Book Talk: Scott Knowles, Imagining Philadelphia
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Free. Registration requested. To register, click here.
Scott Gabriel Knowles, professor of history at Drexel University, will speak on his recent publication, Imaging Philadelphia.
When Philadelphia's iconoclastic city planner Edmund N. Bacon looked into his crystal ball in 1959, he saw a remarkable vision: "Philadelphia as an unmatched expression of the vitality of American technology and culture." In that year Bacon penned an essay for Greater Philadelphia Magazine, originally entitled "Philadelphia in the Year 2009," in which he imagined a city remade, modernized in time to host the 1976 Philadelphia World's Fair and Bicentennial celebration, an event that would be a catalyst for a golden age of urban renewal.
Imagining Philadelphia brings together Bacon's original essay, reprinted here for the first time in fifty years, and a set of original essays on the past, present, and future of urban planning in Philadelphia.
PlanPhilly: Planning Philadelphia's Future