Issue 482 Agents of Change p5 Summer programming p26 Ironies of history p32 Planning in pieces p35 City of plans p45

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I nDIVIDUALS Rachel Malchow Why I gave to the Bernadine Adams Yolanda Manzone Welcome to the Urban Center Harvey Allen Jesse Martinez Community Campaign for Alex Amoroso Richard McDerby Greg Andreas Mark Miller the SPUR Urban Center William Andrews Megan Miller David N. Arnav Lena Miyamoto Monica Arriola Andre Morand Richard A. Sucre, Betsy Baum Mary L. Murphy On behalf of the SPUR Board of Directors, we Fast forward 50 years, to the present moment. Noah Beil Francesca Napolitan Associate/Architectural Historian, would like to extend a warm welcome to all of you We are in a period of what can only be called “heavy Terry Betterly Bernard Niechlanski Page + Turnbull and proud urbanist David Boesch Ruairi O’Connell — our hard-working members and supporters — to lifting.” While the economy of the world is thrashing Geoff Bomba Paul O’Driscoll the SPUR Urban Center. Some of you are long-time around us, we are doing our best at SPUR to keep Margaret Brodkin Larry Orman supporters who have been in the SPUR family for planning and governance in this city and region on Darcy Brown Brian Overland “ I love the neighborhoods and thrive on the vitality of cities! Shelly Brown Marcia Packlick years, even decades, witnesses to the growth and track. And if that isn’t hard enough, we are also Erin Burg Hupp Matt Pagel change that have defined both our organization and working on the final stages of raising $4 million more I gave because I believe in SPUR’s mission, and realize that Caitlin Cameron Michael A. Pearce this great city and region we call home. to finish our capital campaign in a soft economy. the Urban Center is much needed in our community.” Joe Castorena Katie Pethan Others of you are new members. Perhaps you That said, we also find ourselves in a time of Ryan Chamberlain Karolina Pormanczuk Claire Cheng Carrie Portis joined because you value SPUR’s unparalleled great opportunity and excitement. On the national We need your support to help us reach our $18 million capital campaign goal. Zaheen Chowdhury Leslie Pritchett research in local and regional policy matters and want level, we are seeing the re-emergence of a strong Please consider making your gift ­— of any amount — today! Call Sarah Sykes at Christopher Colvin Adina Ringler to support our in-depth policy work. Perhaps you urban agenda after decades of policies supporting 415.781.8726 x123 for more information. Mark Conrad Cygridh Rooney want to learn more from our excellent publications and subsidizing unregulated suburban expansion. Kelly Corter Kelly Peter Sahmel Holly Dabral Tanu Sankalia and exhibitions in the Urban Center. Or maybe you’re Locally and regionally, we have made great progress Raymond del Portillo Brian Sauer a Young Urbanist, a member of our fastest growing in sustainable planning (with the recent passage of Todd Dell’Aquila Alisa Shen membership group. SB 375, California’s anti-sprawl bill) and investing in Earl Diskin Tatyana Sheyner Dina Dobkin Steven Shum regional transportation (securing over $9 billion in the SPUR Board of Directors C hairs and committees However long you’ve been in the SPUR community Michael Eiseman Heidi Sieck — and for whatever reason — the Urban Center is for last election for a high-speed rail system and moving Benjamin Sisson Co-Chairs Board Members John Madden Program Doyle Drive Earned Revenue Kristine Enea Vanessa Eng Robert Stevenson you. Thank you and welcome. We could not think of a forward with planning for the Transbay Terminal). We Andy Barnes Michael Alexander Jacinta McCann Committees Amanda Bill Stotler Courtney Fink William Strawn more fitting way to celebrate SPUR’s 50th anniversary, have also made great strides in local climate change Tom Hart Jim Andrew Jr. Mary McCue Hoenigman Ballot Analysis Executive Alison Fish Masako Martha and an even longer tradition of citizen involvement in policy, planning for a major earthquake and furthering John McNulty Eph Hirsh Suzuki David Baker Bob Gamble Andy Barnes Cecilia Fisher improving San Francisco. the smart growth agenda by channeling jobs into Executive Peter Winkelstein Michael Flaherman Andy Szybalski Fred Blackwell Chris Meany Peter Mezey downtown employment centers. Director Finance William Fleissig Starr Terrell Lee Blitch Ezra Mersey Greg Wagner SB 375 Gabriel Metcalf Terry Micheau Kathryn Fowler Julie Trachtenberg The opening of the Urban Center is perhaps the Zooming in even further — to SPUR’s new Margo Bradish Peter Mezey Andy Barnes Disaster Planning Nicole Franklin Paul Travis biggest change for the organization since the San headquarters in the Yerba Buena district — we are Pamela Brewster Leroy Morishita Tay Via Major Donors Adrienne Frieden Scott Truitt Urban Center Jacinta McCann Francisco Planning and Housing Association — a looking forward to an expansion of the organization’s Laurence Burnett Dick Morten Linda Jo Fitz Jessica Garcia Derek Turner Director Dick Morten citizens group founded in 1910 by Alice Griffith, Dr. platform for good policy, and an increase in our ability Michaela Cassidy Tomiquia Moss Brian O’Neill Marjorie Gelin Elaine Uang Diane Filippi Chris Poland Op erating Rebecca Glyn Dennis Vermeulen Emilio Cruz Mary Murphy Langley Porter and others to advocate for decent to reach and engage with a broader audience. In the Committees Individual Gail Goldyne Rene Vignos Housing housing conditions — was reorganized into SPUR in Urban Center, we will continue SPUR’s long-time Charmaine Curtis Paul Okamoto Membership Tommy Golen Willem Vroegh Vice-Chairs Ezra Mersey Audit 1959. tradition of lunchtime forums. We will also have Gia Daniller Brad Paul Bill Stotler Jawj Greenwald Randy Waldeck Lisa Feldstein Lydia Tan Peter Mezey That tradition of research and action continues exhibits, open to SPUR members and the general Kelly Dearman Tim Paulson Richard Gross Brian Walker Andy Barnes (top) Linda Jo Fitz Board Investment Penelope Grzebik Scott Walton Shelly Doran Chris Poland Project Review and Tom Hart are today, almost 100 years since the Association issued public, mounted in our new streetfront gallery. Please Bob Gamble Development Stanley Herzstein Kevin Hart Tony Wan Oz Erickson Teresa Rea Reuben Schwartz co-chairs of the its first report on anti-tenement reform, which led stop by to explore SPUR’s inaugural exhibition, “Agents Jim Salinas, Sr. Jim Andrew Julia Harter Jayson Wechter Luisa Ezquerro Byron Rhett Human Resources Michael Hicks Lisa Weiner to the State Tenement Act of 1911. The Association of Change: Civic Idealism and the Making of San Libby Seifel Sustainable Building SPUR Board of Linda Jo Fitz Bill Rosetti Anne Halsted Tina Hodgson Steve Wertheim Francisco.” The exhibition — also the focus of this Lyida Tan Development Management Directors. continued to be an active voice for housing concerns Josie Howard, M.D. Julie Whitcomb Norman Fong Victor Seeto Paul Okamoto Larry Burnett Silver SPUR through the next two decades, before they were joined special edition of the Urbanist — covers every major Justin Huang Christie White Frank Fudem Chi-Hsin Shao by Telesis — a passionate group of architects and urban planning movement in our city’s history. It tells Treasurer Bry Sarte Business David Hartley David Hunt Nicholas White Gillian Gillet Raphael Sperry Membership Patricia Klitgaard planners who saw better cities as the path toward a the story of how the San Francisco Bay Area came to Terry Micheau Transportation Devyani Jain Ruby Woo Chris Gruwell Bill Stotler Tom Hart Chris Jensen Dee Dee Workman Gillian Gillett Bay Discovery better society. In the 1950s, SFHA Director Dorothy be, and frames our current challenges in light of all Michael Teitz Terry Micheau Evelyn Johnson Robert Zirkle David Hartley Cruise Secretary Ellen Kaiser Jennifer Zweig Erskine founded Citizens for Regional Recreation and of the many successes — and failures — of previous Laurie Johnson Michael Theriault Jean Fraser Capital Campaign Claudine Cheng Richard Kim Parks (later renamed People for Open Space, and generations of urban planners and thinkers. James Tracy T ask Forces Ken Kirkey Chris Meany Teresa Rea Kassin Laverty businesses then Greenbelt Alliance), and started a movement At SPUR, we believe this knowledge of the past is Will Travis Central Subway Immediate Travis Kiyota Margaret Lee Crescent Heights Stephen Taber Young Urbanists to conserve regional open space by concentrating not just interesting and enlightening — but essential. Past Chair Patricia Klitgaard Jeff Tumlin Sonia Lehman-Frisch of America Gwyneth Borden Debra Leifer Lockton Insurance development in central cities. Led by Aaron Levine, It enables us to forge ahead with our own agenda by Vince Hoenigman Richard Kunnath Brooks Walker, III Downtown Gia Daniller John Leonard Brokers, LLC a planning expert from Philadelphia — and initially learning from the efforts of those who preceded us. Ellen Lou Debra Walker Transit Center Tim Leonoudakis Mechanics Bank Emilio Cruz funded by the Blyth-Zellerbach Committee — the We hope the exhibition answers many questions, but Advisory Council Janis Mackenzie Paul Zeger Jeremy Lizt Ryan Associates SFHA was re-organized into SPUR, and John Hirten that you leave with many more — and with some Co-Chairs Benjamin Lowe Verizon Wireless was hired as its first executive director in 1959. inspiration, perhaps, in becoming a present-day ‘agent Paul Sedway Ann Lyons William McDonough of change.’ Y Michael Wilmar Ian Maddison + Partners Nolan Madson

