DEC 2013/JAN 2014
0 SPUR IPUl IOAID OP DIRICTORI Ch1lr Anne Halsted Extcutlvt Vice Chair David Friedman VlctCh1lrs Alexa Arena Andy Bernes EmllloCruz Biii Rosetti Cart Shannon Lydia Tan v.Ftl Tsen S1cr1t1ry Mary Mccue Tr11surer Bob Gambit Immediate Past Co-Chair Lindi Jo Fitz Advisory Council Co-Chairs Mlchatl Alexander PaulStdwey
Bo1rd Members Carl Anthony Veronica Bell Chris Block Larry Burnett Michaela Cassidy Mldtllne Chun Michael Cohen Charmaine Curtis Oz Erickson Manny Flores GIOffGlbbs Gllllan Giiiett Chris Gruwell Ed Harrl119ton Dave Hartley Aldan Huohls Chris lgleslas Laurie Johnson Vljay Kumar Susan Leal Dick Lonergan John Midden Jacinta Mccann Hyrdra Mendoa Ezra Mersey Terry Micheau Mary Murphy Jeanne Mytrson Adhl Negraj
Brad Paul Rich Peterson Chris Poland Joan Price Teresa Rea Byron Rhett Rebecca Rhine WadtRost Paul Stdway Victor Setto Ellabtth Stifel Chl路Hsln Shao Doug Shoemaker Ontario Smith Biii Stotler Stuart Sunshine Gary Teague Mlchatl Teltz Mike Theriault Wiii Travis Jeff Tumlln Molly Turner Steve Vettel Francesca Vietor Fran Weld Alllson Wiiiiams Cindy Wu
CHAIRS I COMMITTlll
"'9rlll
c........ Ballot Analysis Bob Gamble Disaster Planning Laurie Johnson Chris Poland Housing Ezra Mersey Lydia Tan ProJt<I Rtvltw Charmaine Curtis Mary Beth Sandtrs Reuben Schwartz Transport1tlon Anthony Bruzzone Water Polley BrySarte
Rtglonal Planning Larry Burnett Libby Stifel
c掳"'*' ........ Audit John Madden Bulldlng Man1111m1nt Ttrry Micheau Business Mtmbershlp Rich Peterson Terry Micheau Executive David Friedman Anne Halsted
Flnanct Bob Gamble Human Resources Mary Mccue Individual Membership Biii Stotier Investment Ann Lazarus Major Donors Linda Jo Fitz Anne Halsted Planned Giving Michaela Cassidy Sliver SPUR Dave Hartley Teresa Rea
IAN JOll ADYllOIY IOARD Ttrtsa Alvarado Andy Bernes Chris Block J. Richard Brauoh Larry Burnett Brian Darrow Garrett Herbert
2
DECEMBER 2013
Karla Rodriguez Lomax James MacGregor Connie Martinez Anu NataraJan
Dr. Mohammad Qayouml Suzanne Rice Robert Sttlnbtrg Lydia Tan KlmWalesh Jessica Zenk
News at SPUR Mayor Unveils Transportation Reinvestment Strategy On November 25, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee released the results of the Mayor's 2030 Transportation Task Force. Chaired by SPUR's Gabriel Metcalf and Deputy City Controller Mon ique Zmuda, the task force was charged with coming up with a bold set of proposals to reinvest in the transportation system, with the goal of improving transportation options for all San Franciscans. Its recommendation s will focu s on reinvestment in th e core of the transit system - procuring a new fleet of Muni vehicles, speed ing up the most heavily used transit lines, coming up with a long-term financing source for street paving and covering San Francisco's share of Caltrain electrification costs - as well as some key improvements with citywide benefit such as building out the bicycle network and implementing Market Street improvements . Three funding sources are proposed , which would generate a total of $2.9 billion over 15 years: a General Obligation bond, a local vehicle license fee and an additional half-cent sales ta x. If passed by San Francisco voters, these revenues would re present an unprecedented reinvestment in a transit system that has been underfunded for too long. This will be a major focus of SPUR's work in 2014 as we try to move some of these proposals to the ballot.
Urban Villages Become Central Political Issue in San Jose Th e 2040 General Plan , strongl y endorsed by SPUR, signaled the end of the era of sprawl in San Jose. But as the plan moves into implementation during a hot residential real estate market, it has come under intense fire . Residential developers argue, correctly, that the Urban Village plans discourage housing in favor of retail , office and manufacturing uses, whi le the city argues, also correctly, that it is under fiscal distress as the bedroom community for Si licon Valley, with jobs and retail being concentrated outside the city limits of San Jose. The planning department is suddenly faced with having to figure out zon ing, capital planning, financing and all the other pieces of implementation . SPUR has been asked by the mayor and city council to help navigate a path through these dilemmas . From structuring neighborhood plann ing processes to determining how to balance market forces with the city 's policy goals, we will work with the cit y to help make the visionary ideas of the 2040 plan workable for real-world development.
SPUR Receives Grant to Study Sea Level Rise Adaptation in Mission Creek Based on its success with the Ocean Beach Master Plan, SPUR was given a grant from the Port of San
The Urbanist is edited by Allison Arieff and designed by Shawn Hazen. haze ncreative.com.
THE URBANIST
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
A Tale of Two Cities Francisco for a new study of sea level rise for the Mission Creek area of San Francisco's eastern waterfront. SPUR will manage the project, which is a collaboration among five city departments, the Dutch government and the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC). The project will address the risks of flooding from sea level rise and storms by developing adaptation alternatives for the Mission Creek area and will continue the exchange of knowledge and information between the Netherlands and California about planning for climate change.
A Big Boost for Secondary Units SPUR has long supported secondary units (sometimes called "in-law" or "granny" units) as one of the best ways to increase the supply of housing without changing the character of neighborhoods. There are currently two pieces of legislation in the hopper that could improve the supply of secondary units in San Francisco. The first, introduced by Supervisor David Chiu, would create a pathway to legalization for existing secondary units citywide. The second, introduced by Supervisor Scott Wiener, would allow new secondary units to be built in the Castro neighborhood. We are excited to see this issue addressed in such a robust fashion and hope both of these pieces of legislation move forward. •
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness ... " It seems only appropriate, as the holiday season is upon us. to quote Charles Dickens when talking about SPUR's work this past year in the cities of San Francisco and San Jose, both of which saw highs and lows in 2013. What a ·year it has been for San Francisco! New construction
boomed. Major construction got underway on the Transbay Transit Content Strategist. Center and the Central Subway. Bikeshare, new bike infrastructure and bikes on BART meant that bikes were everywhere. San Francisco added jobs faster than any other city in the country this year...and yet. All of the good news was tempered by the palpable sense of frustration and anger felt in the wake of the changes happening in the city. Economic inequality became stark. Housing and rental prices skyrocketed. Evictions went up. And with the pair of BART strikes this year, we all had a glimpse of what can happen when transit systems fail. But there are many things San Francisco can do help turn things around: boost the minimum wage, as Mayor Ed Lee has called for, make Muni an efficient and affordable transit option for more residents. and continue to push an agenda of affordable housing. These are all things SPUR will be working on in 2014. San Jose, where SPUR opened a stunning new headquarters in September, similarly has much to be positive about: downtown real estate has lured several major new tenants, commercial projects like Samsung and the nl campus are embracing urbanism, BART is coming, bikeshare already has. Yet, like San Francisco, this is a city contending with myriad issues related to budget, affordability and the challenges of planning the best way in the coming decades - from the right jobs-to-housing mix to implementing better urban design. Among the issues SPUR will be working on in 2014 are downtown San Jose, plans for Berryessa BART and a look at the future of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority. Of course SPUR's work is a tale not just of two cities but of many. Perhaps more than ever, SPUR recognizes the necessity of comprehensive regional planning (some of the complexities of which you can read about on p. 12 and p. 16). To go back to Dickens, that Tale of Two Cities quote winds down with the observation that "we had everything before us, we had nothing before us." We remain optimists. This is a tremendous time for cities. It is a challenging one to be sure -- but we have everything before us. •
Cover image from the series "See something or say something." The map shows locations of geotagged photos posted to Flickr (in orange) and tweets posted to
THE URBANIST
Allison Arieff is SPUR's Editor and
Twitter (in blue) in the San Francisco Bay Area, combining to white in areas where people have posted to both. Map by Eric Fischer. www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/
DEC 2013/JAN 2014
3
THE YEAR IN URBANISM
The Uneven Recovery What happened: Housing prices exploded in San Francisco while lagging at pre-recession levels in other parts of the region.
