 Bryant Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
REGISTRATION: Please RSVP to info@studioforurbanprojects.org
Suggested donation $5-$15
TRANSIT: Served by Market Street transit lines to Civic Center or MUNI lines 19, 27 and 47 to SOMA. On-street bike parking available.

The peregrine falcons nesting on Portland’s Fremont Bridge; the infamous Pale Male, a Red Tail Hawk that has made his home adjacent to Central Park since the early 1990′s; and the wild parrots of San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill are all stories of urban birds that offer us a new perspective on our cities.

Award winning documentary filmmaker Judy Irving has spent the past decade documenting San Francisco’s urban birds. Her acclaimed film, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill popularized the story of a flock of wild parrots in San Francisco. She is currently working on a new documentary entitled Pelican Dreams which features a young brown pelican who mistakenly landed on the roadway of the Golden Gate Bridge, creating a spectacular traffic jam and re-igniting Judy’s years’-long fascination with these ancient, endangered birds.

Please join us for an evening of film clips and discussion featuring Judy Irving in conversation with Megan Prelinger. Megan Prelinger is co-founder of the Prelinger Library, a public resource for land-use history and urbanism. Megan is a naturalist, member of bird rescue organizations, and a SF Nature Education guide.

Mannahatta 2409

A talk by Eric Sanderson on imagining ecological sustainability in the context of climate change

DATE: Thursday, December 20th
TIME: 7:00 pm
LOCATION: Studio for Urban Projects, 917 Bryant Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
REGISTRATION: Please RSVP to info@studioforurbanprojects.org
Suggested donation $5-$15
TRANSIT: Served by Market Street transit lines to Civic Center or MUNI lines 19, 27 and 47 to SOMA. Secure bike parking available on-site.

The Mannahatta Project, a project conducted over the last decade by Eric Sanderson, investigated the historical streams, ponds, springs, shores, hills, forests, and wildlife of Manhattan Island on the eve of Henry Hudson’s discovery in 1609. The project allowed New Yorkers to glimpse their ecological past.

Sanderson’s new project, Mannahatta2409.org, enables New Yorkers to imagine their ecological future. With this new web platform, users are able to paint the landscape of Manhattan with new ecosystems, allowing both relatively subtle changes (rain barrels on every block, green roofs on a few buildings) to radical changes in the shape and size and composition of the city’s built and open ecosystems, including buildings, transportation, parks, and natural areas. Each landscape vision can be evaluated in terms of its ecological performance with respect to water, carbon, biodiversity, and population, allowing comparisons for an area as it exists today to an area as it existed four hundred years ago, before European colonization. The goal is to explore the limits of the ecology of densely populated places, to share ideas for ecological success, and to build ecological awareness into the culture of urbanity in New York and elsewhere.

Join us for a talk by Eric Sanderson about his work on Mannahatta 2409. Sanderson is a Senior Conservation Ecologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and the author of the best-selling book,Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City (Abrams, 2009). The project led to a web map and site (since rebranded welikia.org), an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, and the best-selling book. Sanderson is currently pursuing the Welikia Project, on the historical and contemporary ecology of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and surrounding waters His next book, Terra Nova: The New World After Oil, Cars, and Suburbs, will be published in 2013.

Nest Building

A workshop in making nests for urban critters with Amber Hasselbring and Lisa Lee Benjamin

Date: Sunday, December 16th
Time: 1:00-4:00 pm
Location: Studio for Urban Projects, 917 Bryant Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
Registration: $25.00 per person. Please register with EventBrite

San Francisco is one of the densest cities in the country, yet it includes and is adjacent to many natural areas. The city is also a bottleneck in the Pacific Flyway through which migratory birds pass on seasonal migrations. Creating habitat, rest stops and food sources for insects and birds helps to encourage biodiversity in our city and beyond. Please join us for a workshop in creating nests for our urban critters.

Participants will each build a shelter inspired by the nesting habits of insects and birds. Mason bees build nest cavities in existing wood holes. Carpenter bees bore deep into wood to make nests, packed six or seven galleries deep, each provisioned with pollen and an egg. Songbirds use grass, hair, downy seed heads, wool, and lichens for building nests. Spiders use warm, dry cavities filled with sawdust, sand, or grass to make their dens.

The workshop will be taught by artist and naturalist Amber Hasselbring of Nature in the City and the Mission Greenbelt Project in collaboration with designer Lisa Lee Bengamin, of Urban Hedgerow. All materials will be provided and participants will each create a nest to take home. These make wonderful gifts for the holidays! Families are encouraged to attend.