2 Urbanist > June/July 2009 Urbanist > June/July 2009 51 CELEBRATE OUR CITY

SPUR Urban Center Grand Opening

May 28-30, 2009 Join us for three days of exciting events! Thursday, May 28: Grand Opening Party for SPUR Members 654 Mission Street Friday, May 29: Exhibition Opening and Public Open House Saturday, May 30: SPUR Community Day San Francisco All SPUR members will receive invitations to grand opening events. All events will take place at the SPUR Urban Center, spur.org 654 Mission Street (at Third). All SPUR members will receive invitations by mail and e-mail. Sign up today at spur.org/join or call 415-781-8726 x116.

Urbanist > June/July 2009 3 BAY

DISCOVERY CRUISE 11th Annual Monday spur.org/baycruise June 8, 2009 Bay Discovery Cruise

5:30 PM Cocktails & hors d’oeuvres on the top deck SPONSORSHIPS AVAILABLE of the San Francisco Belle, docked at Pier 3 see www.spur.org for more information 7:00 PM sharp All aboard for a dinner cruise along the Contact [email protected] or 415-781-8726 x120 San Francisco Bay waterfront. See the latest Bay Bridge construction up close! to make your reservations. 9:00 PM sharp All ashore: event concludes Purchase your ticket online today at www.spur.org.

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4 Urbanist > June/July 2009 IN-KIND SPONSORS BPS Reprographics • EDAW | AECOM • Hornblower Cruises & Events

4 Urbanist > June/July 2009 Urbanist > June/July 2009 5 The City Builders A city built and controlled by private enterprise

San Francisco was a village of 500 people in 1848, just wrested from Mexico and renamed, when news of the gold found at Sutter’s Mill reached the East Coast. By 1855, the population had reached 50,000. Nineteenth-century San Francisco went from a rough-and-tumble boomtown to a Victorian city with cosmopolitan ambitions. Its familiar contours emerged as the arid peninsula’s hills were gridded, and its bayshore filled with sand, blasted hilltops and hastily abandoned ships. It matched astounding diversity and relative tolerance with gross inequality and greed, giving rise to an active labor movement marred by spasms of nativist race-baiting and violence. It was a city built and controlled by private enterprise, and basic services like transit, water and 1. The Grid Meets Plan introduced Market Street, the Hills parallel to the Mission Road recreation were speculative ventures tied to the city’s and a second, larger grid to the The grid that would shape San rapid growth. City government was corrupt and south, creating the inconvenient Francisco’s growth was estab- but distinctive intersections that weak, and party bosses doled out patronage in the lished by Jean-Jacques Vioget’s define it today. Most impor- form of monopoly franchises for essential services. 1839 survey, commissioned tantly, it established the practice, by Alcalde Francisco DeHaro Private streetcar lines were extended into the dunes, carried forward in the 1851 to regularize land grants in the opening adjacent land for rapid development, while new pueblo of Yerba Buena. In Eddy Survey and subsequent the Spring Valley Water Company snapped up keeping with common practice, additions, of extending the grid without regard to the peninsula’s watersheds all the way to Livermore. he established a crude grid of 12 blocks around a central plaza, dramatic topography. San Francisco’s development was driven by a today’s Portsmouth Square. The grid was remarkably small group of oligarchs who ploughed fortunes The blocks, which measured efficient for both circulation made in mining, timber and railroads into a new 100x150 varas (273x409.5 feet) and subdivision, well-suited to not only established the street absorbing hordes of new arrivals speculative venture: an urban economy based grid, but also the parcelization and to the American view of on manufacturing, finance, trade and urban (into square lots of 50 and 100 land as a salable commod- development. These miners, industrialists, financiers varas) that would define building ity, in contrast to the Spanish land-grant model. The grid and real estate speculators set out to forge a world- sites and local architecture. Under American control, did have its critics, however, class metropolis in a single generation, enriching the village was renamed San including O’Farrell himself, who themselves in the process. They built the city that Francisco, and in 1847 Jasper proposed accommodations to would collapse and burn in 1906: an exuberant O’Farrell, an Irish engineer, was the topography and was shouted engaged by mayor Bartlett to down. Frederick Law Olmsted and frankly ambitious Victorian jumble that was extend Vioget’s grid and rectify and Daniel Burnham would monument to its own explosive growth. its inaccuracies. The O’Farrell both propose in vain that streets

6 Urbanist > June/July 2009 “It made but very little difference that while the steepest would be replaced by stairs, and hilltop some of the streets which he had laid out parks would be encouraged. In followed the lines of a dromedary’s back, 1869, Rincon Hill, then the city’s most fashionable address, was or that others described semi-circles some bisected by the Second Street Cut, intended to facilitate access up, some down… up a grade which a goat to the South Beach wharves. could not travel.” —M.G. Upton (Journalist) At least one house fell into the sandy, unstable 87-foot chasm, should follow the contours of the the process of filling them gave and the neighborhood quickly hills. The grid’s hold would be the city’s waterfront its current declined. Many of its residents broken only in the 20th century, contours. moved to Nob Hill and Russian by romantic residential parks and In 1847 and 1853, 450 Hill, easily climbed by brand- new cable cars. Modernist superblocks. “tidelands lots,” between Rincon William Chapman Point and Clark’s Point were 2. Shaping the auctioned off, raising significant Ralston revenue for the new city. As the Perhaps more than any 3. The Industrial Land: Filling the spaces between the wharves other single figure, William Oligarchy Bay and Cutting were filled with sand and debris, “Billy” Ralston, embodied the Over four decades, a small the Hills numerous ships—abandoned by ambitions and risks of Victorian group of capitalists ploughed San Francisco’s distinctive eager 49ers—were buried. North San Francisco. Confident, fortunes made in mining and natural features made it a dif- Beach and Mission Bay were brazen and enthusiastic to a railroads into a new specula- ficult place to build. Sand dunes gradually filled over the ensuing fault, he made a fortune in the tive venture: the building of extended from the ocean all the decades. Comstock Lode through his San Francisco and a new way into what is now downtown, The city’s hills presented an Bank of California, founded economy based on manufactur- with Darius Ogden Mills. while steep hills limited both even greater challenge as the ing, finance, trade and urban He invested in factories, construction and movement. grid was draped over them, development. They built and ran agriculture, telegraph lines and Although the waterfront is among producing streets impassable private streetcar networks that shipping while his battles over the world’s best natural harbors, to horse-drawn wagons. In opened their landholdings to control of the silver mines roiled the Bay’s natural edge included the 1850s, a maximum street development. They invested in local stock markets. Eager to broad swaths of beach, mudflat grade of 12 percent was briefly Potrero Point factories and the fashion a world capital in San and wetlands separating the established, but when hills Spring Valley Water Company. Francisco, he spent lavishly water from buildable land. These began to be leveled, public They shaped the political land- on a huge range of projects, tidelands—now understood to outcry produced a more modest scape by publishing newspapers including his own headquarters serve vital ecological functions— solution: a few streets would like the Call or the Chronicle, as well as hotels and a theater. were considered wastelands and be graded to ensure access, bribing officials, or running for His grandest venture — the $5 office themselves. They built an million Palace Hotel — would exclusive social world around prove his undoing. As his debts their Nob Hill mansions, Belmont mounted, compounded by Estates and the Pacific Union the Panic of 1873, he made Club. a risky play to buy the Spring The free-for-all of Victorian Valley Water Company and sell capitalism favored individu- it to the city at a huge profit. als who could gain control of When the scheme evaporated many different elements of the in 1875, he was left in deep economy, and a few had stag- trouble, which his colleague gering reach. They included the William Sharon exploited by so-called “Big Four”—Leland engineering a run by depositors Stanford, Collis Huntington, Mark on the Bank of California. Hopkins and Charles Crocker, Ruined, Ralston left for his daily swim in the bay, and washed who built the Central Pacific up dead some hours later, while Transcontinental Railroad, later Sharon emerged with most of consolidated into the Southern his assets. Pacific, which controlled street- car and steamship lines.

