MOBILE WORKSHOPS ARE FULL! We are no longer accepting full registrations. If you have already registered and been assigned a workshop, you can scroll down for meeting times and locations.

Bus tour at New Orleans 2007 conference: Lower 9th Ward above; start of second-line parade, St. Augustine's Church, Treme, below.

A hallmark of all Planners Network conferences, which we are proud to include in the Just Metropolis, are a series of dynamic mobile workshops on the first full day of the conference, Thursday, June 17th. Unlike many other conferences where "tours" are expensive add-ons, these mobile workshops are included in the cost of a full conference registration. They provide a unique way of engaging with many of the pertinent issues in the region, through face to face engagement with the residents, organizations and agencies in the neighborhoods and communities themselves. We have made a particular effort to craft workshops that are not only diverse in terms of subject matter but geography as well, giving participants the opportunity to see portions of the Bay Area that don't lie on the tourist maps.

Basic Details

• All workshops take place concurrently, so you will be asked to rank your top three choices on the registration form.
• Lunch and transportation costs are included when you register for the full conference. We are not currently accepting registrations for mobile workshops only.

Meeting times and locations:

• All participants are expected to make their own way to the meeting points in a timely manner. We will not wait more than a few extra minutes, so plan ahead!
• All meeting points are BART stations. The meeting point and time are listed below. Note the two workshops that start early.
• The BART trip planner below can help you get from the station nearest you to your meeting point.

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTIONS

1) Food Justice - CLOSED (FULL) -

Meeting: West Oakland BART, 9:00 AM

The “Food Justice” mobile workshop will follow the work of local Oakland organizations and businesses engaged in changing current patterns of food production, processing, distribution, and consumption in order to bring food security to areas of the city considered “Food Deserts.” Food deserts are urban areas that lack access to healthy and fresh food.

West Oakland, an area of the city without access to a supermarket within a two-mile radio, is home to some of the most innovative organizations in the nation working in transforming urban food systems. Participants of the  “Food Justice” mobile workshop will visit these organization sites, observe their programs in action, and engage in a dialogue with staff about the increasing role of planners in promoting land use policies that support and promote healthy food systems.

Urban gardens, retail grocery cooperatives, and corner store improvement programs are some of the locations that workshop participants will be visiting. The workshop will start with visits to Mandela Marketplace and People’s Grocery locations. Presentations at these sites will be facilitated by Heather Wooten, from Planning for Healthy Places at Public Health Law & Policy, and Alethea Harper, Oakland Food Policy Council coordinator.

The workshop will also will include site visits to local food businesses locations. For this part of the workshop, Margot Lederer Prado, Industrial & Brownfields Specialist in the Oakland’s Economic Development Division, will facilitate a presentation of the economy and ecology of local food production in Oakland. The food processing businesses included in this mobile workshop are: Hodo Soy Beanery, and Linden Brewery, were we will end the workshop with a sip of good local beer from the only existing microbrewery in the city of Oakland.

Geography: West to East Oakland; Transport: Bus or van

2) Labor - Flexibility in the Landscape and Culture of Silicon Valley

- CLOSED (FULL) -

CHANGED LOCATION & TIME Meeting: Fremont BART, 9:00 AM (note that this is a 30 minute ride from Oakland, so plan accordingly)

*note early time

This workshop explores the landscape and culture of Silicon Valley's industries and worker communities over time, which in turn have shaped the neighborhoods of its workers. Participants will view the vestiges of the old industrial landscapes created by the military industrial complex and federal spending on transportation, R&D, and industrial development and contrast them with the current landscape created by the shift to consumer electronics and the triumph of flexible labor markets, flex spec and globalization and their impacts on vertical industries. Hosted by the Silicon Valley Research Network, a group of scholars, activists, and educators who work on and in the South Bay Area, sites on the workshop include:

* Semiconductor plant: transition to solar and abroad; flexible management practices and office spaces
* BART Extension to the flea market: displacing immigrant entrepreneurs and creating infill transit development
* Workforce Investment Board and Restructuring newspaper industry: flexibility, layoffs, and new models of labor organizing and looking for work
* Stanford's industrial landscape: ephemera, tilt ups, banalities, and other curiosities from Silicon Valley Mystery House
* Superfund Site (discussion of occupational hazards, wage polarization, environmental justice and hazards)
* San Jose's Golden Triangle: the Planners' Gaze (redevelopment, fiscalization of land use, shifting employment bases, and the triumph of downtown San Jose)

