The Year of the City at Burning Man

The annual arts festival Burning Man is underway in Northwestern Nevada. This year's theme of Metropolis highlights the event's city-like nature.

1 minute read

September 3, 2010, 1:00 PM PDT

By Nate Berg


Writing for Next American City, Greg Scruggs has a series of posts about the event, the temporary city it forms and how the artists have responded to this year's theme.

"In addition to the bustling streets full of theme camps and villages that offer the above services (and many more, from fresh fruit to massages to movies to just about anything you can imagine), Black Rock City and the surrounding open playa is peppered with extravagant public art projects. The sheer space and lack of restrictions that Burning Man presents to artists leads to breathtaking works, whose size, scale, and interactivity cannot be replicated in other settings. The Burning Man LLC supports this public art through grants, as well as provisions for the basics of Black Rock City: a street plan with demarcated space for registered camps, portable toilets, the Black Rock Rangers who help mediate conflicts."

Monday, August 30, 2010 in Next American City

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I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching. Mary G., Urban Planner

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