Urbanist > June/July 2009 7 th e cITy builders There were California millionaires who had grown rich merely by lucky speculation. They displayed their wealth with a vulgar and unbecoming ostentation. They did not, as rich men nearly always do in the Atlantic States, bestow a large part of it on useful public objects. There was therefore nothing to break the wave of suspicious dislike. –Viscount Bryce, 1889 4. The Speculative consolidated these into a near- Metropolis: Transit, monopoly, the Market Street Railway, in 1893, which was Water and Land eventually purchased in 1902 by Streetcars and the United Railroads. The graft Growth and labor unrest associated with In San Francisco as else- these companies would drive the where, urban development was municipalization of transit in the driven by mass transit, which in Progressive Era. the 19th century was provided entirely by private companies, which profited from operating streetcars, from the recreational destinations they often served, and, above all, from the develop- ment of new neighborhoods on While hardly a monolithic Francisco as its economy shifted land “opened” by transit access. block—many had competing from the Comstock mines to the By 1851, a private omnibus interests and some were sworn Pacific Rim. coach line connected downtown enemies—they were a remark- The Pacific Rolling Mills and wharves to the Mission via a The Spring Valley ably small and insular group, Union Iron Works created a plank road (now Mission Street) Water Company and shared the sensibility of state-of-the-art shipbuilding and others soon followed. In ambitious frontiersmen who built facility, alongside Donahue’s As soon as San Francisco 1860, the first horse-drawn their fortunes and their city on gasworks (the basis of PG&E) began to grow, water became railcar line opened into the ruthless opportunism. and Claus Spreckels’ massive a problem. The handful of creeks property of Thomas Hayes (now sugar refinery. San Francisco’s within city limits were entirely the inner Mission and Hayes Potrero Point future lay in Pacific trade and inadequate to serve a large city. Valley) setting off a flurry of new Founded in 1858 by George By the 1860s, industrial conquest, and Potrero Point built rail development throughout the Ensign, and granted the authority enterprises moved from North the sugar ships and gunboats city by the 1870s. New tracts of to condemn lands for a water Beach and SOMA, blasting that drove U.S. expansion into residential development quickly system, the Spring Valley Water away the steep serpentine of Hawaii and the Philippines. followed. The hills remained ex- Company quickly became a Potrero Point, and using the fill In the 20th Century, Union clusive enclaves, out of reach to powerful and hated monopoly, to create the flat, buildable land Iron Works was purchased by transit until 1873, when Andrew whose shareholders would along its deep-water bayshore. Bethlehem Steel, producing Hallidie, a Scottish mining include financiers like William Large-scale manufacturing at numerous ships through both engineer, invented the cable car. Ralston, William Sharon, Potrero Point (now Pier 70) world wars and BART’s transbay In short order, even the steepest Lloyd Tevis and William Bourn. employed thousands, becom- tube in the 1960s. hills became passable, creating a The Company played a key ing the industrial engine of San boom in view lots. role in the conversion of the The boom in streetcars and dunescape of the Outside land development drew the Lands into Golden Gate Park, interest of San Francisco’s for which it was obliged to powerful oligarchs, flush from provide free water. Under the Comstock mines and the Hermann Schussler, a hydraulic transcontinental railroad. In the engineer who had made his 1880s Southern Pacific, led by name in the Sierra mines, the Leland Stanford, began acquir- Spring Valley Water Company ing streetcar companies. SP gradually acquired more than

8 Urbanist > June/July 2009 100,000 acres of watershed, The Chinese first in San Mateo County (where Experience the Crystal Springs and San Chinese immigrants first came Andreas Reservoirs remain) and to California in the 1850s to later into the South Bay and work in mining and later railroad Livermore Valley, from which construction. With the comple- water was delivered to the city tion of the Transcontinental by aqueduct. Repeated attempts Railroad in 1869, increasing to municipalize the company numbers of Chinese sought faltered over the price until work in San Francisco, and the 1930. population of Chinatown swelled The city’s rapid growth to more 30,000, at very high required a larger and more densities of 2-300 people per consistent source of water: the acre. It was a city apart, with Hetch Hetchy system, financed its own language, customs and by public bonds. informal government—the “Six Companies” of the Chinese Golden Gate Park Consolidated Benevolent Society. Golden Gate Park was one of the few grand civic gestures of 19th Ninety percent of the population Century San Francisco. New York City’s Central Park, designed in was male, and prostitution, gam- 1857 by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, had recently set bling and opium parlors served the template for the large urban park as romantic landscape. When both locals and visitors. Olmsted visited Berkeley in 1865, San Francisco hired him to make In 1882, the U.S. Congress recommendations for a major open space, the lack of which many passed the Chinese Exclusion boosters saw as a major deficit. Act, severely restricting Chinese But rather than replicate Central Park, Olmsted suggested an immigration, and Chinatown’s Immigration and approach rooted in the challenging local climate: a series of smaller population began to shrink. With parks from what is now Aquatic Park to Duboce Park, connected by Labor: Chinese excluded from most of a sunken promenade that offering shelter from the prevailing winds. The Eight-Hour Day the city, Chinatown remained Olmsted’s plan was rejected in favor of 1,013 acres of dunes in the Workers in San Francisco extremely dense. Public health Outside Lands, where the city had just won title after a struggle began organizing in the early concerns—some spurious and with the federal government. Working from 1850s, and the city has been racist—drove repeated efforts to East to West, Hall devised a brilliant process strongly associated with union displace the Chinese. In 1886, of ecological succession, using barley and labor ever since. Its relative laundry owner Yick Wo chal- lupine to stabilize the dunes, after which isolation favored workers, who lenged a law aimed at banning generous infusions of manure, topsoil, campaigned successfully for an Chinese laundries on equal and water (provided under duress by the eight-hour workday in the protection grounds and won, Spring Valley Water Company) yielded some 1860s. Eight Hour Leagues setting an important precedent semblance of the pastoral English landscape spread the practice through on racialized zoning. the citizens craved. the trades, and won a statewide eight-hour workday in 1868. The victory, celebrated in factories at low wages, At the turn of the century, spectacular parades, would and became the victims of labor was again at the center prove brief, however. The com- racist scapegoating by labor of San Francisco politics, as pletion of the Transcontinental demagogues like Dennis Kearny, Mayor Phelan cracked down on Railroad the following year who led the Workingmen’s striking dockworkers in 1901, brought a flood of workers just Party after 1877 with the slogan propelling Abe Ruef and the as the economy was sagging, “The Chinese Must Go!”. Union Labor Party into power. and the eight-hour law fell by Angry mobs attacked Chinese Angry strikes against the United the wayside. businesses and speakers r Railroads streetcar company Many of those workers were ailed against the capitalists, continued, building momentum Chinese railroad laborers, who especially the Central Pacific, for a Municipal Railroad and a ended up in San Francisco who hired them. Progressive resurgence.

