On Wednesday, Gray Brechin will give a talk entitled “A New Deal for the East Bay: Excavating the Buried Civilization of the Great Depression” in which the historical geographer will look at how New Deal public work agencies put thousands of men and women to work to transform Berkeley and its sister cities within less than a decade.
Doubtless many of the initiatives will provide inspiration for present-day policy not least because we continue to benefit today from many of the schools, parks and vital infrastructure that were put in place then. The John Hinkel Park amphitheater (pictured above) was one of the many New Deal projects in Berkeley.
Dr Brechin is a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Department of Geography and founder of California’s Living New Deal Project.
The talk, which takes place at the Hillside Club at 7.30pm, is part of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA) Fall Lecture Series.
Full details can be found here.
[Photo: livingnewdeal.berkeley.edu]
Here is a nice video (one hour long – and worth it) of a talk by Gray Brechin at the California Colloquium on Water. That colloquium series is generally very good and I encourage people to explore it.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2058915680154645459#
The blurb describes it as: “Rotten Foundations: The Reclamation Act & Urbanization of the West; given by Gray Brechin, noted historian and author of Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin. Keywords: urbanization, west, water law and legislation, water resources development.”
-t