Here We Are in San Francisco - Again?

Chinatown, Fisherman's Wharf, the Haight, North Beach, the Castro, the Mission, the Golden Gate . . . all posing for the tourist cameras. Under ideal conditions we share with the tourists, our honored guests, the symbolic touchstones of our collective life. Conditions in San Francisco are far from ideal. In this lecture, Dean MacCannell describes how San Francisco-for-tourists has transformed the look and feel of the city, and why he insists it has gone stale to the detriment of both tourists and locals. And he proposes a second look that honors the understated heroism of immigrants and others who are modifying the urban experience so it can continue to nurture new thought and ways of living together.

Dean MacCannell is Professor and Chair Emeritus of Environmental Design at the University of California at Davis. He is author of The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (1976, 2013) and The Ethics of Sightseeing (2011), both University of California Press.