What it means: The bullish labor market is having a big impact on housing costs in some parts of the region . Could some of the demand for the hottest markets be met by other, more affordable locations that are well served by regional transit?
By Sarah Karlinsky Sarah Karlinsky is SPUR's deputy director. Special thanks to Jed Kolko of Trulia.
The Bay Area is one of the most expensive housing markets in the entire country. Yet while housing costs in hot areas such as San Francisco, Marin and parts of the peninsula are skyrocketing, parts of the region still remain more affordable. Could transit connections between different parts of the region, coupled with new housing production at all income levels and better urban design, help to address regional housing costs?
Hot cities getting hotter In San Francisco, the high cost of housing is fast becoming the most important issue the city faces. Rents citywide (for apartments of any size in any neighborhood) have escalated 17 percent from October of 2012 to October of 2013, an increase higher than in any other county in the region. In some San Francisco neighborhoods, prices for both rental and ownership units have reached a fever
4
DEC 2013/ JAN 2014
pitch, leading to hyper-gentrification and a substantial increase in evictions.' The lack of housing production in San Francisco has exacerbated this phenomenon. San Francisco has averaged a production of 1,500 units per year for the past 20 years. During the recession, almost no housing was produced (just 269 units of housing were brought to market in 2011). 2 Fortunately, the past 18 months have seen the development of a substantial amount of housing by San Francisco standards - with roughly 4,000 units of housing in the works for 2013 alone. However, it is unlikely this production will be sufficient to meet the incredible demand generated by the city's exploding economy. San Francisco is currently the fastest-growing county in the United States for private sector employment, outpacing Austin, San Mateo, Houston and Santa Clara.' In fact, San Francisco added nearly twice as many tech jobs as Santa Clara County and roughly 20 percent more than San Mateo County, 4 meaning that the geography of Silicon Valley is changing. In the areas commonly associated with the term "Silicon Valley" - such as Palo Alto and Mountain View - housing continues to be extremely pricey. In Portola Valley, for example, the median cost for a home exceeds $2 million. 5
Cities with a mix of expensive and cheap housing near transit In San Jose, the story is different. While in San Jose housing is more affordable than in San Francisco, the city is still the center of one of the most unaffordable metro regions in the country. Median housing prices for ownership units have increased 23 percent from last year 6 and rental prices are also up, factors that are fueling renewed interest in building housing . The majority of new multifamily construction in San Jose is rental housing .7 some of which is being built in downtown San Jose - hopefully reflecting an interest in higher-density urban living. However, housing costs remain fairly uneven across neighborhoods, despite San Jose's proximity to Silicon Valley. While Oakland is not seeing the same increase in housing construction as San Francisco and San Jose, it is experiencing an escalation in both rental and for-sale housing, largely due to spillover demand
Whll th cost of housing In San Fr ncl co and th wealthier p rts of the p nln ul ar escal ting a th I bor m rk t heats up, p rts of Oakland and e t rn Contra Co ta County remain more afford bl
Medlin 5111 Price
c S133K
S1.2M +
from San Francisco. In fact. Oakland's forsale home prices have increased 45 percent since last year, though sales prices have not quite returned to their peak pre-recession levels of 2008. 8 Housing production in Oakland has historically been low, although some projects that were put on hold during the recession , such as the Brooklyn Basin project (previously known as Oak to 9th), are moving forward. 9
Cooler market cities By contrast, in the eastern parts of Contra Costa County, the housing market has a very different story to tell. While housing costs THE URBANIST
in the for-sale market are quickly increasing on a percentage basis, they still reflect the substantial reduction in prices that happened in this area during the recession. In Pittsburg and Antioch , median home prices are $280,000 and $290,000 respectively. 10 Areas to the east of the nine-county Bay Area are less expensive still. For example, the median home price in Stockton is $156,000. In some of these cheaper markets, foreclosures have had an enormous impact on housing cost. Between July 2008 and April 2013, Solano County experienced more than 21 ,000 foreclosures, affecting roughly 14 percent of households." THE URBANIST
Opportunities and challenges It should come as no surprise that there are variations in housing costs across the region. Places closest to the economic engine of the region (Silicon Valley) with high-value housing stock (i.e., large homes on large tracts of land) did not lose their value during the recession and have benefited from the hot labor market. However, most of these places are not zoned to add significant new housing, nor is it likely that they will be in the future. Of course it would be very beneficial if places on the peninsula with lots of jobs that are close to transit, such as Palo Alto and Mountain View, would add to their housing stock. 12 Yet this is
unlikely to happen any time soon . In fact, this November, Palo Alto voters took a big step in the wrong direction by overturning a senior affordable housing project. 13 One of the most important ways to address high regional housing costs is to build more housing, not just in San Francisco but throughout the region. We need to focus on places that have existing regional transit but aren't yet quite as rich with urban amenities, such as downtown San Jose. Doing so could potentially relieve some of the pressure on San Francisco stock by providing options for workers in Silicon Valley who seek housing in great neighborhoods. -7
DEC 2013/JAN 2014
5
THE YEAR IN URBANISM
The Impacts of the Recovery While cooler market locations have experienced greater increases in prices on a percentage basis, these places are also the ones that lost the most value during the great recession .
City
%increase YoY (Nov) for sale
Median home prices
Average price per sq ft
San Francisco
13%
$845,000
$760
23%
$606,000
1
San Jose
$417
•• • •• • •• • • • • • • • • • • • ••• ••• • • •• • •• •• • • • • •• • •• • •••• • •••• •• ••• • •••••• •••• • • • •••••••• • • • •• •
http://antievictionmappingproject.
word press.com/map/ 2
San Francisco Planning Depart-
Oakland
38%
$420,000
$342
ment. SF Housing Permits and
Palo Alto
18%
$1,690,000
$1,046
Teresa Ojeda (personal communi -
Mountain View
4%
$800,000
$653
Fremont
21 %
$640,000
$430
Construction Trends 1960 - 2010.
cation, October 22, 2012) as cited
here: http://www.spur.org/publica-
tions/libra ry/article/san-franciscoboom-back. Rent increase from
Richmond
43%
$280,000
$224
Antioch
22%
$290,000
$151
Stockton
22 %
$159,000
$101
t rulia.com 3 "The
City's Economy" - Power-
poi nt prepared by the Office of Economic Analysis, Controller's Office - July 2013. Slide 3.
