Past events and recordings
Catch up on Petaluma Urban Chat events you may have missed — and explore curated videos that highlight our four pillars: housing, transportation, city finances, and climate action.
Use the category filter to find what you’re looking for. Select ‘event’ to see recordings of Urban Chat past events.
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Office-to-Residential Conversion, panacea or mirage?
May 24, 2023
Join us for a forum on the realities of Office-to-Residential Conversion, which is often touted as a partial solution to our housing shortage. We'll view portions of a SPUR video about a San Francisco conversion project, followed by local architects Ross Jones and Kevin Kelly sharing thoughts from their long careers. We'll conclude with Q&A…
Homelessness is a Housing Problem
March 22, 2023
Join us for a video presentation from author Gregg Colburn on his thesis that homelessness is fundamentally a housing supply problem. In his view, individuals may become homeless due to unemployment, addiction, or other personal matters, but regional rates of homelessness are most strongly tied to housing availability.
And if we continue to diagnose homelessness as a problem of the individual, we will continue to undermine our efforts to reduce it…
How Vienna Solved the Housing Affordability Problem
March 8, 2023
Three Petaluma housing experts will explain why affordable housing is a nearly intractable problem in California, one that has challenged the state for decades.
In contrast, Vienna took a different path to affordable housing a century ago, a path that has resulted in a rich tradition of social housing — government-supported, mixed-income, rent-restricted housing — for many of its residents. A recent study trip to Vienna looked at how social housing is financed, built, and maintained.