Friday Night@Not A Cornfield: MANUEL CASTELLS
Manuel Castells in conversation with Not A Cornfield artist Lauren Bon
Date: Friday November 11th, 2005
Time: 7:30 PM - 10:30 PM
Location: The Not A Cornfield project site, 1201 North Spring St, Los Angeles, CA, Downtown
Cost: Free
Wallis Annenberg Chair of USC'sof Communication Technology and Society at the Annenberg School of Communication, Sociologist Manuel Castells is internationally renowned for his theory of the Network Society, which describes the spatial form of our time as the 'metropolitan region' - a constellation of multiple nuclear centers, settlements, populations, and activities that are held together as a unit by transportation and communication networks.
Stretching from Ventura to Tijuana, Los Angeles is the 'ultimate region'. A huge urbanized sprawl with many centers in which already extreme social, ethic and economic segregation is increasing and the real estate engine drives the city ever deeper into the desert, causing widespread environmental degradation as it goes.
In this contemporary context the need to develop new forms of livable high density becomes urgent. In particular, if cities are to be saved on behalf of citizens, then innovation will come from urban planners, architects, professionals and concerned citizens forming alliances that take a holistic approach to creating multiple meaningful social spaces all around the metro landscape.
In conversation with artist Lauren Bon - whose Not A Cornfield project reclaims a brownfield site for public use and restores meaning to the historic birthplace of LA - Professor Castells will discuss his groundbreaking analyses and thoughts regarding the state and direction of human experience in the Network Society.
About Manuel Castells
Manuel Castells is the a Research Professor of Information Society at the Open University of Catalonia in Barcelona. He also holds the Wallis Annenberg Chair of Communication Technology and Society at the Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California. He is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and of City & Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught for 24 years. Before being appointed to Berkeley he taught sociology at the University of Paris for 12 years. Professor Castells has published 24 books, including the trilogy The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, which has been published to date in 20 languages. His current research focuses on the comparative analysis of network societies, and on the relationship between globalization and cultural identity.
About Not A Cornfield Artist Lauren Bon
Lauren Bon resides in Los Angeles and holds a Masters of Architecture degree from MIT and a BA from Princeton. Ms. Bon is a trustee of the Annenberg Foundation and President of Not A Cornfield, LLC. Her recent urban, public and land art projects in the U.S., Hong Kong, Belfast and Northern Ireland, as well as her role as a trustee, make her uniquely poised to build the capacity of the Foundation in the area of site based philanthropy, serving communities through education, civic, health, artistic initiatives and programs. Not a Cornfield art project is being developed through a grant by the Annenberg Foundation.
About: Not A Cornfield
About the Not A Cornfield Project
Growing in the historic center of Los Angeles, the Not Cornfield project transforms an industrial brownfield site into a cornfield for one agricultural cycle. Now the Los Angeles Historic State Park, the site popularly known as 'The Cornfield' had remained derelict for more than a decade. The project serves as a potent metaphor that provides a focus for reflection and action in a city unclear about the location of its energetic and historic center.
About Not A Cornfield Salons
'If you want a better urban life, you invent it, then fight for it' is one of the ongoing Not A Cornfield Salons that bring people together in order to share, engage, energize, and enhance the organic nexus that is this project.
Comments
P.S. friday night file share is postponed due to too much other cool stuff happening...
Posted by: mt | November 10, 2005 8:58 PM
"Stretching from Ventura to Tijuana, Los Angeles is the 'ultimate region'. A huge urbanized sprawl..."
Having grown up in Ventura County, and lived in San Diego for 5 years, I object to this characterization of Southern California. First, San Diego is very much its own metropolis, separated from the LA region by 20-30 miles of completely undeveloped land. Also, far more urban planning went into San Diego than the sprawl that is LA, to the point where SD feels less like a large city and more like a series of interconnected towns & suburbs, separated by large open space regions.
And going the other way...once you get to the edge of the San Fernando Valley, the landscape starts changing. Grassy hills, trees, fresher air. Past Thousand Oaks, the rocky Conejo Grade overlooks farmland where strawberries grow.
I completely agree when it comes to the Los Angeles basin, but the quoted statement was obviously written by someone who doesn't get out of the city that often.
Posted by: msteffen | November 10, 2005 11:46 PM