Of course, San Francisco is a major job center in its own right, creating pressure within the city 's boundaries. If more housing could be added to downtown Oakland and other areas with BART stations, it would not only help to build Oakland 's tax base but also create more reasonably priced housing opportunities for people priced out of San Francisco and other locations that are feeling the heat caused by the labor market. The biggest challenge to addressing the Bay Area's housing costs is political. There is a great policy paradox in regional planning namely, the places with the greatest demand are anti-growth and the places that are progrowth don't have enough market demand to support new construction . Add to this the fact that some of the tools to create affordable housing, such as inclusionary housing (in which municipal and county planning ordinances require a given share of new construction to be affordable by people with low to moderate incomes), are under attack, and you have the conditions for a perfect storm . We need to change some of these dynamics if we are ever going to address the extraordinary cost of housing in our increasingly unaffordable region . •
6
DEC 2013/JAN 2014
' Ibid, Slide 5. ' http://www.trulia.com/ local#prices/san-francisco-ca 6
http://www.trul ia.com/real_es-
tate/San_Jose-California/
' http://www.huduser.org/pub lications/pdf/SanJoseCA_comp.pdf 8
http://www.trulla.com/real_es-
tate/Oakland -California/ ' http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2013/04/12/brooklyn_basin_finds_funding.php 10 http://www.tru lia.com/ local#prices/san-francisco-ca 11
https://www.baycit izen.org/data/
housing/map-bay-area-foreclosures-county-by-county/ 12
The City of Mountain View actu-
ally rejected a plan by Google to construct housing on its campus as part of a plan to create more job density. http://www.spur.org/publications/library/article/corporatecampus-embraces-urbanization 11
http://www.mercurynews.com/
breaking -news/ci_24462926/earlytally-shows-measure-d-seniorhousi ng-project
THE URBAN!ST
Bay Area Bike Share launched in the
City, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and
annual members and 4,380 casual
Bay Area this year with 700 bikes and
San Jose. Soon after rolling out, the
members - and plans are in the works
70 stations across the region, with
program has logged an estimated
for expansion in 2014.
locations in San Francisco, Redwood
21,138 bicycle trips and gained 2,273
THE URBANIST
DEC 2013 / JAN 2014
7
THE YEAR IN URBANISM
When Transit Goes Awry What happened: BART went on strike, for the first time since 1997.
What it means: The Bay Area learned just how dependent it is on a functioning transit system, which leads to difficult questions for the future: How do we make sure BART continues to expand to handle more riders as the region grows, and how do we make sure strikes don't happen in the future?
By Gabriel Metcalf Gabriel Metcalf is SPUR's Executive Director.
Most people think of the BART strike as the time when BART workers paralyzed regional travel. Some people understand that those days were a preview of what awaits the Bay Area as we add another 2 million residents without any increase in reg ional transportation capacity. The strike should serve as a wake-up call with regards to the latter. In many ways, it seems inevitable that BART went on strike this year. Labor was fed up with years of flat wages, years of recession and years of watching economic inequality grow and fearing that new provisions would undermine the middle-class life that many workers had achieved . Not all of labor's issues were specific to BART. The anger felt by the rank and file was at least partly in response to much bigger economic trends. Since the early 1970s, wages
8
DEC 2013/ JA N 201 4
for many workers in the country have been stagnating as incomes grow for those at the top and productivity continues to shoot up by 80 percent (because the gains from wages have flowed to owners of capital, not to the average worker). Inequality has been growing, like a quiet cancer, until the Occupy Movement put it at the center of the country 's awareness in 2011. Although BART employees make fair wages, rising costs in many other aspects of their lives (such as day care, college and of course, housing) put further pressure on them . After a labor contract in 2009 that kept wages flat, BART's unions were ready to make progress again - channeling not just their own economic self interest, but the broader frustration felt by so many people about the fate of working-class and middle-class America . Management, on the other hand, believed that the agency was at a crossroads that would determine the long-term viability of the entire BART system. Years and years of deferred maintenance have been eating away at the tracks, the train cars, the tunnels and the stations. A system that got used to thinking of itself as "new" compared with Muni or the East Coast transit systems is now four decades old. The system still uses its original fleet of railcars, currently the oldest among U.S. transit agencies . Under its new leadership, BART finally tallied up the maintenance reinvestment costs it is facing, and the capital needs of an expanding ridership, and was horrified to discover that it needs many billions of dollars to operate. Meanwhile, state and federal support for transit continues to dwindle. People were beginning to talk about New York in the 1970s - the archetypal precedent for what happens when transit maintenance goes unfunded for too long. Management was also concerned about the cost of BART's benefits package: ballooning pension costs (increasing at more than 6 percent per year over the past decade) and medical insurance premiums (increasing at more than 12 percent per year), with BART employees making either no, or low, contributions to increasing costs. The irony, and perhaps the root of the vastly different perceptions between labor and management, is this: despite low wage increases, BART's overall labor costs keep increasing . Workers don't experience
increases in pay or benefits, yet management experiences big increases in costs. Faced by governments everywhere, this structural problem has been the focus of pension reform efforts at the state and local level. Finally, management was also concerned with work rules, which had not been reformed in a very long time. Faced with this kind of critical choice, the job of BART management seemed clear: They needed to get a labor contract that would control operating costs so that the agency could fund its core capital needs - starting with its first three projects: replacing and expanding its fleet of railcars (around $3 billion, depending on exactly how many are ordered), investing in a new train control system ($700 million), and building a new maintenance facility ($430 million). Adding up these projects plus the full backlog of maintenance needs, BART's unfunded system rehab needs are $7.5 billion over 30 years, or about $250 million per year. BART's operating budget is only about $500 million annually. Given all of this, is it any wonder that the two sides could not agree? Is it any wonder that it seemed "worth it" to take the system down for a period of time with a strike? Many have suggested a ban on transit strikes. If we are actually going to rebuild the Bay Area to be transit dependent, then the transit cannot be withheld . Like transit on the East Coast, like Muni, like cops and firefighters everywhere, transit workers should not be allowed to strike, goes this line of thinking. This makes sense. The question, however, is what happens instead - how are labor disputes to be resolved when they reach an impasse? And here, the simplicity of banning strikes dissolves into a mush of competing ideas. Would management have the right to impose contractual terms? This is impossible to imagine in a Democratic state like California. Would arbitrators have the right to impose contractual terms? This is precisely how Stockton and Vallejo (not to mention Detroit) went bankrupt, as arbitrators make decisions based on fairness , not on a public agency's ability to pay. Under binding-interest arbitration as it is normally practiced in California, it is highly unlikely that BART could control operating costs in order to reinvest in its capital needs. Does this present us with a choice between THE URBANIST
the severe unreliability caused by strikes vs. the long-term unreliability caused by physical deterioration? Not quite. There are all kinds of variations on arbitration, some of them quite promising , but it's fair to say that this is going to be a complicated problem to fix. As for the settlement: Wages will increase in a series of steps, to over 16 percent at the end of four years. Each year employees will make an increasing contribution to their pension cost and will pay an increasing share of rising medical premiums. BART gained control over some key work rules, which , in theory, should allow it to make up for the added costs of the labor contract. BART should be able to earmark enough money each year to fund the local portion of its railcar and maintenance THE URBANIST
facility projects --but the annual maintenance backlog remains unsolved . But as of this writing , the settlement is under litigation - due, it appears, to a drafting error in the agreement. The creation of the BART system was a proud moment for the Bay Area, very much against the grain of the postwar consensus about the embrace of the automobile. But we 've rested on our laurels for a long time. Our generation has to figure out how to reinvigorate BART for the future - how to reinvest in the physical system, how to expand service so that BART can carry many more passengers and how to heal the terrible divide between labor and management so that the trains can actually be run. â&#x20AC;˘
Two debilitating BART strikes in 2013 not only inconvenienced thousands of riders but revealed the many challenges that lie ahead for the transit provider, from how to invest in the existing system to how to repair relations between labor and management.
