SATURDAY 9AM - 1PM
TEDxSacramento City 2.0
“the City: A Morning of Urban Inspiration” (A TEDxSacramento City 2.0 Event)
On Saturday, October 13, we will have "A Morning of Urban Inspiration" (A TEDxSacramento Event), during which we will take part in a global dialogue about the future of our cities and the ideas that can make our city--or any city--a city of the future. We intend to distill global and local ideas and explore practical and sustainable solutions through the use of technology, development, design, education, and the arts. The morning will include live speakers, recorded TEDTalks, and an “Action Pitch” by loc
(the Crocker Art Museum)
09:00-09:30 REGISTRATION
09:30-11:00 SESSION 1
11:00-11:30 BREAK
11:30-11:45 "ACTION PITCH"
11:45-1:00 SESSION 2
SATURDAY'S PERFORMANCES:
SHAWN PITTARD accompanied by CLEMON CHARLES
Shawn Pittard is a poet and an environmental planner. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Standing in the River, winner of Tebot Bach's 2010 Clockwise Competition, and These Rivers from Rattlesnake Press.
Clemon Charles is a singer and a songwriter. Born in Barbados, the island culture and music remains a powerful influence in his life and work.
SATURDAY'S SPEAKERS:
TED GAEBLER, Government IS Good
Ted Gaebler has been changing governments for more than 40 years. He is the co-author of the book “Reinventing Government,” which became an international best seller about transforming governments from outdated, bureaucratic organizations, to flexible, customer-focused organizations. He has testified before congressional and state government committees advocating reinventing concepts. He has advised top-level administrative and elected officials at all levels of government in 59 countries. Making governments better—not “just managing”—has consistently motivated Mr. Gaebler. Through his roles as City Manager, County Executive Officer, teacher, and mentor, he has been acknowledged as a revolutionary “reinventor,” and “public entrepreneur,” changing governments peacefully from the inside out.
CHRIS BENNER, The Power of Just Growth
Chris Benner is an Associate Professor of Community and Regional Development at the University of California, Davis. He received his Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Benner’s research focuses on the relationships between technological change, regional development, and structures of economic opportunity. Dr. Benner’s recent book, co-authored with USC Professor Manuel Pastor, is Just Growth: Inclusion and Prosperity in America’s Metropolitan Regions, which helps uncover the processes, policies and institutional arrangements that help explain how certain regions around the country have been able to consistently link prosperity and inclusion. Breaking new ground in its research methods, the book argues that we need more than just growth (or growth alone), and that especially in the context of our current economic stagnation and inequality, lessons from these “just growth” regions can help shape a new paradigm in which the promotion of social equity is not simply seen as a beneficial social goal but as an important component of economic development policy and practice.
STEVE WHEELER, Ecocities... and Ecosocieties
Stephen M. Wheeler, Ph.D., AICP is author of Planning for Sustainability and Climate Change and Social Ecology, and editor of The Sustainable Urban Development Reader (with Timothy Beatley). Associate Professor in the Department of Human Ecology at the University of California at Davis, he has also taught at the University of New Mexico and U.C. Berkeley. Professor Wheeler’s areas of interest include sustainable development, planning for climate change, urban design, and built landscapes of metropolitan regions. His awards include the William R. and June Dale Prize for Excellence in Urban and Regional Planning, the Education Project Award from the California Chapter of the American Planning Association, and first place (with Michael Larice) in the Housing the Next Ten Million urban design competition.
REBECCA SIBILIA, Using Schools as the Engine for a City Renaissance
Rebecca Sibilia is the Vice President for Fiscal Strategy at StudentsFirst, focusing on the investment of resources to drive education reform in states and cities. Prior to her position at StudentsFirst, she served in a variety of roles including Chief Financial Officer for state education resources in Washington DC, Budget Director for Economic Development, and Special Assistant for Education to Mayor Anthony Williams.
JESUS HERNANDEZ, Sustainable Communities: Regional Equity or Market Exclusion?
Jesus Hernandez is a real estate broker practicing in the Sacramento area with over 20 years of experience in residential sales and financing. He has a Ph.D. in sociology and currently teaches courses in Urban Sociology and Community and Regional Development at the University of California at Davis. His research connects economic action with historical processes of urban planning and residential segregation and demonstrates how racialized market interventions reproduce long-standing patterns of inequality. Jesus has been invited to present his work at the Open Research Conference on Globalization in Tokyo, Japan, and the International Conference on Urban Justice and Sustainability in Vancouver, British Columbia. Additionally, he has testified before the National Commission on Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity regarding predatory lending practices and is a frequent speaker at fair housing and academic conferences across the country regarding the effects of predatory subprime lending on communities undergoing crisis.