Geography: Silcon Valley/San Jose; Transport: Bus or van

3) Neighborhood Commercial Revitalization Strategies - Best Intentions and

Unintended Consequences

- CLOSED (FULL) -

Meeting: 12th Street BART, Oakland, 9:00 AM

Bay Area LISC and the City of San Francisco's Office of Economic and Workforce Development jointly provide comprehensive economic development programs in nine commercial districts in low to moderate income neighborhoods. In this interactive session, participants will visit and learn about these communities and the various approaches taken to tackle neighborhood challenges including long-term vacancies, lack of community connection and pride, blight, and crime. In particular, we will explore arts-based solutions to these challenges. What are the benefits and potential pitfalls of strategies that employ the arts - artists and arts-based organizations - in these efforts?

Geography: San Francisco; Transport: Transit + Bus/Van

4) Sustainable Neighborhood Revitalization: Green Affordable Housing and Schools, Healthy Foods, Safe Parks, and Youth Involvement

- CLOSED (FULL) -

Meeting: Richmond BART, 8:30 AM

The community of Nystrom is located in the southern portion of the City of Richmond, California. Nystrom faces challenges including unsafe/under-utilized community spaces, crime, below average school performance, high unemployment, and poverty. How can people, buildings, programs and services work in tandem to revitalize urban spaces and ways of living? How can we engage community -- especially young people -- in these processes?
Morning: The Nystrom United Revitalization Effort (NURVE) initiative was formed as a collaborative effort between Richmond Community Foundation (RCF) and various City, County and community entities. This comprehensive, community-based initiative grew from input gathered through community meetings, technical analyses, and youth participation. We will visit the NURVE project sites: Nystrom Elementary School, Maritime Child Development Center, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) Community Center and Park, and the four-block Nystrom Village affordable housing project.

Afternoon: This workshop highlights how collaborative practices can revitalize/sustain places for community to gather, grow, heal, and thrive. Presented by Urban Tilth and Richmond Spokes, this session includes community mapping and garden demonstrations along the Richmond Greenway. Facilitators discuss connections between locally-grown foods, transportation and access, youth opportunities and green jobs, health and regional connectivity.

The workshop will be documented by the Green Screen media team. The Green Screen is EarthTeam's answer to the question "How can we engage young people in the community discussion and planning to revitalize urban spaces and ways of living?" EarthTeam teens and a new partnership with the City's Groundwork Trust's "Green Team" puts technology into the hands of the teens, using photography, video and locative media to motivate them to take a closer look, to see with new eyes the community as it is and be inspired to become leaders in finding the solutions. The Green Screen will present samples of their work as well as document the workshop.

Co-organized by: Earth Team/Green Screen, Richmond Community Foundation, Richmond Spokes, and Urban Tilth

Geography: Richmond; Transport: Transit + Walking

5) Sustainable Neighborhood Development

- CLOSED (FULL) -

Meeting: West Oakland BART, 9:00 AM

This mobile workshop will showcase and facilitate constructive discussion on the application of Ecocity Builders' Urban Villages model in West Oakland, and bringing nature back to the city in West and Downtown Berkeley. Starting with a walking tour down the Pine Street commercial corridor, community leaders will guide participants through localized efforts in creating an alternative model for socio-cultural, economic, and environmental self-reliance. We will visit the Black Dot Cafe, Cornelia Bell Black Bottoms Gallery, Village Bottoms Farm, and the Black New World performance venue. The tour will incorporate an open exchange of ideas and resources for the project moving forward at the Black Dot Cafe.  Next, we had to several projects in Berkeley, beginning in West Berkeley, beginning with the Cordornices Creek daylighting project, including its pocket park and community fruit orchard. We'll stop at the Mivlia Slow Street project, which reshaped several blocks of Milvia Street to give alternative modes of transit a fair share of the public realm on our way to the Gaia Building where we will discuss the project design history of this infill development with Berkeley's first live roof, car-light housing plan, and a rooftop cafe, the Panoramic Room, where we will break for lunch and discussion. The final session is on the plan for Stawberry Creek Plaza in downtown Berkeley and the Berkeley campus and Ecocity Builders proposed integration of the creek into the design of the plaza as a car free public space in the heart of downtown with deep green features, such as storm water capture and reuse, and permeable paving.