DEC 2013 / JA N 2014
9
THE YEAR IN URBANISM
On September 2, 2013 - nearly 24 years after the old span collapsed during the Loma Prieta earthquake - the new East Span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened to traffic. Pedestrians and cyclists also get to travel on the bridge now on a 15.5-foot-wide bike and pedestrian path. Despite calls for a High Line-ish park, the bridge's original East Span, including the cantilever and truss structures, will be demolished.
DEC 2013 / JAN 2014
11
THE YEAR IN URBANISM
A New Plan for the Region W hat happened: Two Bay Area regional planning agencies adopted Plan Bay Area , which combines a relatively compact land use vision for 2 million more people and 1 million jobs with $290 billion in transportation investments through 2040.
W hat it means: Plan Bay Area is the Bay Area's implementation of the land use portion of California's climate change law, which projects a 15 percent reduction in perperson greenhouse gas emissions from driving less as required by CA Senate Bill 375 (2008). The plan is a major step forward in that it puts transportation money behind a clear land use visions. But the process of producing Plan Bay Area also revealed weaknesses in regional planning . In particular, there is too little money for the region's transportation needs and too few tools to enact the land use vision .
By Egon Terplan and lmron Bhatti Egon Terplan is SPUR's Regional Planning Director. lmron Bhatti is a research intern at SPUR.
12 DEC 2013/JAN 2014
Plan Bay Area paints a picture of a Bay Area with more transit service and ridership, less auto dependency, broad-based job growth and new development around transit in many communities, such as cities like Oakland that have missed some of the recent real estate cycles. It plans for some growth in communities toward the edges of the Bay Area, but it assumes little greenfield development (long critiqued as producing sprawl) and funds no new highways (except additional HOT lanes. which are new carpool lanes that allow single-occupant vehicles to pay to use). It directs 90 percent of transportation funds into the maintenance of existing infrastructure. The plan also offers an updated way to analyze transportation investments to see how they would perform (using a traditional cost-benefit approach as well as assessing whether they support or undermine important regional goals). As a result of this analysis. some transportation projects that would run counter to the plan's goals (e.g, would result in more driving) were deliberately not funded. Overall, it's a great vision for the region, but there are several issues that reveal the weaknesses in regional planning: 1. The tools to implement the plan's vision are limited. Successful implementation requires a robust economy and local governments that will zone and approve good development. but the regional agencies lack the authority or tools to do this. 2. There's not enough money to do what's needed. The plan acknowledged nearly $20 billion in unmet needs for transit capital projects alone - most of which is just to keep the system in a state of good repair, let alone ensure that BART, Caltrain , Muni and other systems can carry hundreds of thousands more daily riders. The only big sources of new funding are from an additional bridge toll and cap-and-trade revenues, which won't be enough. The plan also assumes that federal spending will remain at current levels (the federal portion of the bill is $33 billion over 28 years). and grow by 3 percent annually.
But the future of federal transportation spending will be different. The Feds are incapable of fixing the gas tax, which is declining in value as cars become more efficient. The sooner we acknowledge these realities, the sooner we can develop new local funding sourcessuch as expanded road pricing or tolls that could be controlled regionally. 3. The growth may not happen in the places projected. The plan focuses growth in places with transit while making no changes to the underlying power of local governments to control every land use decision. 4. The plan lacks any power to affect the real estate market. Some areas with lots of projected growth - like Oakland (projected to add over 51,000 housing units)- have seen major rent increases but have yet to see much housing or job growth since the Great Recession. San Francisco may easily reach its unambitious growth targets (its housing target of 92,000 units is almost equal to what the city has already planned for and thus does not push the city to plan for additional growth), but other cities may not. If growth remains elusive in the central. transit-served markets identified as "Priority Development Areas," it will go elsewhere - either to greenfield environments at the region's edge (undermining our region's environmental goals) or to other regions altogether (undermining the job growth needs of our region). 5. The plan does not have a coherent vision for outlying areas like Santa Rosa and Solano County. Plan Bay Area leaves unresolved some difficult questions stemming from the Bay Area 's size and diversity. The essentially urban-coreoriented, anti-sprawl framework does not always fit the diverse geographies and socioeconomic conditions of the nine-county region where demand remains strong for low-density development. 6. Many residents do not feel as if they are actually part of the Bay Area and prefer to identify instead with their neighborhood or small town. As a result. communities are often not able to see how the impacts of THE URBANIST
climate change require that the region work cooperatively. Some also feel that their way of life is threatened if new development takes place as discussed in Plan Bay Area, despite the plan~s unstated goal of protecting single-family neighborhoods from intense development. It is hard to accept the logic of density along transit corridors and the need for affordable housing if you have no sense of shared responsibility.
What happens next Plan Bay Area will be updated every four years. Simplifying the 2017 update could make it more easy to understand. Some of the controversy around the plan (see p. 16) may have come from the complexity of following the three-yearlong planning process. Among the topics that should be further explored in the 2017 plan are: -7 How to better connect and unify the
region's 27 transit operators. -7 How to balance inefficient and costly
transportation expansion projects with smaller-scale investments that may benefit more people. -7 How emerging systems (i.e., driverless
cars) will change our transportation needs. -7 How to adapt to the impacts of climate
change.
The Supreme Court ruled that proponents of Proposition 8, a ban on gay marriage passed by California voters in 2008, did not have the legal right to defend the law in the federal courts restoring gay marriage in the nation's most populous state.
-7 How to manage the tension between
housing development and goods movement in areas of poor air quality, and how to deal with the greenhouse gas emissions produced by the alternatives. evin
-7 How to respond to concerns about a
shrinking middle class.
£~
o·conn~
•
-7 How land use policies and transportation
investments can connect workers particularly the lowest-wage earners to better jobs.
Ultimately, Plan Bay Area is only as good as its supporters. Since all land use power resides locally, the best measure of the plan's success will be if local government staff and elected officials support and champion the regional approach to growth. • THE URBANIST
DEC 2013/JAN 2014 13
THE YEAR IN URBANISM
Cyclical Job Growth in SF
The Tech
Boom
650,000 ... ••• ................................................. ....... .. •. .. ................................. ......• .. .................. 12.0% = Total Employment
• =Recession Bars 625,000 .. ............................................................ ... ................................. . - =Unemployment Rate ~
········ 9.0%
600,000 ... .. ····················································· •
"'
·;::
]]
575,000 ...
§ n; "' a:
~
550,000 .•
•.• 6.0% ~
~
,.,E
E ,.,
0
c.
0
What happened:
~ w
525,000
~
"
::::>
;;;
San Francisco added jobs faster than any other city in the country.
~
500,000 .. 475,000
W hat it means: The boom -and-bust cycle is an inherent part of capitalism . But underneath the ups and downs of the business cycle are longer-term trends - in this case the emergence of technology as the dominant employment sector in San Francisco.
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The Meteoric Rise of SF Tech c "'~
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By Gabriel Metcalf and Egon Terplan
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Special thanks to Ted Egan.