Exploring Mission Creek

A walking tour with Chris Carlsson, Leslie Golden, Megan Prelinger, and the Urbia Adventure League

Date: October 14
Time: Urbia Quest 1:00-2:00 pm, Walking Tour 2:00-5:00 pm
Location: Mission Creek Park, meet at the boat launch. 
Directions: The boat launch is on the North side of Mission Creek Park. Look for the blue boat house near the highway 280 overpass. MUNI metro N-Judah, T-Line and bus lines 15, 30, and 45 have stops in the vicinity of Mission Creek Park.
Register: Suggested donation $10.00-20.00
To register please e-mail: info@studioforurbanprojects.org

San Francisco recently launched its new partnership with the Biophilic City Project to become not only a “green” city but one that encourages functioning ecosystems, wildlife, and an abundance of nature. How is the design of our city parks rethinking their role as habitat as well as public green space? How can looking back to the original ecology of our cities inform the ways in which we consider redesigning them?

Join us for a walking tour of Mission Creek. We will explore the natural history of Mission Bay, an estuary once teaming with wildlife as the tides ebbed and flowed over rich mud flats. After years of urban and industrial development that culverted Mission Creek and toxified its waters, dozens of birds and aquatic species have returned to the tidal channel in Mission Creek Park, a remnant of this former watershed. How was the Park designed to create a habitat in the city? What species live here now and can be encouraged to thrive? More broadly, with inspiring examples of daylighting streams, such as the Cheonggyecheon Stream in the heart of Seoul, how can we re-think the ways in which waterways might be integrated into our cities?

Our speakers will include author and historian Chris Carlsson who edited, revised and expanded the book Vanished Waters: A History of San Francisco’s Mission Bay; Leslie Golden of Golden Associates, an award-winning Landscape Architect and Urban Planner who was responsible for the planting design of Mission Creek Park; and Megan Prelinger, co-founder of the Prelinger Library, a public resource for land-use history and urbanism. Megan is a naturalist, member of bird rescue organizations, and a SF Nature Education guide. On hand to add to the discussion will be Amber Hasselbring of Nature in the City, and Ginny Stearns, a Mission Creek houseboat resident and local expert on Mission Creek wildlife.

Early in the day Damien Raffa and Barbara Corff of the Urbia Adventure League  will be piloting their new quest for Mission Creek. Families are welcome to come at 1:00 pm to explore the park and enjoy the latest edition of this great San Francisco self-guided adventure series.

This event is co-presented with Nature in the City.

Reclaim Market Street! Film Screening

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
Tuesday, November 15, 6:00–8:00 pm
SPUR, 654 Mission Street, San Francisco
This event is free and open to the public.
To register for this event please click here.

Urban planner William H. Whyte’s study The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces is a profound study of urban space. In the 1970s, using methods of direct observation—including photography, film and notation—Whyte and his research assistants compiled a survey of New York’s plazas, streets and sidewalks, examining pedestrian behavior and dynamics. In The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces Whyte presents his witty and insightful views on what makes public space thrive. Please join us for a screening of this seminal film.

Reclaim Market Street! Street Intervention

Saturday October 22, 1:00- 5:00pm
Meet at Harry Bridges Plaza
Please register with SPUR
This event is free and open to the public
Donations appreciated

“Space is a practiced place.” –Michel de Certeau

Reclaim Market Street! Plaza Intervention

Saturday October 15th Playspace 1:00-5:00 pm, Screening 7:00 pm UN Plaza (Market Street between 7th & 8th Streets) Please register with SPUR This event is free and open to the public Donations appreciated “Play is freedom.” –Johan Hizinga Can plazas be made more dynamic by serving different age groups and interests over the course of a day? Can children be better integrated into the life of the street, learning to become citizens through their participation in the city and protected by the watchful eyes of neighbors? UN Plaza will be transformed into a play space for children, parents and friends. By day, it will feature the Imagination Playground kit by David Rockwell. In the evening, this space will host a public screening of the 1906 film A Trip Down Market Street and its 2005 remake by Melinda Stone and Liz Keim. Archivist Rick Prelinger will show films from his collection focusing on the history of Market Street as captured by amateurs, newsreel cameramen and industrial filmmakers. This event is part of the exhibition Reclaim Market Street! created by the Studio for Urban Projects and exhibited at SPUR. Please visit the exhibition at 654 Mission Street, San Francisco. Acknowledgments: Created with the support of the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department. Imagination Playground on loan from the Bay Area Discovery Museum, Sausalito, CA. Special thanks to Karen Mauney-Brodek, Dana Ketcham, Lisa Beyer, Brianna Cutts and Jennifer Caleshu. Reclaim Market Street! is made possible through the generous support of SPUR and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.