Urbanist > June/July 2009 9 The Progressives and Classicists Reforming government and reimagining the city

The turn of the 20th century saw a series of 1. Civic Reform Its social reformers took on reform movements in reaction to the greed and The Progressives’ poverty and social ills from a Bumpy Rise: position of privilege, and strove corruption of 19th century San Francisco. The Phelan, Ruef, and to “better” the poor through bald graft and bare-knuckled politics of the the Graft Trials assimilation. Government reform efforts were often geared toward Victorian city were abhorrent to the generation The first decade of the improving the business climate new century saw a protracted that followed, who found the accompanying and breaking the hold of corrupt political struggle between the political machines on City Hall. social ills and labor strife both threatening and Progressives and the new Union morally offensive. Its relationship with organized labor teetered from coalition- They responded with campaigns to clean up building to schism to and back and professionalize city government, municipalize again. There is little doubt, public services, and tackle poverty, disease and however, that they put forward a new vision of how cities other social problems. Social reformers targeted should operate: competently, conditions in poor communities through settlement transparently and in the service houses and public health campaigns. Many were of stability and prosperity. educated, idealistic children of the Gilded Age, After the earthquake, Phelan and his allies initiated trials of challenging political machines rooted in immigrant Ruef and Schmitz on charges of and labor groups, and they precipitated a protracted graft, inducing many members political struggle with overtones of culture and of the machine to testify. Both were convicted (though Schmitz class. But city government’s new transparency was acquitted on appeal) and Labor Party, created by Boss Abe Ruef spent time at San Quentin. and new capacity to deliver basic services, from Ruef, who put forward musician Although the era of open graft the Municipal Railroad to the Hetch Hetchy water Eugene Schmitz to run for mayor, was over, it would take the after Phelan alienated organized system, ultimately served all segments of society Progressive until 1912 to take labor by cracking down on better and came to define expectations. back City Hall. striking streetcar operators. Ruef Others had aesthetic ambitions, and put was a notoriously corrupt political forward grand schemes to remake San Francisco’s boss, whose machine continued The City Charter of businesslike jumble as a splendid Beaux Arts the kind of graft-based politics of 1898 returned home rule to the last century. San Francisco after four decades capital worthy of the European models they Progressivism was a complex beholden to the State Legislature. idealized. Daniel Burnham’s bold 1906 plan and contradictory movement. It reorganized city government neatly coincided with the tragic earthquake and fire. Though the Burnham Plan was sidelined in “Make no little plans; they have no magic the rush to rebuild, elements of the City Beautiful to stir men’s blood and probably will appeared at U.C. Berkeley, the Civic Center, and themselves not be realized. Make big plans; the Panama Pacific International Exhibition. aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die.” —Daniel Burnham

10 Urbanist > June/July 2009 rebuilding won out over civic New Institutions: City Agencies, Philanthropic beautification and the expense Foundations and Corporations and delay entailed in assembling Many arenas of public life were institutionalized and structured private property for new streets to shift power away from individuals and toward independent and parks. Many simply began bodies. The commissions and civil-service agencies of City rebuilding immediately, and the government were designed in the period to separate technical Burnham Plan quickly faded. professionals from political pressures. Attempts were made to Similar arrangements changed the nature of business, as both relocate Chinatown to Hunter’s government and internal pressure produced a shift away from Point and “reclaim” the area for the massive trusts and family empires of the Gilded Age, and white business. The Chinese toward corporate governance that divided power among managers, community was quick to The San Francisco boards, labor and public shareholders. respond, finding common cause Housing Association and Philanthropy was also institutionalized in this period, as the with white landlords who thrived the roots of SPUR families of 19th-Century capitalists—Haas, Goldman, Fleisshacker, on the neighborhood’s density. In the aftermath of the Stanford and others—created the foundations with boards, They called on the Chinese earthquake, a rash of bylaws and endowments, that would underwrite the Bay Area’s Embassy, who threatened unregulated building was nonprofit arts, social service and conservation movements over Governor Pardee with a trade producing substandard the coming century. embargo, and they enlisted tenement housing. In 1910, (mostly white) architects to Alice Griffith, who had founded along the civil-service and 2. The Earthquake develop the “oriental” vocabulary San Francisco’s first Settlement commission model designed and Its Aftermath of upturned eaves, upper-story House, the Telegraph Hill to reduce political corruption On April 18th, 1906, loggias, and pagoda-inspired Dwellers’ Association, and and increase competence and the political tug-of-war was turrets that would appeal to Langley Porter, a physician, transparency. It also called for interrupted, if only briefly, visitors and tourists. created the San Francisco the municipalization of public by the earthquake and fire services like water and transit. that obliterated much of Under the new Charter, San San Francisco. Twenty-eight Francisco rapidly recovered thousand buildings were from the earthquake, and destroyed and more than 3,000 built Muni, the Hetch Hetchy people killed, while a quarter water system, Civic Center million people were rendered and the Panama-Pacific homeless. International Exposition. In In the aftermath, Burnham contrast, the previous City Hall rushed to San Francisco, took 20 years to build, and convinced that a golden became a symbol of shoddy opportunity was at hand to construction and graft before implement his plan. Although collapsing in 1906. it was considered, expeditious

James Duvall Phelan Few figures embody the Progressive Movement in San Francisco— to “promote in every practical way the beau- and its contradictions—as completely as James Duvall Phelan. tifying of the streets, public buildings, parks, A prosperous and scholarly Irish Immigrant, he had the support squares, and places of SF” Most importantly, of both labor and the wealthy when he was elected mayor in this meant engaging Daniel Burnham to 1896, but could also be elitist and racist. He was passionate develop a long-term plan for the city, which about both reforming city government and civic beautification, was delivered just before the earthquake. which he viewed as essential to SFs fulfilling its promise as the Phelan also served on the Committee of Fifty Paris of the West. that led reconstruction efforts and instigated He led the effort that resulted in the City Charter of 1900, but the investigations that led to the graft trials of lost to Eugene Schmitz in 1902 after alienating striking work- Schmitz and Abe Ruef. He went on to state politics without seeing ers with a police crackdown. In 1904, he founded and led the his grandest plans realized, but his idealism and civic vision were Association for the Improvement and Adornment of San Francisco, profoundly influential.

Urbanist > June/July 2009 11 Prge o r ssives and Classicists

Housing Association to educate 3. Progressive 4. The Aesthetic the public about the need for Public Works Impulse: City housing regulations and to lobby The Municipal Beautiful and the Sacramento for anti-tenement Railroad legislation. The result, following Beaux Arts By 1902, San Francisco’s a hard-hitting report by the While some pursued political competing streetcar companies Association, was the State and social reforms, other saw had consolidated into a near- Tenement House Act of 1911, civic beautification as the key monopoly, the United Railroads, which created basic standards to a better city. Many San widely hated for its corruption for health and safety in housing Francisco elites were well and anti-labor policies,. The construction. traveled, and looked to Europe— City Charter of 1900 called for Michael O’Shaughnessy and the neoclassical order of The SFHA continued to municipalized services, and a Michael O’Shaughnessy, the beaux-arts style—for an advocate for housing reform public railroad took priority. who served as the City antidote to the city’s decorative through the 1930s, becoming In 1912 the City acquired the Engineer under Mayor Rolph, jumble. The hugely successful the San Francisco Planning and Geary cable lines, whose private embodied the Progressives’ 1893 World’s Columbian Housing Association in 1941, charter had expired. Newly- ambitions for a technocratic Exposition at Chicago, designed and the San Francisco Housing elected Mayor “Sunny” Jim civil service, free from political by Daniel Burnham, exposed and Urban Renewal Association Rolph opened the system, and and speculative influence. Born many Americans to the monu- in 1959. The SFHA’s model its rapid expansion was a popular in Ireland, he had established a mental formalism of the City of citizen-driven research and centerpiece of his 19 years in successful engineering practice, Beautiful, and to the potential advocacy continues to inform office. In 1914, Muni added an which he left in 1912, taking impact of a World’s Fair. The SPUR’s work today. SPUR’s additional pair of streetcar tracks half his former pay. With the 1894 Midwinter Exposition good government program area, to Market Street, challenging help of the new City Charter, in Golden Gate park actually including fiscal reporting reform, United Railroads. he oversaw a massive public repurposed some of its buildings, the creation of the Mayor’s Fiscal Muni became an enormous works campaign, funded by in addition to constructing Advisory Committee, Charter source of pride, developing bonds, taxes and assessments, the DeYoung Museum and reform in 1994 and its highly- new lines to serve the 1915 that was intended both to Japanese Tea Garden. regarded ballot analysis, as well Panama-Pacific International provide efficient public services as its research reports on the Expositionand, in 1917, and to shape the development full range of city issues, can be constructing the twin peaks of the city. traced directly to Progressive-era tunnel that opened the city’s He dramatically expanded reformers like the SFHA. west side to development. the nascent Muni system, quickly providing new lines to serve the Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915, followed by the J, K, L and M lines that are still in operation. He oversaw con- struction of the Stockton and Twin Peaks tunnels, the latter a 10,000 –foot technical marvel that enabled the development of the southwestern part of the city. His most dramatic The aesthetic ambitions of this achievement, however, was generation were personified the construction of the city’s by Phoebe Apperson Hearst, municipal water system, which who was inspired by her travels brought Sierra water to the city through a 167-mile system of in Europe and exasperated dams, pipelines and aque- with the provincial aesthetics ducts from the Hetch Hetchy of San Francisco. In 1896, Valley. He died days before its she launched an architectural completion. competition for the U.C. Berkeley campus, which she advertised in