Geography: West Oakland; Transport: Transit + Walking

6) The East Bay Greenway and 7) Transit Proximate Affordable Housing as a

Revitalization Strategy in Oakland have been combined to form a superworkshop!

Meeting: 19th Street BART, Oakland, 9:00 AM

Transit Proximate Affordable Housing as a Revitalization Strategy in Oakland (Part One)

- CLOSED (FULL) -

This mobile workshop will commence with tours of three recent affordable housing developments, developed by three different organizations, located in three distinct Oakland neighborhoods, each of which is served by a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station but is in need of community-sensitive investment. Each development displays particular strategies tailored to the specifics of its neighborhood's culture and local needs as well as to the particular capacities of its sponsoring organization. Focused, innovative new developments can strengthen their local communities while simultaneously addressing the critical need for affordable housing.

The East Bay Greenway: (Part Two)
The final tour on this workshop will demonstrate the contributions urban design makes to the just metropolis by highlighting the role of community participation, illustrating the importance of balancing long range, general concepts with short term site improvements and finally, experiencing first-hand the need for improved quality and character of the public realm. We will visit key stops along the BART system to demonstrate how the Greenway reclaims nearly twelve miles of open space that have, over time, become a major source of urban decay, crime and environmental hazards. When completed, this effort to reconnect neighborhoods and repair the divide created by a lack of transit options, physical barriers, inconsistent land uses and neglect, the Greenway will provide for the free movement of bikes and pedestrians while promoting safe access, improved public space, environmental justice and healthier communities.

Geography: Oakland; Transport: BART, walking

8) Economic opportunity to address Oakland's jobs crisis: Oakland Army Base Reuse

Project

- CLOSED (FULL) -

CHANGED LOCATION Meeting: 12th Street BART, Oakland, 9:00 AM

The Oakland Army Base is over 400 acres of land near the Port of Oakland-a once in a lifetime development opportunity to improve Oakland's economy and provide real jobs for local residents. This is particularly important as Oakland attempts to recover from the global recession, with many low-income communities of color suffering a "permanent recession"-plagued by unemployment, lack of good quality jobs, and broken pathways into sustainable work. Conveyed by the military to the Port and City of Oakland for economic development purposes, the base will be built by private developers and operated by companies leasing from the Port and City. At current projections, the base could provide 6,000 - 8,000 construction and operational jobs-a bulk of which will be warehousing and distribution jobs related to the Port of Oakland. In addition to local jobs, the base has the opportunity of setting new standards for green, clean business practices and environmental safety for workers and residents.

Geography: Oakland Army Base, West Oakland; Transport:Bus/Van

9) Regional Transportation Justice

- CLOSED (FULL) -

CHANGED TIME Meeting: Lake Merrit BART, Oakland, 9:30 AM

Geography: Oakland, San Francisco, Oakland Airport; Transport: and BART/Bus

10) Responding to the Foreclosure Crisis: The Oakland Land Trust

- CLOSED (FULL) -

Meeting: 12th Street BART, Oakland, 9:00 AM

This workshop will take an in depth look at the efforts to establish a land trust in Oakland as a response to the foreclosure crisis. Participants will examine: how local activists worked with technical assistance providers and the City of Oakland to access federal funds for acquisitions; the current challenges to the Land Trust and neighborhoods facing high foreclosure rates. A full description is pending.

Geography: Oakland City Hall to East Oakland ; Transport: Bus/Van

11) The Right to the City

- CLOSED (FULL) -

CHANGED LOCATION Meeting: Meeting: Coliseum BART, Oakland, , 9:00 AM

This workshop will examine the growing Right to the City movement through the work of local members of the Righ to the City Alliance. Participants will examine how local groups Causa Justa / Just Cause (CJJC) and POWER work to fight evictions and foreclosures and to build power amongst it working class community of color members to fight for justice along a number of fronts.

Geography: Oakland, San Francisco; Transport: Bus/Van