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Above, top: Today, private sector employment is about 20,000 jobs higher than where it was in 2007, before the
As of 2013, approximately 7.5 percent of total private sector jobs in San Francisco are in "technology," broadly defined.' Over the last two decades, tech has grown from a base of less than 1 percent in 1990 to 4 percent at the height of the 2000 dotcom boom to nearly 8 percent today. We've lived through the trauma of boom and bust during this period : job growth, rising incomes, rising rents. flush government budgets, speculation and gentrification in the good times; jumps in unemployment, vacancies and deficits. in the down cycles. The question " Is this current condition sustainable?" might not be the right one to ask. History tells us that this boom will be 14
DEC 2013/JAN 2014
followed by a bust (which will be followed by a boom . Et cetera). Commercial rents will drop, and vacancies will climb. Rents may decline (or at a minimum, increases will slow). Many people may move to other regions, as happened after the dotcom crash . And then we know that the bust will be followed by another boom. A long-term sustainable growth trajectory does not seem to be a part of our economic system. But the drama of the up and down can obscure longer-term structural change. In the case of the Bay Area, what is most striking is the convergence of the South Bay and peninsula economies with San Francisco's. Silicon Valley is no longer limited to areas
most recent recession. Unemployment dropped to about 5-1/2%from a high of over 10%in 2010. Despite this recent growth, the city still has close to 30,000 fewer private sector jobs than at the height of the dot com boom in 2000. Above, middle: About three quarters of " tech" in San Francisco is what the Federal government calls "Computer Systems Design and Related Services" (NAICS 5415) - about 28,000 jobs in software and web design, data processing and other information technology services.
THE URBANIST
south of SFO : In many parts of the Bay Area, the economy is increasingly driven by knowledge-intensive technology firms . And while most of the biggest tech firms are still in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, the technology sector is now the fastest-growing part of San Francisco's employment base and a growing part of the East Bay 's. People used to say that tech firms would only move into low-rise buildings or historic warehouses in SoMa . But data tells a different
c
"'
story: Today, fully 22 percent of all office space in Sari Francisco is occupied by tech
In July, the San Francisco Board of
passed new laws for urban farming in
To read more, www.spur.org/pub-
firms . The tech boom makes San Francisco
Supervisors, inspired by the model of San Francisco's Little City Gardens,
the city that make it easier for backyard gardeners to sell their produce.
/ications/spur-report/2012-04-23/ public-harvest
the envy of cities all over the world . The unemployment rate has fallen from over 10 percent in 2010 to 5.6 percent (as of August 2013) and continues to drop. The multiplier effect on export-heavy tech jobs is as much as 5 to 1 (meaning that for every job in tech there are as many as five other jobs created across many different sectors - everything from restaurants and retail stores to architects, real estate agents, nurses and construction workers). City coffers are flush with a yearover-year increase in the city budget of $600 million .2 But the size of this job growth relative to the size San Francisco's housing stock (combined with the city 's attractiveness to residents) has created huge problems in the form of skyrocketing prices for housing . And as much as the housing cost issues consume political and collective thought, the key is that economic growth is a prerequisite for many of the other goals we have. The ability to invest through new public spending instead of slashing services across the board is a luxury that results from economic growth. Our job is to find ways to make sure that more people get the chance to benefit from the prosperity that has come to San Francisco and parts of the entire region . That means working on new ways to connect people to the jobs being created . In particular, we need to get people on a pathway to betterpaying jobs - whether for tech firms or for one of the many other firms paying good wages. It also means facing the long-term structural housing supply problem head on . SPUR has been working on both of these major challenges and will continue to do so throughout 2014. • THE URBANIST
Construction on the BART extension from
BART
Expands
to the South Bay W hat happened: BART broke ground on the first station in San Jose.
Fremont to San Jose began in April 2012. The first phase of the project, which will extend to the Berryessa Station, is scheduled to be completed by 2016, with service beginning by 2018. At a projected cost of $2.3 billion,* it is the biggest public works project ever in Silicon Valley. In order to bring BART to San Jose the voters of Santa Clara County have overwhelmingly approved two different measures to increase the sales tax (in 2000 and 2008). The state and federal governments have contributed large sums as well. A second 6-mile phase will bring BART from the Berryessa Station to downtown San Jose via an underground subway and into Caltrain's Santa Clara Station. This segment is largely, but not yet fully, funded .
W hat it means: The BART extension to San Jose is the single largest transit project currently happening in the Bay Area - and a central part of the South Bay's decision to embrace urbanization by connecting to commuter rail from the East Bay. As the project moves toward construction , attention shifts to the question of land use planning around the stations.
Since the heroic years of BART planning and construction, from the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s, the Bay Area has barely added to its transit system. While BART has its drawbacks as a technology for longer distances (including no ability to run express trains on passing tracks), it has the best brand in transit in the Bay Area. South Bay voters' decision to embrace BART marks a significant change of direction toward more sustainable forms of transportation. •
By Leah Toeniskoetter LPoh To
111
ko tier
1s thr Due~tor
of SPUR San Jos . ' Tho lir>t 10-milo pho'° or BART Silicon Volley is 0'11matcd to co•I $2.3 billion (per tho FFGA): Federal $900 million (39%); Stale 5251
m1lllon (10%): Loc.11$1.179 billion (51%)
DECEMBER 2013
15
THE YEAR IN URBANISM
A Threat to Planning? Wh at happened: Critics across the political spectrum challenged the vision put forth in the newly adopted Plan Bay Area, a 30-year regional plan that aligns transportation investments with assumptions about growth for the next two million in population.
W hat it means: By contesting the fundamental notion of a shared regional responsibility, the opponents of Plan Bay Area are undercutting the role of regional planning as a tool to manage long-term growth.
By Egon Terplan and lmron Bhatti
In the Bay Area, there is a growing backlash to development and aspects of planning as res idents struggle with rising real estate prices and changing communities. Plan Bay Area, a long-term vi sion meant to manage competing views on growth and development, has come under attack by politically disparate factions . The groups share a notion that the plan reflects a growth pattern and values they do not support. Tea Party-aligned groups concerned about government intrusion , on the one hand, and left-wing equity and environmental advocates, on the other, have challenged the results of Plan Bay Area, and some have sued to block its implementation. While SPUR doesn't agree with the opponents, we do recognize that they are tapping into a popular view that change will make matters
16 DECEMBER 2013
worse. The urban -oriented vision put forth in the plan is a clear demonstration of the change they fear. The opposition to Plan Bay Area is also set against a rising tide of populist discontent nationally and globally. In November, Bill de Blasio beat out more establishment candidates to become mayor of New York. Social movements swept through cities like Sao Paolo and Istanbul earlier in 2013. While these examples differ from the opposition to Plan Bay Area, they reflect the growing sense that existing institutions are not effectively solving the issues of greatest concern for many people. Planning is meant to be the vehicle to manage the powers of the marketplace toward better outcomes. Regional planning is an exercise that requires long-term thinking, a sense of shared responsibility and a trust in existing institutions. Given that the alternative to regional planning is an increasingly balkanized Bay Area incapable of confronting major economic and environmental issues, this growing populism must be addressed. There are two key aspects of the opposition to Plan Bay Area and regional planning that are important to consider: 1. Plan Bay Area sparked opposition on both the right and left based on a shared distrust of how the plan will be implemented.
The right challenged the plan for being the product of unelected bureaucrats attempting to impose a singular vision of urbanism . The left's most serious critique was that the plan assumes significant growth will go to urban neighborhoods where lower-income residents risk displacement from rising costs yet the plan offers no fund ing mechanism for the region 's affordable housing needs. 2. There was a wide chasm in emotional energy between opponents and supporters.
