ADMISSION:
Admission is free. Reservations required. RSVP at the links below beginning Wednesday, September 21, at 9 a.m.

USC Students, Staff, and Faculty: RSVP
USC Alumni: RSVP
General Public: RSVP

DESCRIPTION:
The concept of utopia—a term coined 500 years ago by Sir Thomas More to describe the ideal city—lies at the heart of the Western political imagination. But what does it mean in the context of 21st-century urbanism, especially in a megacity like Los Angeles that has been the setting for utopian and dystopian thinking since its founding? In a series of events, distinguished guests will discuss L.A.’s relationship to Utopia from diverse perspectives, amid questions about the area’s natural and built environments, political representation, imagined futures, and large-scale, intractable problems such as homelessness and income inequality. We begin with a discussion of politics, democracy, and leadership, asking what utopian governance might look like in today’s L.A. Participants include moderator and architecture writer Geoff Manaugh, Santa Monica city manager Rick Cole, planning historian and USC Price professor David Sloane, and Aurora Tang from the Center for Land Use Interpretation.

Presented as part of “500 Years of Utopia,” a series of events marking the December 2016 half-millennial anniversary of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. This first event in the series will also be held in conjunction with the 11th Annual Los Angeles Archives Bazaar, which will take pace on October 15 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m at Doheny Library.

Related Events:
Designing Utopia
Wednesday, November 9, 2016, 7 p.m.
Friends of the USC Libraries Lecture Hall, Doheny Memorial Library 240
For more info, click here.

Utopian Representations
Tuesday, February 7, 2017, 5 p.m.
Friends of the USC Libraries Lecture Hall, Doheny Memorial Library 240
For more info, click here.

Organized by the USC Libraries.