12 Urbanist > June/July 2009 “San Francisco is more fascinating than beautiful, a site of flagrantly missed opportunities.” —Willis Polk, A. Page Brown and Bernard Maybeck 5. Residential Parks and Garden Suburbs San Francisco’s grid had been criticized from the beginning as relentless and unresponsive to the city’s topography, but had nevertheless been extended for reasons of commercial and technical expediency. By the turn of the century, the fashion in residential neighborhoods had turned to romantic, curvilinear street plans that followed the contours of the land. Several East Bay and The 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition Peninsula districts had been A World’s Fair had been proposed for San Francisco well before the earthquake, and the idea returned built along these lines, and the as a way to celebrate the city’s rapid reconstruction as well as the opening of the Panama Canal, which Burnham Plan proposed this promised to cement San Francisco’s emerging position as an imperial capital on the Pacific Rim. approach for San Francisco After some wrangling, 635 acres of Harbor View (now the Marina) and the Presidio were selected, and hilltops. Edward Bennett, who had been Burnham’s assistant, supervised the design. The centerpiece was the The grid was finally broken Tower of Jewels, which soared over a series of garden courts framed by ornate but temporary exposition in the southwest part of the buildings, washed at night by elaborate electrical lighting. The only piece that remains today is Bernard city, with the development of Maybeck’s Palace of Fine Arts, rebuilt in the 1960s. The new Muni lines hat were rushed into service, several so-called “residential and the new Civic Center, built that same year, amplified the San Francisco’s pride at this defining event. parks”, including St. Francis Wood, Forest Hills and Ingleside European circles. Emile Benard’s The Civic Center Terrace. Designed for affluent winning scheme emphasized The new Civic Center, streetcar commuters, these formal axes and quadrangles, constructed between 1913 single-use tracts of Beaux Arts framed by ensembles of and 1915, is one of the most and craftsman houses classically inspired buildings. The complete expressions of the City flourished after the opening plan would be carried forward by Beautiful (and the only major Twin Peaks tunnel opened in John Galen Howard, and typifies piece of Burnham’s Plan) built 1918. the aesthetic ideals if the period. in San Francisco. Bakewell

“Sunny Jim” Rolph Although Phelan was the high-minded purist behind the Progressive ascendancy, it was James Rolph who implemented many of its and Brown’s City Hall dome successful programs. A likeable man and terminates the formal axis that a savvy politician, he was equally at home runs from Market Street, and drinking with working men, launching public the surrounding ensemble of works, and schmoozing with the business neoclassical civic buildings elite. He was mayor from 1912 to 1931 and (including the Civic Auditorium, presided over the creation of Muni, the PPIE, Civic Center, and built to house conventions during the construction of much of the Hetch Hetchy water system. the PPIE) embody a symmetrical frame to the park.

Urbanist > June/July 2009 13 The Regionalists Grappling with growth in the Bay Area

In the 1940s and 50s, planners, citizens and 1. Early Efforts on consolidation was roundly business leaders began to view the metropolitan The Greater San defeated. Projects of regional Francisco Movement concern would henceforth need region as a critical scale for both planning and Efforts at regional consolida- to be undertaken by voluntary conservation. Wartime industry and postwar tion have a long history here. As single-purpose metropolitan suburbanization, abetted by bridges and early as 1907, the San Francisco districts. The idea of regional plan- highways, drove regional expansion and created Chamber of Commerce cre- ated the Greater San Francisco ning emerged in earnest regional problems, like traffic, smog and the loss Association, which aimed to in the 1920s, when the of agricultural land. replicate New York City’s recent Commonwealth Club, inspired by efforts in New York and Los The nine counties that touch the Bay have 101 annexation of Brooklyn. Among other motivations, expanded Angeles, launched what would municipalities, each with local land use authority, bonding power would make become the San Francisco and often in competition with one another. Many the critical Hetch Hetchy water Regional Plan Assocation. Led system feasible. But Oakland, by earnest, patrician Frederick important dynamics operate across arbitrary Dohrmann, Jr, the SFRPA municipal boundaries: job and housing markets, flush with earthquake refugees and new industrial development, presciently identified the emerg- travel behavior, air quality, recreational amenities, was having none of it (the name ing region’s critical needs, from habitats, watersheds and ecological processes, even least of all). The East Bay was transit to bridges, airports and open space, but was ahead of identity and culture. the terminus of inland rail routes, had mild weather and room its time and failed to resonate Planning intellectuals began focusing on to grow, and wasn’t about to broadly. regionalism in the 1920s, hoping to manage growth become a vassal of its charred, 2. A Region and preserve the relationship of city and country. frigid neighbor to the West. A 1912 state ballot initiative Emerges: Citizen advocates, galvanized by Streetcars, Ferries, rapid bay fill and the loss of open and Bridges space, organized conservation efforts By the turn of the 20th cen- that spawned the Bay Conservation tury, the Bay Area was beginning and Development Commission and to function as an interdependent region. Wealthy San Franciscans the Golden Gate National Recreation had long held country estates Area. Planning for BART began in on the Peninsula, where upscale 1951 and came to fruition in the suburbs grew around the Southern Pacific rail line (now early 1970s. Caltrain). Rail lines were comple- But in spite a looming climate mented by state highways, many crisis, repeated efforts to based on bicycling routes, after manage regional growth and its a 1909 bond measure. These became the basis of many major consequences have fallen short arterial roads once supplanted by of a workable framework, and mid-century freeways. regional planning is conducted The East Bay took shape around the Oakland terminus of by a patchwork of single-purpose the Transcontinental Railroad, agencies. the University of California in

14 Urbanist > June/July 2009 cities and their agricultural and ecological hinterlands, and sought mechanisms to realize it. These ideas influenced, at least on paper, New Deal programs like the National Resources Planning Council and the Tennessee Valley Authority, as well as Telesis, the influential Bay Area planning group. Telesis, concerned that the livability of the Bay Area was being eroded by sprawl, sponsored exhibitions in 1940 (Space for Living) and 1950 (The Next Million People) promoting comprehensive “envi- ronmental design” to rationalize Berkeley and industrial develop- Depression. In 1939, the Golden 3. The Idea of Bay Area development. ment in Richmond. But two Gate International Exposition Regional Planning During World War II, efforts factors led to a major develop- was held on newly-constructed to organize wartime industrial The idea of regional planning ment boom: streetcar transit and Treasure Island, celebrating location, housing and transporta- had been emerging in intellectual the thousands of earthquake the region’s integration at its tion led to quasi-governmental and policy circles for decades. planning entities. After the war, symbolic heart. The British regionalism of Patrick many of these major industrial The Bay Bridge more than Geddes and Ebenezer Howard employers formed the Bay Area doubled the transbay commute, found American advocates such Council, to advocate for regional and though it brought Key as Lewis Mumford, co-founder of industrial development and System streetcars directly into the Regional Plan Association of infrastructure, including BART. the newly constructed Transbay America. Responding to the ex- Terminal, the tracks were plosive growth of industrial cities, refugees who arrived in 1906. removed in 1958 in an attempt they imagined a healthy, mutu- Francis “Borax” Smith used his to move more vehicles over the ally supportive (and sometimes mining fortune to acquired large congested span. idealized) relationship between tracts of land in the East Bay, where his “Realty Syndicate” developed housing and street- Jack Kent cars in tandem, as well as the Jack Kent was among the most influential Bay Claremont Hotel and Key Route Area city planners, and was connected with Inn. The Key System, as the nearly every facet of Bay Area regionalism. While streetcars became known, deliv- studying architecture at U.C. Berkeley in the ered commuters to a ferry pier 1930s, he was inspired by Lewis Mumford’s in Emeryville for the quick trip to ideas on regionalism, which resonated with what the San Francisco Ferry Building. he saw in the Bay Area. Traveling in Europe, By the mid-1920s, commuters he encountered both modern architecture and on the Key System and other regionalism, visiting Ebenezer Howard’s garden lines were making 35 million 4. A Giant Leap for city at Wellwyn. Back in the Bay Area, he worked at the National transbay ferry trips per year. the Region: BART Resources Planning board, a New Deal agency that espoused re- As impressive as the gional planning. He was a member of Telesis, where he collaborated Rapid postwar suburbaniza- ferry commute was, it was the with the SFPHA (now SPUR) to promote planning in San Francisco, tion produced traffic congestion, bridges that finally made the where, at age 29, he served as the second planning director. smog, and the threat of declining Bay Area a single, integrated Kent also served on the Planning Director’s Committee, which center cities. Civic and business region. Imagined and studied advised the newly-formed Bay Area Council on regional planning groups like the Bay Area Council for decades, The Bay Bridge matters, including the need for regional transit. In 1948, he was and SPUR (then SFPHA) began (1936) and Golden Gate Bridge invited to create U.C. Berkeley’s Department of City and Regional advocating regional transit both (1937) were engineering marvels Planning, where he published the classic text, “The Urban General to organize regional growth and sources of immense pride, Plan” in 1964. and to reinforce the emerging completed at the height of the service-based economies of San

