Santa Fe is often described in visual shorthand: adobe or stucco walls, muted earth colors, and "Santa Fe Style." But the City's identity was taking shape long before the style gained a name. Drawing on his recent Santa Fe New Mexican essay, author, urbanist, and photographer Charles R. Wolfe will explore the deeper sources of a city's character—in the case from the landscape and Indigenous and Hispanic traditions to the Salinas Pueblo Missions, streets, acequias, public life, and patterns of adaptation.

Using ideas and images from his three books—Urbanism Without Effort, Seeing the Better City and Sustaining a City's Culture and Character—Wolfe will also show how to more generally read the "DNA" of cities: the inherited qualities, everyday practices and visual clues that make a place distinctive. He will also summarize his "Leveraging Place" approach, asking how Santa Fe can welcome change while preserving continuity, cultural memory and the qualities that make it more than a marketable style.