Rethinking What Urban Nature Means at October 19 Conversations Salon
No Description Available | 9/15/2014
Long Beach, California - From the farmer's market to the revitalized Los Angeles River to the state's Wi-Fi enabled open spaces, the location of “nature” in California has shifted from pristine wilderness to the widely complex interactions of the natural and the manmade that characterize the 21st century. In expanding the limits of what is meant by the natural world, we're brought into even more intimate contact with it. In that encounter are both riches and risks.
When culture becomes the environment – when the urban is everywhere – new questions need to be asked about the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the landscape on which we stand. Everyday encounters with “urban nature” need to be redefined and brokered in sustainable terms. And the connection of natural processes to human priorities and needs to be transparent.
The featured guests leading the discussion of these imperatives in the Conversations in Place are Jonathan Gold (Pulitzer Prize winning restaurant critic of the Los Angeles Times), Jon Christensen (Adjunct Assistant Professor in the UCLA institute of the Environment and Sustainability and Department of History and the editor of Boom: A Journal of California, published by UC Press), and Jared Farmer (author, historian and self-described "geohumanist” who is Associate Professor of History at Stony Brook University and winner of the prestigious Francis Parkman Prize).
Their Conversation begins at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, October 19 at the historic Rancho Los Alamitos in Long Beach. Advance purchase of tickets is required.
D. J. Waldie, co-moderator of the series with Claudia Jurmain, Director of Special Projects and Publications at the Rancho and series founder, agrees that nature in Los Angeles needs a new script. “There's very little room for us if nature is viewed as a place set apart, as an oasis of refuge with little connection to ordinary life.” Jurmain adds, “On the streets we drive, in the products we buy, and in the restaurants where we eat, are everyday encounters with urban nature redefined.”
Now in its third year, Conversations in Place 2014 will present a final exploration of “Southern California – Yesterday and Tomorrow” at Rancho Los Alamitos on Sunday, November 2. The final program's distinguished panel will assess the impact that new narrators of Southern California stories are having on the way our region is perceived at home and around the world.
Tickets for the Sunday, October 19 Conversations in Place are $25 each. Tickets may be purchased online at www.rancholosalamitos.org or by calling Rancho Los Alamitos at 562-431-3541.
The Conversations in Place 2014 series is supported by Metabolic Studio, IMPRINT Culture Lab, Port of Long Beach, Michael F. Sfregola, Mary Alice and Bob Braly, and Gelson's.