Urbanist > June/July 2009 15 th e regIOnalists

spurred the Bay conservation pressure, and SPUR had been movement. involved in struggles to preserve The successful preservation of Fort Mason, Alcatraz and the the Bay can be largely attributed Presidio, despite these areas to three remarkable Berkeley having been identified for even- women: Kay Kerr, Esther Gulick tual park use. and Sylvia McLaughlin, who Amy Meyer, an east coast became aware of the Bay fill transplant living in the outer issue when Berkeley was plan- sunset became involved in open ning a major expansion into the space conservation when, at a water. They organized Save San SPUR neighborhood-services Francisco Bay, launching a formi- meeting, she became aware of dable grassroots campaign that a National Archives warehouse reached thousands and drawing proposed for East Fort Miley, on their political connections (all three were married to powerful Francisco and Oakland. In 1951, 5. Saving the Bay U.C. academics and administra- the State Legislature created a From 1959 to 1961 Citizens tors) to reach and enlist State study commission on regional for Regional Recreation and Senator Eugene MacAteer. In transit, finding that,“If the Bay Parks, just founded (along with 1964, MacAteer tapped SPUR Area is to be preserved as a fine SPUR) by Dorothy Erskine, Deputy Director Joe Bodovitz place to live and work, a regional sponsored annual conferences to head a study commission rapid transit system is essential through the U.C. Extension on on the issue. The result was to prevent total dependence on the state and potential of the the 1965 MacAteer Petris Act, automobiles and freeways…” San Francisco Bay for recreation. which placed a moratorium on It also stated that any transit In conducting related research, Bay fill and created the Bay system needed to be coordinated Berkeley planning professor Mel Conservation and Development with a total plan for the region’s Scott determined that about one- Commission, with Bodovitz as near Land’s End. She quickly development, but lacked any third of the Bay’s 736 square its director. connected with the Sierra Club provisions for regional land use miles had already been filled, and SPUR, and formed People controls. The five-county Bay and an Army Corps of Engineers 6. Regional for a Golden Gate national Area Rapid Transit District was Study showed that much of the Recreation Area. Amy and created in 1957, and empowered remainder might be filled before Open Space PFGGNRA launched a cam- to raise funds through tolls and long. The Army Corps maps Conservation paign, hosted and mentored by taxes. In 1962, San Mateo became the basis of the iconic The Golden Gate County supervisors pulled out of “Bay or River?” graphic that National Recreation the plan. Marin County, unable Area: A Citizen to bear an increased share of Triumph costs, followed suit. Voters The Golden National approved a revised three-county Recreation Area, 75,000 acres plan by a hair’s breadth in 1962. of stunning headlands and coast Construction began in 1964, range wildlands, is one of the and costs ballooned from $996 nation’s great urban conservation million to $1.6 billion by the time areas, protecting some of the the system was complete. But region’s defining elements. But the 71.5 mile system, serving although our regional greenbelt 33 stations in 17 cities, was the is at the core of the Bay Area’s first major U.S. transit system identity, its conservation was constructed after World War II. the result of a concerted—and The spacious, carpeted cars and recent—citizen campaign. As futuristic trains and stations were geopolitics made local defenses intended to lure transit-wary obsolete, local military lands Californians out of their cars. came under development

16 Urbanist > June/July 2009 “I prefer to think of the waters of the San Francisco Bay as uniting the various communities rather than dividing them, and on that account I consider that their common problems demand a common solution.” — Fred Dohrmann, Jr. (President of the Regional Plan Association)

SPUR, that drew in more than 65 organizations and hundreds Conservation of volunteers, with the goal of Organizations founded establishing federal protection for in the Bay Area 4,000 acres of the most threat- > Trust for Public Land ened land. In two short years, a > Friends of the Earth flurry of organizing, letter-writing, > The Sierra Club and advertising created enough > Earth Island Institute momentum to earn the backing > People for Open Space/ of elected officials like Senator Greenbelt Alliance Phil Burton, and even President > Transportation And Land Use Nixon, whose campaign photo- Coalition/TransAct op on a San Francisco pier led to > Natural Resources Defense space and transportation at the Meanwhile, the region has a Senate hearing for the GGNRA Council regional scale. The Association expanded well beyond the proposal, by then encompass- > Urban Habitat of Bay Area Governments was Bay Area’s nine counties and ing 34,000 acres as far as the > Goldman Environmental Prize/ created in1961 as a voluntary into the Central Valley, further Olema Valley. In October of Goldman Fund council of governments charged complicating attempts to fashion 1972, the GGNRA became law, with regional planning. Although a regional planning framework. and has since grown to 75,000 7. Regional it produced an influential Regional Between 1980 and 2000, the acres—part of a 175,000 acre Planning and Plan in 1970, with ambitious number of commuters from 12 greenbelt of protected land at conservation goals and a focus on neighboring counties into the San Francisco’s doorstep. Governance: A Bumpy Ride concentrating growth in existing Bay Area nine-county core nearly cores, it lacks the authority to quadrupled. Region-wide, new In spite of the longstanding regulate land use, and the plan commutes are overwhelmingly recognition of regional problems, remains a path not taken. The by auto, far outweighing the there is no public agency em- Metropolitan Transportation growth in transit ridership. powered to conduct regional planning in the Bay Area. On Commission, created by the The emergence of global at least 11 separate occasions, State Legislature in 1968, is the climate change as major policy attempts to create some form region’s Congestion Management focus has renewed efforts to of limited-purpose regional Agency, is charged with address regional growth patterns, government have failed. Local apportioning Federal and State which remain uncoordinated and interests are loathe to cede any Transportation funds, but not overwhelmingly auto-dependent. authority to a broader agency, a land use planning. In 1971, a bill The State’s new climate change position that finds legal backing to combine the two into a single and anti-sprawl legislation (AB in the State Constitution’s “home agency failed by one vote. In the 32 and SB 375 respectively) rule” doctrine. late 1980s, a renewed effort, create new regional requirements Successful campaigns by Bay Vision 20/20, conducted and planning tools. Among citizens, political leaders, civic an extensive effort to build a other things, SB 375 links and business organizations have regional planning framework, transportation dollars to regional resulted in single-purpose agencies but the resulting legislation failed land use planning. Its impact dealing with air, water, open in 1992. remains to be seen.

Urbanist > June/July 2009 17 The Moderns Destroying the city in order to save it

By the end of World service of social improvement. Housing was a particularly press- War II, American cities, ing need, and young advocates including San Francisco, like Catherine Bauer and Dorothy were suffering. Fifteen Erskine began connecting dispa- years of Depression rate strands to create a distinctly modern approach to urban hous- and war left a serious ing. They took in Progressive Era housing shortage and tenement reform, social science overcrowded, dilapidated research and innovative social housing experiments by modern conditions in many areas. architects in Europe, and forged Automobiles brought the policies that would shape 1. Housers and the traffic, pollution and accidents to city streets, postwar American cities. New Deal These “housers,” including and the booming suburbs drew families, jobs and The reforms of the Progressive the San Francisco Housing investment out of central cities. Era helped create a sense Association, were especially But the experts, or so it seemed, could meet any that social problems could outraged by industrial slums, in challenge. Planners, including the Telesis group be addressed through regula- which poor renters were exploit- tion, public action and citizen ed economically and subjected and the San Francisco Planning and Housing advocacy, backed up by rigorous to overcrowding, disease and Association (later SPUR) had been imagining a research in the social sciences. pollution. “Slum clearance”— modern, rationalized Bay Area since the late 1930s. It was against this backdrop that the total demolition of ‘blighted’ the Great Depression hit, and districts seemed to be the only Driven by socially and environmentally progressive Roosevelt’s New Deal turned solution, and became a progres- impulses, they saw bold planning as the imperative expertise and idealism to the sive byword. that could save the city. Housing advocates won federal support for public housing, early examples of Catherine Bauer which were innovative, livable and well-made. They Catherine Bauer Wurster was among the most passionate and influential advocates looked to modern architecture and social housing of social housing in the United States. While in Europe, and imagined clearing away the decrepit traveling, she was exposed to European tenements of the industrial city to create a new city Modernist experiments with progressive housing and became increasingly convinced of light, air and open space. of the potential of good design and planning But the approach—wholesale demolition and re- to address human problems. In New York, he had a romantic and development—produced one of the most traumatic intellectual relationship with critic Lewis Mumford, and in 1934, she published Modern Housing, a classic text on progressive and divisive chapters in San Francisco’s history. It housing for low-income people. began as a grand coalition of government, business, Working with the Labor Housing Conference during the labor and housing advocates, striving to “save the Depression, she was a passionate advocate of public housing, and was invited to co-author the 1937 Wagner-Steagall Housing Act, city”. But over time, both local projects and federal which initiated significant federal investment in public housing incentives began to look less like social reform in and slum clearance. In the late 1930s, she married the architect the public interest, and more like commercial real William Wurster and moved to the Bay Area, where she was a estate ventures at the expense of local communities. member of Telesis. She died in a hiking accident in 1964.

