Urban Affairs Association Conference - Building the 21st Century City: Inclusion, Innovation, and Globalization (April 2013)

San Francisco embodies much of what is right about cities, but it also faces problems common to urban areas everywhere. It has earned a reputation as an inclusive city, one that champions citizens’ rights and provides them significant access to the city’s spaces and amenities. San Francisco has also experienced significant gentrification and has been the site of great contestations. Struggles over the “right to the city” have helped to shape its unique social, economic, and political landscape. These tensions raise important questions. Who has access in richly diverse cities? When faced with exclusion, how can the marginalized penetrate local institutions and have a voice in larger society? 

These questions are even more pressing when one considers that cities like San Francisco are at the center of innovation and the global economy. How can cities take advantage of their role in the international economy to improve quality of life in the future? As cities develop in the 21st century, this conference theme asks its participants to describe and explain how cities everywhere deal with issues of inclusion, innovation, and globalization. The city of San Francisco serves as an appropriate context for this conference, because it has had major success in addressing these issues, while continuing to face new challenges.