The Live@SPUR Podcast

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Gabe Klein, the former head of the city transportation departments of both Chicago and Washington, DC, is now a special venture partner with Fontinalis Partners, a leading venture firm working in next-generation mobility. Klein visited SPUR on November 18, 2015, to talk about his new book Start-Up City, and how cities can best harness changes in technology and partner with the private sector to reshape themselves for the coming century.

Generously sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Music by Podington Bear (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/podington_bear/), licensed under CC BY-NC 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/). Image courtesy Flickr user Elvert Barnes (https://www.flickr.com/photos/perspective/5678001976/sizes/l)

On August 12, 2015, SPUR hosted a panel discussion about San Francisco’s 1985 Downtown Plan, its legacy 30 years after adoption, and how it might point the way toward a new plan for downtown. Speaking on the panel were three people involved in the plan’s creation and implementation: Dean Macris, George Williams, and Jeff Heller.

Dean Macris was San Francisco’s Planning Director during three periods: in the mid-1970s, from 1980 to 1992, and again from 2004 to 2007. He led the effort that created the 1985 Downtown Plan. George Williams was Assistant Director of Planning under Dean Macris in the 1980s, where he was in charge of long-range planning including the Downtown Plan. And Jeff Heller is President of Heller Manus Architects, a firm he founded with Clark Manus in 1984. Heller served on a professional task force that helped create the Downtown Plan, and his architectural résumé includes many buildings in downtown San Francisco.

Generously sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Music by Podington Bear (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/podington_bear/) and Deal the Villain (https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Deal_TheVillain/), licensed under CC BY-NC 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/).

Peter Busby is the managing director of the San Francisco office of global architecture and design firm Perkins+Will. Busby, a global leader in sustainable design, visited SPUR on July 8, 2015, to talk about the evolution of architectural practice over the last few decades to encompass increasingly cross-disciplinary concerns that extend well beyond the envelope of an individual building. The presentation drew from Busby’s book Architecture’s New Edges, published earlier this year by Ecotone Publishing.

Generously sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Music by Podington Bear (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/podington_bear/), licensed under CC BY-NC 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/). Image courtesy Perkins+Will (http://perkinswill.com)

Michael Kimmelman is the architecture critic for the New York Times, but his work doesn't just focus on the way buildings look. Kimmelman writes about a wide range of urban issues and about how we build cities, and he sees his role as helping people understand those processes so they can play a part in making their cities better. Kimmelman visited SPUR on June 1, 2015, to talk about some of the issues he's covered for the Times with SPUR Editorial Director Allison Arieff.

Generously sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Music by Podington Bear (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/podington_bear/), licensed under CC BY-NC 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/).

As cities around the world face climate change, natural disasters, and other stresses both acute and chronic, how can they plan, build, and re-build in ways foster comprehensive, long-term resilience? Dr. Judith Rodin works toward answers to that question in her role as president of the Rockefeller Foundation, and addressed it also in her recent book The Resilience Dividend. She visited SPUR on May 7, 2015, to discuss building resilient cities with Gabriel Metcalf, SPUR’s President and CEO.

Generously sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Music by Wake (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Wake) and RoccoW (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/RoccoW/). Image courtesy PublicAffairs (http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com).