Penn IUR Public Interest Series -- Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City
University of Pennsylvania Bookstore
3601 Walnut Street, Philadelphia
Wednesday, 17 February, 5:30pm
Reception to follow
AIA credits available
Registration via email: penniur@pobox.upenn.edu
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.
What Bacon did not predict was the long, bitter period of economic decline, population dispersal, and racial strife that Philadelphia was about to enter. As such, his essay comes to us as a time capsule, a message from one of the city's most influential and controversial shapers that prompts discussions of what was, what might have been, and what could yet be in the city's future.
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.
Scott Knowles, editor of the volume and assistant professor of history at Drexel; Harris Steinberg, contributor and Executive Director of PennPraxis; and Gregory Heller, contributor and President of the Ed Bacon Foundation, will share some of their insights into Bacon’s 1959 essay on his vision for Philadelphia’s future and how events in the intervening years converged to create the city of today, as well as some ideas for how it might look in 50 years. This event is part one of two, and co-hosted by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson and the Philadelphia Center for Architecture. AIA credits are available. The event will be followed by a book signing and reception. Books will also be available to purchase.
PlanPhilly: Planning Philadelphia's Future