Streets Ahead: The 2019 Black Rock City Plan is Here!

Can’t wait to stride down our city’s streets? Take a gander at Ganymede, hang a right at Hyacinth or leg it out to Labyrinth with the 2019 Black Rock City plan, which we’ve just released. 

The City Plan lays out the streets, plazas, center camp, reserved placement camping and walk-in camping for our playa Home each year. Each year’s theme decides the names of the annular streets, and the 2019 Metamorphoses theme has birthed the following names:

  • Esplanade
  • Andromeda
  • Bacchus 
  • Cupid
  • Diana 
  • Echo 
  • Fortuna 
  • Ganymede
  • Hyacinth
  • Icarus 
  • Jove 
  • Kronos 
  • Labyrinth

What else is new in 2019? Terry Schoop, chair of the city planning subcommittee and draftsman of the plan, has got the skinny on the city.

“We’ve added new plazas at 4:30 and 7:30 at Bacchus. We are varying blocks depths between 250’, 200’ and 150’. We are incorporating an increase of 50’ depth to the city over 2018, and we have reduced the size of the Center Camp portal,” he says.

Theme camps also need to take particular note:

“The light blue shaded area approximates where you will find reserved-placement camps: interactive theme camps, camps supporting art installations, and infrastructure camps. We’ve softened the edges of the reserved-placement shading here as this zone fluctuates greatly between this initial city plan and the final placed camp plan displayed at the event site,” Terry says.

To nerd out on city dimensions and learn more about reserved camping spaces, walk-in camping and parking, head over here.

2019 BRC City Plan


Top photo by Will Roger

About the author: Terry "Retro" Schoop

Terry

As manager of the Community Services Department, Terry oversees the planning, budgets, management, and operations of nine volunteer-staffed teams that are dedicated to providing Burning Man participants with vital public services at our event: BRC Municipal Airport, Earth Guardians, Greeters, Lamplighters, Placement, Playa Info, Recycle Camp, and the Volunteer Resource Team. As a core member of the BRC Ops Team and a member of the Event Leadership Team, Terry collaborates on the management of event-related issues affecting public welfare and resource management.

39 Comments on “Streets Ahead: The 2019 Black Rock City Plan is Here!

  • Jillian says:

    What good are the streets if you don’t have a permit to have the festival?

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  • Anon says:

    Ironic that the top cover photo highlights the 10 o’clock side, G through L, which is where the large plug and play camps have been placed. Also the largest moop areas year after year.

    Is this the new Burning Man?

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  • Motz says:

    What was the rationale for narrower blocks on the outer streets and also for not adding an M street?

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  • Dustin says:

    I’m just over the moon about those street names

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  • Keru says:

    YES! Great street names, and glad the center camp portal is gradually getting back to where Esplanade will once again be a smooth arc across there (maybe next year?). That bump in the circle has caused years of distress to my OCD ;-)

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  • Hiya on the Playa says:

    Some of these names refer to characters who were transformed, which I suppose is a sort of metamorphosis. But I’m a little confused about the connection between the theme and some of these names!

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    • maladroit says:

      Yeah, kind of WTF…Andromeda was just a princess chained to a rock who got rescued from a monster.

      WHY NOT ARACHNE?

      Arachne was a badass weaver who essentially doxxed the gods, wove tapestries showing their cruel and depraved actions. Then she was turned into a spider.

      By the way, this story is literally in fucking Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

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    • David Loye says:

      All the Street names (except Esplanade) are mentioned in Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”
      “Fortuna” is not a character per se – more of a concept or a driving force.
      “Labyrinth” is a place, not a character.
      Personally, I expect almost everyone at BM 2019 to respond to the “Theme”: “Metamorphoses” with art focused on “transformations” and vanishingly few people touching on Ovid, Roman history, or mythology.
      These street names will be a little confusing to everybody. That said, I DO expect a lot of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana music will be playing, “O, Fortuna!”

