Event

Suddenly Dinner with Thomas Sieverts and Matthew Stadler

Suddenly: Seattle and Burien, July 1-3, 2009

Our cities surprise and confound us by scrambling the categories we use to plan and understand them. At once dense and sprawling, crowded and empty, urban but centerless, dynamic and stalled, the landscape where we live defies planning and leaves us with little grasp of its meanings or pleasures. Yet it is the product of our choices, individually and as a public: we live here now. So, what can we make of it? Suddenly will bring art and food and public conversation to bear on the common cause of making meaning and life in the landscape where we live now as it is, as we are, as best we can.

Borne of the insights of urban planner Thomas Sieverts, suddenly accepts the paradoxical in-between condition where we live an inextricable mix of urban and rural, natural and manmade, global and local and looks to the creative capacity of citizens, artists, writers, and others to articulate meanings and relationships that can sustain us and enrich our lives within that condition. A festive convocation of planners, activists, neighbors, friends and strangers alike, with food, films, art, music, and frank, ranging conversation, suddenly seeks common ground and new tools for living here now.

In Seattle and Burien, three days of events, occasioned by Thomas Sieverts's visit to the area, will bring diverse communities into common conversation around art, writing, film, policy, and great food.

Dinner to be held in Pioneer Square. Cocktail reception at 6pm. Dinner at 7pm. $40 person.