18 Urbanist > June/July 2009 space for “Living, Working, 3. Enter the Playing, and Services” without Automobile destroying the unique Bay Area landscape. Beginning in the 1920s, Telesis members worked with the automobile transformed SPUR’s forerunner, the San American life. As auto-oriented Francisco Planning and Housing suburbs emerged on the urban Association, to promote planning fringe, planners and engineers and redevelopment, leading to sought to retrofit the center cities the creation of San Francisco’s to move and store hoards of new Department of City Planning cars. Traffic engineering was a in 1942, the last in a major new and quintessentially Modern Amercian city. discipline: quantitative, rational

2. Modernist called themselves “Telesis” Dorothy Erskine: Urbanism: CIAM meaning “Progress, intelligently Pioneering Activist and planned and directed.” They and Telesis were products of the Great SPUR Founder CIAM and Modernist Depression, steeped in the ideals Few citizens have ever shown as deep Urbanism of the New Deal, and committed and sustained an involvement in planning The architectural and urban to improving social conditions and conservation as Dorothy Erskine. planning response to the indus- through betterment of the physi- A lifelong progressive, she became trial city was articulated most cal environment. involved in housing issues, participating famously by CIAM (Congres Many Telesis members in an influential 1938 study of housing International d’Architecture became highly influential figures, conditions in Chinatown, which helped Moderne) in The Charter of including Vernon DeMars, Jack draw federal public housing funds to San Francisco. She met Alice Athens (1933) which laid out an Kent, William Wurster, Garett Griffith and helped breathe new life into the San Francisco Housing influential vision of a rationalized, Eckbo and Walter Landor, among Association. Through her contact with Telesis, the SFHA broadened functional and egalitarian city. others. In 1940, they planned its purview and became the SF Planning and Housing Association (SFPHA) in 1942, successfully lobbying for the creation of a City Buildings would be placed in and produced an influential parks, away from the noise and Planning Department. SFPHA also conducted research on the pollution of traffic. Large slab fiscal impacts of “slums,” encouraging San Francisco to initiate a towers spaced far apart in pe- redevelopment program, which the city did in 1948. destrianized “superblocks” would Erskine was able to seamlessly navigate the disparate worlds offer equal light, air and greenery of advocacy, research, government, philanthropy and business. to all. Where the traditional city Through her prominent husband, Morse Erskine, she gained access (and the street, its defining ele- to the upper echelons of the business community, where she ment) was fundamentally mixed, tirelessly raised money and drew attention to housing and planning issues. In the 1950s, she became concerned about regional issues, the Athens Charter emphasized and in 1958 founded Citizens for Regional Recreation and Parks separation—of housing and in- (later People for Open Space and Greenbelt Alliance). A series of dustry, of pedestrians and cars— conferences the group sponsored was instrumental in launching the which became a fundamental Save the Bay movement. approach to city planning. In the late 1950s, San Francisco’s redevelopment program was From 75 years’ distance, widely considered to be bogged down and ineffective. Among those the Modernist vision can be pushing for a more effective program was the Blyth-Zellerbach shocking, and seem basically Committee, a group of business leaders anxious about the city’s anti-urban, but it began as an deteriorating reputation. optimistic and socially progres- exhibition at the SF Museum of In 1959, the SFPHA and the Blyth-Zellerbach Committee brought sive approach to the dismal Art (SFMOMA today) entitled Aaron Levine, a Philadelphia redevelopment expert to San Francisco conditions of the industrial city. “Space For Living.” It challenged to evaluate the redevelopment program. His widely-covered study visitors to look systematically lambasted San Francisco, placing it 99th out of 100 cities in its Telesis at the built environment, attempts to modernize. He recommended new leadership, more In 1939, a group of pas- including decaying inner cities autonomy, and an active citizen’s organization to promote Urban sionate young planners and and unplanned suburban Renewal. To that end, the SFPHA was reconstituted as the San designers began meeting in a development, and imagine a Francisco Planning and Urban Renewal Association (SPUR). Telegraph Hill living room. They future where the region provided

Urbanist > June/July 2009 19 th o e m derns and boldly determined to reorder housing than it built. Anger— the world. and litigation—over its impacts The ultimate piece of surged, and federal policy gradu- traffic-moving technology was, ally grew more inclusive. Under of course, the freeway, which the Nixon administration, the pro- eliminated all functions from gram was finally abandoned in the street except the smooth favor of community development flow of traffic. It was based on block grants, which remains early experiments with limited- the predominant framework for access roadways, including the federal aid to cities. German autobahn, and partially separated expressways in may 5. The Deepest parts of the U.S. The true, Scar: Urban grade separated, limited-access freeway became the holy grail Renewal in SF that would peel auto traffic away R ace and from congested city streets, into Redevelopment sinuous, abstract realm of safe, Trafficways Plan (1948) People of color were excluded efficient movement. To that end, The 1948 Trafficways Plan is one of numerous versions of a from most urban neighborhoods neighborhoods would be con- comprehensive freeway system for San Francisco. It includes by a combination of restrictive demned and demolished, and proposals for freeways up the Pandhandle and on either side of covenants and simple prejudice. gargantuan structures imposed Golden Gate Park, as well as freeway approaches to a proposed In the 1930s, the Federal on the fabric of the city. Southern Crossing bridge. Many of these proposals were carried Housing Administration codified forward, but most were cancelled after vigorous citizen opposition. such discrimination mortgage underwriting guidelines that 4. Urban Renewal condemned through eminent do- deals were in place, demolished excluded “inharmonious racial and Growth main, and the federal government neighborhoods often sat vacant groups”. This led to decades Coalitions would pay two-thirds of the cost for a decade or more. Urban of decades of redlining, which starved minority neighborhoods Urban renewal (a general term of “slum clearance” programs. renewal destroyed far more for federally-assisted redevelop- Land could then be bid out for ment) had its roots in the New private development. The federal Deal, in the sometimes uneasy funds created a huge financial alliances between public housing incentive for blight findings, advocates, unions and real especially in poor neighborhoods estate interests. After World War near downtowns. Amendments II, downtown boosters and city in 1954 and 1961 allowed more planners, faced with postwar ur- commercial uses, and urban ban decline and suburbanization, renewal increasingly emphasized joined these “growth coalitions” office buildings and convention in pushing for federal urban centers over low-income housing. renewal legislation to “save the Although the 1949 Act cities”. required relocation assistance for The 1949 Federal Housing Act residents, in practice this was funded additional public housing rarely provided. Most residents and created the basic framework were poor, minority renters, Golden Gateway The Golden Gateway Redevelopment Area (adopted in 1959) for urban renewal, calling for “the and tended to be scattered into replaced the wholesale produce market, which moved to Islais realization as soon as feasible of racially exclusive housing markets Creek. The ambitious first phase, completed in 1964, created an the goal of a decent home and where mass demolitions were upscale residential zone of widely-spaced residential towers over a suitable living environment for worsening existing shortages. a series of elevated plazas linked by footbridges, in keeping with every American family.” New development was mostly Modernist ideals. The second phase, Atlanta developer-architect Under the program, areas upscale, far out of reach of those John Portman’s Embarcadero Center, was completed in the early found to be “blighted” by local displaced. Because demolition 1980s as a planned expansion of the Financial District. authorities—“slums”—could be proceeded before development

20 Urbanist > June/July 2009 “In the Western Addition the people of San Francisco can begin remaking the city, can literally clear away the mistakes of the past and better than they ever built before, guided by foresight.” —1947 WA-1 redevelopment study