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  • maladroit says:

    So the response to “We’re concerned the increased amount of placed camps may stifle spontaneous creativity and enables abuse such as paid experience camps” is pretty much “We’re Placement and you’ll get whatever the fuck we want, you better not complain again or we’ll alter the deal further.”

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  • Edgy Rad Guy says:

    I can’t wait to steal the street signs and put them up in my office cubical.

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  • Andromeda says:

    It’s a good thing I’m not rangering this year because that would be a bit confusing over radio…

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  • Stuart Macintyre MACINTYRE says:

    ARE there going to be placed camps in the G,H,I ,J,K,and l areas ?

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    • AC says:

      Yes. Well, at least the land grabbing faction that put out random items or yards & yards of survey flags just before the gates open to hold space for those that won’t fit within the area they’ve already been given.

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  • Diney says:

    I cry to Fortuna: Tickets! Destiny I be on Diana!

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  • unwelcome says:

    So there are no camps inside of J or I except registered theme camps? I guess unregistered theme camps aren’t invited. So much for radical inclusion.

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    • Pablo says:

      As he said this is a rough idea and if you look at last years map (best to look at Moop map) you can see in some areas theme camps went all the way out to L but in other areas theme camps only went to F. This will evolve until we get there to see final map at BM. Everyone is invited (even unregistered theme camps) but if you want to have placement prior to gates opening then you should register your camp and get organized. This is a city that needs to be organized and it takes months to organize all of the camps that go through the process to register and get them all placed before gates open, then people like you can fight for what is left. What is your recommendation that they don’t place any camps then just have a free for all once the gates open? The system they have is radical inclusion it’s just that those that choose to not register are included last…

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      • Susan Kaufman says:

        Does not Radical Inclusion imply there is space for everyone? Does it not also imply there is a ‘fair’ space for everyone? Your comment re: “those that choose to not register are included last” implies otherwise. And we should know, we’ve camped at K for a few years now. We have been both ‘registered’ and unregistered (Placement sounded less fascist). The little you leave everyone else to camp on is sad by comparison to the amount of placed camps whose sole function is pouring alcohol. Watching for 14 years now, and this is not Radical Inclusion. You want to change the world but you keep playing to the choir. Having said that I like the new city blueprint. I wish vision could open up about all the people that make BRC happen and not just the chosen registered.

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  • Jayne says:

    So it is the clamoring of many that creates this city in the dust – this beautiful community of freedom and of exchange and of support – true love xx

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  • Zippo says:

    Have a great time out there. Make it real, make it count, make it yours, because the new conditions for BLM to give Burning Man a permit for 2020 just can’t be met.
    Just as the cops threw Burning Man off Baker Beach in 1989 because “it was getting too big”, now the BLM clearly wants Burning Man to leave the Black Rock Desert, for some of the same reasons.
    So 2019 really WILL be a year of ‘metamorphoses’ as Burning Man will have to transform itself next year into something else. If the BMORG were wise, they’d have a team working on finding a different/better location now, hopefully on private land.

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  • Glimmer says:

    Parking? I thought the previous experiment with parking was a disaster – vehicles broken into, damage/graffiti, trash dumping, human waste? How will the new version be better?

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  • fewhacks.com says:

    So the thing is that we can look for this website.

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  • Pepperjack says:

    In STILL concerned about the cramped area between I and L … Camps are on top of each other!!! 200 ft. would reduce fire spreading!! Also, adding that M street would alleviate crowding!!!

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  • return man 3 says:

    I understand what you bring it very meaningful and useful, thanks.

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  • Any updates on this? In our placement application, the automated size response based on our camp size was 250′ x 450′

    For our camp layout process it would be nice to know if thats our reality (We remember blocks being 200′ wide)

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  • Deep Deep says:

    Great critical thoughts, less complaining please, more appreciating please!

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  • saltyburner says:

    Ganymede Is a myth about pedophilia. I hope BM accidentally overlooked this when picking a G name out of the thousand of greek myths, it would be really disgusting if this was intentional.

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