Urban Planning for a Temporary City October 13, 2007

Burning Man: Planning and Evolution of the Temporary City
Center for Architecture
536 LaGuardia Place
New York, NY, 10012 USA
Burning Man is a temporary city (Black Rock City), an experiment in community planning inhabited by over 40,000 participants for one week each year in the Nevada desert. The London Observer has described Black Rock City as a "beautifully zoned tentopolis, designed with a precision of which the Renaissance city-state idealists or Haussman would approve." As a one-week-long experiment in community planning, Burning Man teaches us much about how to plan more permanent communities. Since event participants construct their camps and works of art on a blank piece of land within the city framework, the entire community is a real-time, high intensity laboratory in planning, design, negotiation, and social issues. The panel assembled consists of presentations from panelists Larry Harvey (founder of Burning Man) and Rod Garrett (architect of the original master plan). Other panelists include an organizer and "architect" of a major arts collective that participates in Burning Man as well as an urban planner who has attended Burning Man, and discusses how the event is relevant to her work. Following the presentation, panelists will engage in discussion and take questions from the audience.

Official Website: http://tinyurl.com/22c85k