The plan's opponents and critics (particularly on the right) were able to rally people's innate distrust for established institutions better than the plan's proponents were able to tap into their sense of collective responsibility. In fact, there is growing hostility from many sides toward the notion that any city or neighborhood has a regional respons ibility for growth. This is no surprise. It is easy to connect to
people's emotional energy when they fear some change about where they live - whether from market forces leading to price increases or irrational fears about the supposed destruction of single-family neighborhoods which could force people to live in a "stack and pack " environment. (A euphemism for apartments, "stack and pack" is continuously repeated as being the true goal of regional planning .) We don't want planning to be jettisoned because it is seen as a status quo institution that is both imposing a set of values on people and failing to address or respond to people's needs. Plan Bay Area is an opportunity to collectively confront the major environmental, economic and social issues of the day - most importantly our clarion call is the tremendous challenge of ensuring that our regional economy doesn't leave people stuck at the bottom . Our answer, in part, is that good planning is the way to get sufficient housing at all levels and will (over time) moderate the price surges that we 're now experiencing . Making sure there is broad-based job growth and investment in our infrastructure is another key answer. If regional planning can offer tangible answers to major issues and make a compelling case for our collective responsibility, it may well command more broad-based trust and redirect some of the emotional energy that's been going into (:hallenging the plan toward successfully implementing it. â&#x20AC;˘
In September, SPUR celebrated the grand opening of its new headquarters in downtown San Jose. SPUR San Jose just issued its first pol icy report, " Getting to Great Places," and will celebrate its second anniversary in January 2014.
A Giant Step Forward in Disaster Resilience America's Cup captured the imagination of some 700,000 spectators who flocked to the waterfront and pumped
$364 million into Bay Area businesses during its three-month stay.That's an amount that fell far short of the $902 million first projected yet it appears that the yachting race may return to San Francisco again in 2017.
What happened: On April 18 the anniversary of the 1906 earthquake. Mayor Ed Lee signed into law the mandatory soft-story retrofit program, requiring the retrofit of all older and larger soft-story, wood-frame residential buildings in San Francisco.
What it means: As building owners all over the city screen and begin work on the estimated 3,000 or so buildings that will require retrofit, San Francisco takes its next steps forward in seismic mitigation - 20 years after its first step.
By Patrick Otellini Patrick Otellini is Director of Earthquake Safety for San Franc1 co
The mandatory soft-story retrofit program targets buildings with "soft-story" conditions
- meaning that the ground floor is seismically weak because of multiple openings such as garages and windows. Many soft-story structures experienced damage in the Marina and other parts of the city after the Loma Prieta earthquake. This program targets those soft-story buildings with three stories or more and five units or more - the larger apartment structures with this seismically vulnerable condition. The passage of the mandatory soft-story retrofit program is an enormous step forward. Many of the city 's most vulnerable apartment structures wi ll be fixed by this ordinance. However, while this is unquestionably a huge success for San Francisco, it is just the start of the work that must continue to be done. The city has crafted an Earthquake Safety Implementation Program (ESIP), which is aimed at making San Francisco safer and more resilient. Private schools' earthquake safety, building facade maintenance and concrete tiltup buildings are all focuses of ESIP this coming year. In future years, ESIP will seek ways to make some of the smaller soft-story buildings - including single-family homes over garages - seismically stronger. ESIP is dedicated to continuing to work actively and directly with the community to advance the city 's resilience, a goal that SPUR laid out well in its Resil ient Cities initiative. It is critical that we all continue to work together to accomplish these tasks in order to prepare San Francisco for the next major earthquake. We cannot wait another 20 years to take our next steps.
OECEMBER 2013
17
THE YEAR IN URBANISM
18 DEC 2013/ JAN 2014
THE URBANIST
A New Start for the SFHA W hat happened: The mayor replaced the entire San Francisco Housing Authority (SFHA) leadership and asked them to come up with a new approach to public housing 1n San Francisco.
What it means: This represents the first real opportunity in decades to strategically evaluate how San Francisco operates its public housing program .
By Tomiquia Moss Tomiquia Moss is SPUR's Community Planning Policy Director
The San Francisco Housing Authority (SFHA) is a federally recognized public corporation with a commission appointed by the local government, and its mission is to provide affordable housing to low-income people. Yet for years this agency has been troubled and seemingly immune to reform efforts. At the start of the year, the controversial SFHA executive director was fired . Si x of the seven SFHA commissioners resigned, and Mayor Lee replaced them with city department staff. The new commission worked quickly to identify organizational challenges and increase their oversight function . Mayor Lee tasked the city administrator and the director of the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development to lead an inclusive community process to identify strategies that address the severe financial challenges facing the SFHA while still providing high-quality affordable housing to the more than 31,000 low-income residents it serves. ~ THE URBANIST
DEC 2013 / JAN 2014
19
THE YEAR IN URBANISM
The reenvisioning process. which resulted in an implementation report, was coordinated with representatives from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. Residents, nonprofit service providers, affordable housing developers, loca~ labor unions and private sector development experts provided feedback on specific areas of governance, resident services, public housing and Section 8 programs and what to do with the buildings within the public housing portfolio. One of the most important recommendations in the report is to create an Affordable Housing Land Trust Model as a way to ensure the preservation of public housing while also addressing the capital needs of buildings in order to make operations more sustainable. This would keep ownership of the land with the Housing Authority, thereby ensuring that the housing remains permanently affordable for residents. It would also require the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development to engage in a colla~orative process with affordable housing developers in order to assess the city's public housing portfolio as a whole to determine which properties need modernization. This public-private partnership would allow the city to rehabilitate or modernize the public hou_sing stock as needed . Another critical recommendation is to have a third-party provider - not SFHA - run the Section 8 program. Section 8 is the federal government's major program for helping low-income families , the elderly and the disabled afford housing in the private market, and it's currently managed by SFHA. This recommendation would help professionalize the operations and provide a more reliable system for voucher holders and landlords.
Samsung's new San Jose headquarters avoids the insularity of nearby tech campuses like Apple and Facebook with cafes that open to the street (and to the public). Its towers are oriented toward a light-rail corridor slated for dramatic densification.
