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.

Reclaim Market Street! Exhibition Opening

Tuesday September 6th, 6:00-8:00pm
SPUR, 654 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94105

In 2015, Market Street will be remade as the culmination of a four-year public process called the Better Market Street Project. Reclaim Market Street!, created by the Studio for Urban Projects, augments this ongoing community program by staging a series of interventions that engage the public in changing the street. Accompanying these events is an exhibition at the San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association (SPUR) that provides context for these pilot projects by highlighting the many ways in which cities, nationally and internationally, are engaged in reimagining their public spaces through experimental urban planning. Believing that artists can be provocative agents in helping us to reimagine our cities, the Studio for Urban Projects—in collaboration with artists, activists, designers and city officials—has created this project as a way of helping us to claim Market Street in this crucial moment.

The Underground Food Movement

Following the program several Underground Farmers Market vendors will be serving delicious home-made food.

Tuesday, May 17 7:00 pm
Space is limited. Please RSVP to rsvp@studioforurbanprojects.org
Suggested donation $5-$15

Edible Wild Plants

There are nutritious, delicious and abundant edible plants growing wild all around us. Join us for a presentation and discussion with foraging expert and author, John Kallas, who will show you how to identify, harvest and prepare edible wild plants found within walking distance of your kitchen. Dr. Kallas will be on hand after the discussion for a signing of his recent book, Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods From Dirt to Plate.

A trained botanist, nature photographer, writer, researcher, and teacher, Dr. Kallas, is one of the foremost authorities on North American edible wild plants and other foragables. He learned about wild foods through formal academic training and over 35 years of hands-on field research. Dr. Kallas has amassed one of the largest personal wild food libraries in the country, and started Wild Food Adventures in 1993 and the Wild Food Adventurer newsletter in 1996.

The program will take place on Thursday, May 5 at 7pm.  Space is limited, RSVP to rsvp@studioforurbanprojects.org.

Cycling Cities

“Since the first time since the car became the dominant form of American transportation after World War II, there is now a grassroots movement to seize at least part of the street back from motorists.”
Pedaling Revolution, Jeff Mapes

San Francisco is being transformed by newly painted bike lanes, cycle tracks, bike boxes and a master plan for integrating safe bicycle transport throughout the city. What is happening here is mirrored by similar efforts in Portland, New York, Seattle, Minneapolis and many other US cities.

Join us for a discussion examining the emerging bicycling movement and how it is changing our cities. What are models of integrated urban transit? How do we design for increased numbers of cyclists? What are our aspirations for integrating cycling into our urban fabric? What is the history of bike advocacy and how has it shaped contemporary political dialog?

Our panelists will include Leah Shahum the Director of the San Francisco Bike Coalition; Heath Maddox, Transportation Planner at SFMTA who is overseeing San Francisco’s new bike sharing program; Architect David Baker; and Chris Carlsson, author, historian, and co-originator of Critical Mass. The evening’s panel will be moderated by Sabrina Merlo, the former Regional Advocacy Director of the Bay Area Bicycle Coalition.

Thursday, April 14 7:30pm

Reclaiming the Street

Referred to by many names; woonerfs (Netherlands), verkehrsberuhigter bereich (Germany) home zones (UK), and shared spaces (US); these streets prioritize space for pedestrians and bicyclists. By design they remove cars as the primary form of transportation and allow a more holistic mix of transit options.

How are US cities beginning to embrace new approaches to planning our city streets? What lessons have we learned from models in European cities that are helpful in designing more inclusive spaces? What are models in San Francisco and other American Cities that we can look to?

Join us for an evenings discussion with Bryan Goebel, the Editor of SF StreetsBlog; Kit Hodge, the Director of the Great Streets Project; Architect and Urban Planner David Winslow the designer of Linden Alley, and moderator John Bela of REBAR.

Thursday, March 31 7:00pm