Reclaim Market Street! Sidewalk Intervention

Saturday October 8th 1:00- 5:00pm
Sites from UN Plaza to 5th Street on Market
Please register with SPUR
This event is free and open to the public
Donations appreciated

“Poetry is in the streets.” -Situationists

This one-day event examines ways in which we can redefine the social life of the sidewalk. Amidst the hustle and bustle of commerce and business how do we slow to the pace of conversation, interaction or reflection? Can we create places to sit, make or play? How does our relationship to the street change when we tend it, plant it, or perform for it? The day will profile the work of Futurefarmers, Michael Swaine and Paul Benney, Genine Lentine, and Amber Hasselbring.

Futurefarmers
After the Market (Market between 5th and 6th)
Futurefarmers will enliven a derelict marquee between 5th and 6th streets. Passersby will be invited to collectively imagine a new Market Street through play, humor, and dialogue. Drawing upon current instability of the “market,” Futurefarmers will create an abstract language in the form of a set of symbols. Using poles they will compose messages, in collaboration with the public, to hang on the marquee.

Michael Swaine and Paul Benney
BroomTrade (6th and Market)
Who cleans the streets? What is the definition of Civic Pride? What is teamwork? Where did you get that broom??? These are some of the questions that are at the core of BroomTrade, a social experiment/art piece by Michael Swaine and Paul Benney. Join them as they parade down Market St, with a series of hand-crafted, tandem brooms, and an open invitation to join in and help clean up the streets! Swaine and Benney have created a number of brooms that require groups of two, four, and six people to operate, transforming the simple act of sweeping into a collaborative, public dance event. They also invite people to bring a broom from home, and engage in a BroomTrade with other willing participants. Come to Market Street! Bring a broom! Learn a dance! And clean your city!

Genine Lentine
Listening Booth (UN Plaza)
Listening Booth arises out of an abiding interest in the brightening effect of being listened to, even for a brief period of time. Listening Booth is enclosed not by a structure but by regard. Creating a context for heightened attention, the piece emphaizes listening over the product of speech or conversation. Attention itself is the medium. Listening Booth provides an opportunity for face-to-face conversation when much public conversation now happens with either an absent listener, i.e. on a cell phone, or an absent speaker, i.e. a podcast. All are welcome to sit down in “the booth” and talk to an attentive listener for five minutes.

Amber Hasselbring
Urban Hedgerow (UN Plaza)
Join a public think-tank of artists, designers, and plant experts in a discussion and workshop set in a temporary native habitat staged in UN Plaza. The group will scheme ways of creating wild, unmanaged green veins throughout San Francisco made of hedges, sidewalk gardens, treetops and stream corridors — thoroughfares for songbirds, pollinators and other urban wildlife.

Joshua Short
Red Carpet for the Commons (Civic Center BART station)
Joshua Short will facilitate his project, Red Carpet for the Commons at various locations around the Civic Center BART station. Unsuspecting citizens will find themselves walking across the red carpet, greeted by applause and reverence.

This event is part of the exhibition Reclaim Market Street! created by the Studio for Urban Projects and exhibited at SPUR. Please visit the exhibition at 654 Mission Street, San Francisco. Reclaim Market Street! is made possible through the generous support of SPUR and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.

Reclaim Market Street! Walking Tour

Occupations of Market Street
Saturday October 1st, 11:00am- 3:00pm
Meet at Harry Bridges Plaza in front of the Ferry Building
This event is free and open to the public
To reserve a spot on the tour please click here.

Join us for a walking tour amplifying the street as the stage for history, political dialogue and activism. In what ways has Market Street been used for political ends throughout its history? How do we claim this space as we consider the street’s future? This four-hour walk down Market Street will feature author, activist and historian Chris Carlsson, who recently edited Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968–1978. He is also one of the initiators of Critical Mass and has spearheaded a San Francisco participatory history project titled Shaping San Francisco. Special thanks to Chris Carlsson and Lisa Ruth Elliott of Shaping San Francisco in developing this event.