By Benjamin Grant Benjamin Grant is SPUR's Public Realm and Urban Design Program Manager
What's next? The deterioration of the SFHA occurred over several decades, and it will take time to correct
It's tempting to view Samsung's new headquar-
these systemic problems. The city is addressing the right issues, but it is unclear how much staff capacity the city or the SFHA has to transform San Francisco's public housing delivery system. For this to occur, the mayor and community
ters through the lens of the company's emerging challenge to Apple's dominance of the smartphone market. Samsung¡ - a corporate titan in its own right - here plays the role of the hungry upstart, putting down a stake in Apple's Silicon
stakeholders will need to prioritize fixing
Valley turf. But in truth, a lot of forces aligned to
the SFHA and continue to evaluate how we administer low-income housing to some of our
deliver this best-in-class project: a creative end user who wants to make a visual statement, a city and state ready to go the extra mile to land the deal, a terrific architect who understands
most vulnerable populations. â&#x20AC;˘
20
DEC 2013/ JAN 2014
THE URBANIST
urbanism, and a thoroughly vetted plan with a clear urban design framework. Beyond its scale - a 680,000-square-foot, $300 million project that will house up to 2,500 workers - the project's two most striking features are its design and its location. The design, by NBBJ, is something of a revelation for the usually hidebound world of tilt-ups and parking lots that dominates the South Bay. It consists of two 10-story towers linked by several outdoor decks, creating a massive central garden atrium. Ground-floor cafes enliven the street, and the site welcomes pedestrian access. The towers are oriented toward North First Street, a light-rail corridor slated (rather optimistically so far) for dramatic densification through both housing and office development. The requisite massive parking structures are tucked away in the site's interior, screened by green walls and topped by solar arrays. The location is also significant. Samsung was presumably entertaining tantalizing subsidies from Texas, where it has long had a presence and financial support. The City of San Jose worked closely with the State of California to THE URBANIST
assemble a modest package of incentives that included reductions in impact fees, construction and utility tax breaks, and state tax credits. The city also offered expedited permitting, with entitlements completed in a blistering 76 days. In the end, according to several city officials, the incentives were important, but being in Silicon Valley was even more so. But for San Jose, which faces stiff competition from Silicon Valley neighbors like Santa Clara and Sunnyvale (not to mention Cupertino and Mountain View), the deal is a major vote of confidence. Many in San Jose are hoping that the Samsung project, scheduled to open in 2015, will provide a new model for the design quality and urban form of new tech workplaces. "Walkability, permeability and density are just ideas until large numbers of people see and experience them as creating better places," explains Kim Walesh , San Jose's chief strategist. These ideas are the cornerstones of the city 's new General Plan, but they face an uphill battle in a suburban context with a relatively soft market. In north San Jose, an ambitious urban design vision - of a walkable, transit-oriented tech
corridor - has gotten a major shot in the arm . Given the economic, fiscal and symbolic win represented by Samsung, it is unlikely that the city would have pushed the firm on design issues, whatever its guidelines. But as it turned out, San Jose didn't have to. Samsung and its architects saw elegant design , urban amenities and the quality of life of their workforce as fundamental to their enterprise. It remains to be seen how much of an impact this project will have on the design of the tech workplace elsewhere in the city and Silicon Valley. Samsung can afford to take risks. In contrast, most commercial development is speculative and is driven by brokers, lenders and tenants toward a standardized, status quo product. Some speculative developers are beginning to pitch projects with a more urban feel (like the Nl Campus on North First Street), but until major tenants buy in , these projects are just encouraging ideas. If Samsung shows that it 's possible for tech to thrive on a new kind of campus, it may just inspire a broader shift toward more engaging , sustainable places. â&#x20AC;˘
DEC 2013 / JA N 2014
21
URBAN FIELD NOTES
Case Study #62:
San Francisco's Construction Boom
Perhaps you've noticed? New . housing and commercial construction is booming in San Francisco. Caseworker: Sergio Ruiz
The construction boom in San Francisco is more evident than ever. All those cranes dotting the skyline would get any urbanist excited. The recent surge in activity seems to have turned the city into one big construction zone. But it 's not just the plywood or scaffolding lining our sidewalks or the occasional traffic detour that will have an impact: These projects will add scores of new residents and workers with new housing, offices, hospitals, historic renovations, and transportation facilities. Here are just a few examples of the many projects currently under construction in San Francisco. These images serve as snapshots of a city in the midst of growth as people continue on their daily lives. 22
DEC 2013/JAN 2014
THE URBANIST
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•••
THE URBANIST
DEC 2013 / JAN 2014
23
URBAN FIELD NOTES
II Central Subway Construction of the Central Subway is now in full swing. While Stockton Street continues to serve Union Square shoppers, construction is taking place behind the fences in preparation for future tunneling. This project will extend the T-Third Street light rail to directly connect Bayview and Mission Bay with subway stops in SoMa, Union Square, and Chinatown .
Ii Transbay Transit Center People walking past the Transbay Transit Center site can catch a glimpse of the excavation work and bracing 60 feet below for the underground structure. This facility will serve as a modern transportation hub, replacing the functions of the old Transbay Terminal with the addition of 24
DEC 2013/JAN 2014
Caltrain, California High Speed Rail, and a 5.4-acre rooftop park.
B The Transit Center District The neighborhood surrounding the future Transbay Transit Center is a key area for economic growth and transit-oriented development in San Francisco. The Transbay Transit Tower will play centerpiece to a host of new towers rising above South of Market. Construction has begun for Lumina, two condominium towers at 201 Folsom, which will mimic the Infinity Towers to the east. â&#x20AC;˘
Sergio Ruiz is an urban planner in the Bay Area and SPUR's photographer.
THE URBANIST
MEMBER PROFILE
WELCOME
Committed to Cities Paul Zeger Just one visit to New York City at age 7 was all it took - Paul Zeger was hooked .
For nearly 30 years, Paul Zeger has been working to create urban communities that meet the needs of residential consumers, developers and city planners. As president of Polaris Pacific, a leading West Coast new home sales and marketing company, Paul has the daily opportunity to influence the decisions of developers on how to best satisfy the needs of homebuyers within the parameters set by local planners. " We get to translate the economic realities of building in urban centers into homes that support modern city lifestyles," he explains. A SPUR board member for a decade, Zeger has since been invol ved in the Housing Advisory Board and the New Membership Committee. Of his favorite city, Zeger observes, "San Francisco is still a young city in many respects. While we are rich in many aspects of city life we are still somewhat unsophisticated and poor in others. We have a great history and unparalleled beauty, but we have yet to figure out how to allocate the resources in a way to support many large segments of the population . SPUR provides an opportunity to influence our progress." How did you first get interested in cities? I was raised in a small town in upstate New York. When I was about 7 my folks took the family to New York City on vacation and I was immediately hooked on the vibrancy and diversity of "the City." I remember going to Times Square, looking up and thinking this place is amazing. It took me another 15 years to move there, but once I did, I fell in love with the complexity of how it all worked. You're devoted to creating urban residential communities that thrive. What are the essential ingredients to make that happen? Every private and public space has its own character, style and culture. The key to "place makTHE URBANIST
ing" - that fine art that is the difference between building a "development " and a creating a "community " - is recogn izing the needs of the population, the special nature of the environment and the range of possibilities to bring them together. Identifying the authentic nature of the "place" and how residents will connect is a great start. When you appreciate that successful communities need to satisfy the residents ' physical , emotional and even spiritual needs, you have a solid basis for making design decisions. What are some common mistakes cities make? Short-term and politically motivated decisions are the enemy of good urban planning. When it
