Society for American City and Regional Planning History Presents

The Thirteenth National Conference on Planning History

Oakland, California
October 15 - 18, 2009

Registration Information

Hotel Accommodations/Directions

Local Information

Program Summary

Full Program

 Call for Papers (expired)

Call for Prizes and Awards (expired)

Call for Undergrad and Masters' Poster Sessions (expired)

Call for Graduate Research Workshop (expired)

Information for Exhibitors


SACRPH's 13th National Conference on Planning History will take place in Oakland, California from October 15 through the 18, 2009. The SACRPH conference focuses on the history of cities and regional planning; this year's program will also feature sessions and tours on issues of regional planning and sustainability facing the San Francisco Bay Area. On Thursday, October 15, a "mobile symposium" will take advantage of the conference location to explore Oakland in the context of regional planning and development. Site visits will emphasize issues of race, ethnicity, and gender in nineteenth- and twentieth-century urban development efforts such as urban renewal and HUD-assisted housing. On Sunday, October 18, conference participants will have a choice of optional tours to different parts of the Bay Area to explore regional planning and sustainability. Tour locations will likely include Marin/Sonoma, Silicon Valley, and San Francisco. The conference will be based at the Marriott Oakland City Center Hotel, near BART and many of the revitalized areas of downtown Oakland.

This year's conference promises to be the largest and best-attended to date. In order to accommodate the 25% increase in proposals and create a denser program, the Program Committee raised the number of four-paper sessions as well as the number of panels per session. In addition to the Thursday focus on the history and future of Bay Area planning, and Sunday's enticing array of tours, the two days of panels on Friday and Saturday will include some new features. For the first time, SACRPH will host a poster session for undergraduates and MA students working on planning history projects, building on the proximity of so many universities.

The Oakland meeting will build on popular innovations from recent conferences: the workshop for graduate students working on dissertation prospectuses or book proposals, a documentary film screening including the director, and a reception for graduate students. The featured documentary will be "Mixing it Up," a film about the redevelopment of Cabrini Green, directed by Ronit Bezalel as a sequel to her acclaimed earlier film, "Voices of Cabrini." The conference will also feature two New Media sessions, to provide forums for the discussion of how new media have impacted research and teaching in the field. There will be two plenary sessions, one of which will be a roundtable discussion of Regional Equity within the Bay area, and will feature Howard Gillette (Rutgers University), Carl Anthony (Ford Foundation), Amy Dean, and Manuel Pastor (USC).