CHRISTOPHER CABALDON, A Hard Reboot of Democracy in the City
Christopher Cabaldon was first elected Mayor of West Sacramento in 1998, and has served seven terms. The Sacramento Bee calls him “one of the most intelligent, talented and hard-working elected officials in the region.” Mayor Cabaldon’s work on transportation, land use, air quality and climate change, housing, economic development, water, civil rights, and education from the local to the national scale has won numerous awards. He led the groundbreaking Blueprint project as head of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments. Mr. Cabaldon served five years as Vice Chancellor of the 110-campus California Community Colleges. He has been President/CEO of EdVoice, and director of the state legislature’s Committee on Higher Education. He is currently executive director of the Linked Learning Alliance, co-director of the California Legislative Staff Education Institute, and program officer for the California Education Policy Fund. He has served as an appointee of four California governors from both parties, most recently as California’s representative on the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education. Elected to the board of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in 2011, he is his peers’ vice chair for education.
KONSTANTIN DIMOPOULOS, Blue Trees: Can Art Save the World?
A performance artist, sculptor, installation and social artist Konstantin Dimopoulos’s artworks are grounded in his sociological and humanist philosophy. The Blue Trees uses transformation and change through color and was a feature installation in the 2011 Vancouver Biennale, Canada, and since then has been created around the United States and in New Zealand. Dimopoulos will continue to install The Blue Trees in other major global cities over the coming months. Other social art installations by Dimopoulos include Black Parthenon, a light installation about cultural appropriation; Virus, ‘Level 4’ and Savage Garden about environmental ecocide; and Paradise Lost about domestic violence. Black Pharoahs was about the artist’s experience as a young Greek migrant from Egypt to New Zealand in the early 1960s. "As an artist I think in images. These installations are my ‘voice’ about global issues, a visual platform to effect change.” As a sculptor Dimopoulos has created his signature linear sculptures that are in public spaces and private collections in Australia, the United States, Europe and New Zealand. These works are defined by colour, mass, repetition and form. Many are dynamic, choreographed by the wind, bringing an organic simplicity into the urban or natural environments.
TEDTalk Videos:
ALEX STEFFEN, The Sharable Future of Cities
How can cities help save the future? Alex Steffen shows some cool neighborhood-based green projects that expand our access to things we want and need -- while reducing the time we spend in cars. Alex Steffen explores our planet's future, telling powerful, inspiring stories about the hard choices facing humanity ... and our opportunity to create a much better tomorrow.
GEOFFREY WEST, The Surprising Math of Cities and Corporations
Trained as a theoretical physicist, Geoffrey West has turned his analytical mind toward the inner workings of more concrete things, like ... animals. In a paper for Science in 1997, he and his team uncovered what he sees as a surprisingly universal law of biology — the way in which heart rate, size and energy consumption are related, consistently, across most living animals. (Though not all animals: “There are always going to be people who say, ‘What about the crayfish?’ " he says. “Well, what about it? Every fundamental law has exceptions. But you still need the law or else all you have is observations that don’t make sense.")
A past president of the multidisciplinary Santa Fe Institute (after decades working in high-energy physics at Los Alamos and Stanford), West now studies the behavior and development of cities. In his newest work, he proposes that one simple number, population, can predict a stunning array of details about any city, from crime rate to economic activity. It's all about the plumbing, he says, the infrastructure that powers growth or dysfunction. His next target for study: corporations.
He says: "Focusing on the differences [between cities] misses the point. Sure, there are differences, but different from what? We’ve found the what."
JENNIFER PAHLKA, Coding For A Better Government
Jennifer Pahlka is the founder and executive director of Code for America, which works with talented web professionals and cities around the country to promote public service and reboot government. She spent eight years at CMP Media where she led the Game Group, responsible for GDC, Game Developer magazine, and Gamasutra.com; there she also launched the Independent Games Festival and served as executive director of the International Game Developers Association. Recently, she ran the Web 2.0 and Gov 2.0 events for TechWeb and co-chaired the successful Web 2.0 Expo. She is a graduate of Yale University and lives in Oakland, CA with her daughter and six chickens.