comes to communities we need a long-term perspective and the ability to do things that are right not easy. The Embarcadero Freeway is a great example. The decision to build it in the first place demonstrated a lack of foresight and a response to economic and political pressure. The decision to remove it would most likely never have been made without the help of the Loma Prieta earthquake, but once nature provided that opportunity, it is a credit to the city that the right decision was made. What an amazing contribution to the long term of the waterfront. I'm sure it's an impossible question, but what is your favorite recent urban improvement? The High Line in New York is an obvious favorite . Another great example is in Berlin. What was the strip of no-man's land that housed the Wall and kept the city divided is now a massive ribbon of parkland that brings the citizens together for exercise, entertainment. culture and commuting . Favorite city? San Francisco. It's a city that doesn't always make the right decision , but it continually demonstrates that it cares about doing the right thing. In the long run that will make a big difference. Favorite book on cities? Visual Density by Julie Campol i and Alex S. Maclean is a book I recently reread because it summarizes, in a unique way, the reality that we Americans are going to have to live in smaller homes in more densely built communities if we are going to survive and prosper. Remembering that this is not necessarily a bad thing is a healthy reminder for me and a message that I am professionally trying to get out to the next generation of homebuyers. â&#x20AC;˘
New Members New Business Members Kohn Pedersen Fox Pelosi Law Group Santa Clara Valley Water District San Jose Earthquakes
New Members Salvador Acevedo Jono Acquisti Keysha Bailey Dasha Barannik Cella Barbaccia Samuel Bowman Andrew Branscomb Helen Bronston Christine R. Butterfield Meb Byrne Alexandra Calven Michael J. Carabetta James Chalmers Sudthida Cheunkarndee Terry Chong-Crupi Matt Chwierut Christina Contreras Drew Cooper Christopher Ian Cruda Kevin Danaher Jeff Davis Audrey Desmuke Jhan Dolphin Stefanie and Kevin Egan Gabriella Folino Rosanne Foust John Garibaldi Lizzie Garrett Sherie George Barbara Graham Lucas Griffith Susan Gygi Kathleen Haley Sarah Harvey James Heilbronner Max Heinritz Parker Higgins Robert Hindman William Ho Daniel Hoyt Nori Jabba Ellen Keith
Anton Kovalyov Jon Kozak Terence Lee Matthew Levine Derek Levoit Ran Li Lisa Lu Nicolette Mastrangelo Colleen McKenzie Julie Samuels and Josh Mendelsohn Hannah Miller Tim Minezaki Mahlen SMorris Chris Murphy Chris Neil Elizabeth W. and Martin F. Nolan Cristina Olea Henry Pan Tania Pollak Gowri Potharaju Meghen D. Quinn Emma Reed Leah Rowell Julia Salinas William Senkus ZacShore Sara Steinberger Joseph Stephenson Kelley Stough Adam Tartakovsky Kathy Thibodeaux Gregory Thurman Jake Torrens Zachary Townsend Emily Van Loon Michael Waters Paul Weaver Karen Weiss Claudia Wilopo Scott Winkler Jon Wright Timothy A. Wudarski Jo Zientek
DEC 2013/JAN 2014
25
r CITY NEWS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE
Urban Drift
lamps? Pro-Teq is hoping that governments, which are trying to cut back on their nocturnal electricity bills, will embrace the self-aware, supernatural-looking pathway for its energy-saving elements and ease of installation . John Metcalfe, "Britain Is Experimenting With a Glowing, Seemingly Self-Aware Bike Path," The
Atlantic Cities, October 30, 2013.
Urban Urine in Amsterdam
In the City
In the City, the latest book from artist Nigel Peake, explores the visual details of a variety of metropolises, from Shanghai to Budapest. His drawings and paintings document the sights, sounds, shapes and textures he absorbs as he wanders the streets without a
map or sits in a cafe while waiting for a train. Nigel Peake, In the City (Princeton Architectural Press, 2013).
A Bright Way to Reduce Nocturnal Electricity Costs
Pro-Teq Surfacing, a company headquartered near London , is in the prototype phase of creating a solar-enhanced bike path called Starpath . The material works by absorbing ultraviolet rays during the day and later releasing them as topaz light. In a weird feature, the path can adjust its brightness levels to get dimmer on pitch-black nights - similar to the screen of an iPhone. Will this do away with bike lights and street 26
DEC 20 13/JAN 2014
Some campaigns want donations of money, others food or clothes . But the Green Urine campaign in Amsterdam wants urine. Yes, urine. The city 's water corporation, Waternet, recently installed a set of temporary urinals in La Place de La Bourse designed to collect the users' urine. Why? Waternet plans to extract the phosphates from the urine and turn them into struvite, a fertilizer used in agriculture and horticulture. It then plans to use the "donated" struvite to fertil ize green roofs totaling 1 hectare of the city. With this rather unorthodox effort, Waternet hopes to raise awareness of the ways cities can use urine as a source of phosphates, which are typically extracted from mines in countries including China, Egypt and Morocco. This is relevant because there is a debate raging between scientists over the claim that phosphorus resources in the natural world could run out within SO to 100 years. Waternet 's urinals in Amsterdam are some of the first to address recycling urine for urban renewal. Ric h Heap, "Amsterdam Will Harvest Urine for Green Roofs," Future Gties. November 7, 2013.
Stenciled Streets
U.K.-based graffiti artist Banksy took to the streets of New York in October, with stencils in one hand and spray paint in the other for his monthlong residency. His work, Better Out Than In, not only confronts the notion that street art must blight other people's
property, but also elevates discussion on place, space and imagination for modern urbanites. As each Banksy work became authenticated through the artist's website and lnstagram account, which announced their general locations, finding his creations became an urban scavenger hunt driven by social media . Rather than cover the city in paint, Banksy brought out the wonders of urban landscape through his imaginative choice of locations and use of negative space. From spraypainted stencils to performance pieces, Banksy utilizes urban space and asks, "Don't we want to live in a world made of art, not just decorated by it?" James Panero, "Taking It Beyond the Street," Wall Street Journal, November 4, 2013.
Nairobi's Lingua Franca
There are 42 languages spoken in Kenya - Swahili and English are the two official ones - but Sheng, a Swahili-based slang , is overtaking them all as the language of city youth. In the 1980s and '90s, a massive urban migration resulted in large numbers of young people living in close quarters with their families in low-income neighborhoods. "When you had all these young people living together in these very crowded areas of Nairobi, [they needed] a language of secrecy," says sociolinguistics professor Mungai Mutonya. Now the secret is out. It isn 't uncommon to see Sheng pop up almost anywhere, including on billboards and the radio. The Sheng flagship radio station, Ghetto Radio, calls itself the "voice of youth." Ghetto Radio producer Joseph Lotukoi says it 's not just the words they use, but also what they talk about: crime, joblessness, child labor and other issues that affect the young and poor. Sheng has become the lingua franca of Nairobi's youth . Laura Dean, "Nairobi's Street Talk," Roads & King-
doms, November 1, 2013.
Squats for Subway Tickets
Futurefarmers: Taking Stock
They've created temporary schools, community bread ovens, an ethnobotanical station (above) and the Lunchbox Lab, which enabled students to discover hydrogen-producing algae. On view at San Francisco's Gallery 16 through December is an exhibition of the work of the important Bay Area artist collective Futurefarmers spanning nearly two decades. www.futurefarmers.com Futurefarmers, Taking Stock, www.gallery16.com
Here's the thing about free giveaways: They're not really free . The latest gimmick in Russia 's Olympic fever is a machine that offers free Moscow subway tickets to anyone who completes 30 squats in two minutes. To help drum up excitement for the 20TK Sochi games, the Russian Olympic Committee installed a unique vending machine at the Vystavochnaya station. A special sensor counts squats and dispenses a free ticket to anyone who successfully completes the challenge. A single-ride ticket normally costs 30 rubles. or 92 cents, so the offer translates to a ruble to, well, squat. Stephanie Garlock, "Moscow Introduces a Rather Unusual Way to Pay for the Subway: Squats," The Atlantic Cities, November 8. 2013. â&#x20AC;˘
THE URBANIST
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SPUR 1s a memb r-support d nonprofit org nlzettion. W rely on your support to promote good pl nning nd good government through res rch, ducation nd dvocacy. Find out mor at spur.or /Join.
-i Ideas + action for a better city
Nonprofit Org. US Postage
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654 Mission Street San Francisco, CA 94105-4015 (415) 781-8726 spur.org
76 South First Street San Jose. CA 95113 (408) 510-5688 spur.org/sanjose
San Francisco. CA
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