What advocates of redevelop- groups, but only one displaced ment failed to notice was a vi- family returned to A-1. brant working-class community, The A-2, a much larger area, centered on Fillmore Street that was established in 1964, with supported local businesses and promises of a real relocation churches and nurtured the West program and an emphasis on Coast’s most important jazz rehabilitation. Although a few of mortgage capital. The Western scene at clubs like Jimbo’s Bop Victorians were saved, 11,000 In San Francisco, racial Addition City and Elsie’s Breakfast Club. units of low-cost housing were The 28-block A-1 project was demolished and only 7,000 built. discrimination in housing and The San Francisco approved in 1956, and demoli- employment was commonplace, Redevelopment Agency’s clear- tion began the next year. Plans leading to overcrowding and ance of The Western Addition called for luxury apartments, public health problems in is one of the most disturbing a Japanese Cultural and Trade enclaves like Chinatown. Racism chapters in San Francisco’s Center, and the conversion of played a major role in the experiment with Urban Renewal. Western Addition. More than Since the early 1940s, the Geary Boulevard into a six-lane 5,000 San Francisco Japanese- Western Addition had been expressway. More than 3,000 Americans were interned in identified as in numerous reports families had been displaced by 1942, forced to sell off homes as “blighted”. Its aging Victorians 1960, and the SFRA failed to and businesses. At the same were considered outdated provide the legally mandated time, large numbers of African- firetraps, and many had been relocation assistance. A rising Americans arrived in the city subdivided in to tenement units chorus of objections led to a to work in wartime industries, with grossly inadequate plumb- few moderate-income co-ops and found themselves excluded ing and ventilation. developed by unions and church from nearly everywhere else. The new housing was generally With the war over, industrial of poor quality, and the blocks jobs declined, and many black slated for private development workers were shut out of local sat vacant for decades, a con- unions. stant reminder of the community The wholesale displacement of that had been. Under pressure the African-American community from civil rights groups and from the Fillmore coincided lawsuit by the Western Addition with the decline of industrial Community Organization, the jobs—more than 8,000 when SFRA issued 4,729 housing Hunter’s Point shipyard closed in preference vouchers were issued 1974—and a sustained increase for the A-2 area. Fewer than in housing costs. Since 1970, 1,100 were redeemed, reflect- the black population of San ing the lack of available housing Francisco has declined nearly and the bitter mistrust many still 40 percent, and many African- feel toward the Redevelopment Americans say they just don’t Agency, particularly among feel a part of the city. African-Americans.

Urbanist > June/July 2009 21 The Contextualists Protecting the historical city

Many San Franciscans were shocked by the upheaval wrought in the name of "Modernization”. The scars of large-scale demolition and freeway projects, and the apparent disregard for both the urban fabric and local communities, led many to conclude that the “experts” had it profoundly wrong. Around the country, writers like Jane Jacobs and Kevin Lynch began to articulate a new view of the city that embraced its multilayered richness and complexity, where the Moderns strove for rational clarity. In a variety of different ways, they argued, city planning must take its cues from the existing context. Urban designers began to emphasize close analysis of existing forms and patterns as the most important basis for new interventions while historic preservationists asserted the value of older buildings and launched campaigns to protect them. Activists and community groups insisted that planning respond to the needs and priorities of 1. The Freeway in many affected areas. In existing residents, not sweep them aside, and they Revolt 1959, with the Embarcadero under construction, the Board created new kinds of institutions, like Community One of the first and most of Supervisors voted to cancel Development Corporations and nonprofit housing dramatic episodes of citizen seven out of 10 proposed developers. resistance to the Moderns’ brave freeways, but the Panhandle- Community and preservation groups forged new world began in 1956, when Golden Gate proposal remained. the Chronicle printed a map of formidable political alliances, and answered the Sue Bierman, a self-styled the extensive freeway system postwar growth coalition with an anti-high-rise “Haight mom,” organized the proposed for San Francisco, Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood and growth control agenda. Many viewed both including the Embarcadero and Council (HANC) and led a surge government and business—historically major Park-Panhandle routes. The of local opposition, culminating instigators of planning activity—with suspicion, and completion of the Bayshore in the project’s cancellation in Freeway in 1953 revealed both 1964, by a single vote. It was developed a legal and political toolkit for stopping the seriousness of the plans and a dramatic turnabout, inspiring misbegotten projects. The Contextualists pushed the disruptive impact of urban efforts around the country and for a bottom-up approach that was the antithesis of freeways. It was the last freeway launching many local community Modernism: incremental rather than visionary, local completed. organizations. The stubbed Opposition quickly mounted, ends of the Embarcadero, rather than comprehensive, and protective rather and community groups organized Central and 280 Freeways were than transformative. and launched petition drives stark reminders of the episode

22 Urbanist > June/July 2009 sites within the area. TOOR was rechristened TODCO (Tenants and Owners Development Corporation) and became a nonprofit community housing developer. TODCO has since developed more than 1,200 affordable units and provides a range of social services for low- income SOMA residents. began in 1967 with no effective for decades. The halting and Localism and Identity removal of these ill-conceived provisions for relocation. But Politics: The Rise of freeways is among the most the SFRA had not counted on the Neighborhoods widely-celebrated citizen the will of the residents, many movements in the city’s history. of whom, like George Woolf and The cultural upheavals of the In 1989, the Loma Prieta Peter Mendelsohn, were radical 1960s gave rise to grassroots The Mission Coalition: earthquake badly damaged veterans of San Francisco’s organizations in many neighbor- hoods, often emerging from The Fruits of the Embarcadero and Central labor movement. In 1969, they Community Organizing Freeways. The Embarcadero was organized Tenants and Owners local issues and correspond- The Mission Coalition torn down in 1991. The Central in Opposition to Redevelopment ing to the city’s patchwork of Organization (MCO) a fed- Freeway was the subject of three (TOOR) and filed suit against ethnicities and subcultures. eration of community groups, separate ballot initiatives, but HUD to demand affordable A new politics of identity and emerged from a successful was finally demolished North replacement housing within self-determination inspired 1967 effort to resist Urban of Market Street, replaced by the neighborhood. Some labor organizing and activism among Renewal proposals in the Octavia Boulevard. unions broke ranks with the gays in the Castro, Latinos in Mission District. growth machine, objecting to the the Mission, African-Americans Mayor Alioto then proposed in the Fillmore, and Asians in 2. Planning displacement of blue-collar jobs applying for Federal funding Chinatown. These groups not for Whom? and residents. under the Model Cities pro- only asserted control of their own The court found the relocation gram, and community leaders Community neighborhoods, but they also plans inadequate and stopped organized the coalition to Development formed the basis of new political the project, a major victory for establish a local platform and coalitions, led by politicians and Social Equity poor residents who had been ensure the program met local like Willie Brown, John Burton Planning arrogantly dismissed as “bums” needs. The MCO was rooted and George Moscone, who in Saul Alinsky’s community Y erba Buena Center challenged the labor-business organizing model as well as For a century, Market Street growth coalitions at City Hall. the civil right movement, and divided San Francisco’s Central Increasingly, San Francisco’s brought together more than Business District from the work- political landscape was framed 100 different local organiza- shops, factories, and working- as “The Neighborhoods” vs. tions to find common ground class housing to the South. “Downtown”. and campaign for community By the 1950s, SOMA was an A 1976 ballot initiative created priorities. The MCO estab- affordable if shabby district of district elections for the Board of lished a hiring hall and pres- rooming houses and residential and “derelicts”. TOOR drew up Supervisors, and 1977 Harvey sured local employers to hire hotels, occupied mostly by single its own plan calling for 2,000 Milk, Gordon Lau, and Ellen locally. It organized dozens of older men, retired from industrial units of affordable housing. Hill Hutch were elected the first tenants organizations, pres- and maritime work. Commercial When the legal battle ended, openly gay, Chinese-American sured the school district and interests began eyeing SOMA for the SFRA was obliged to plan and female African-American other public agencies to be tourist and convention facilities, for 1,500 units of affordable Supervisors. Moscone and Milk more responsive, and created and after several false starts, housing and to provide four were assassinated the next year. Mission neighborhood plan. plans were approved in 1964. A Although the MCO dis- series of architectural schemes “The Transamerica ‘pyramid’ exhibits the banded in 1973, it left imagined a controlled, inward- behind a remarkable legacy of looking complex that turned essentially archaic and regressive nature community organizations and away from the streets and their of the science fiction mind.” social service providers, many “undesirable” citizens. of which are still active. Evictions and demolition —Lewis Mumford (writer and critic)

Urbanist > June/July 2009 23 th o e c ntextualists

3. Respect 4. The Presence of for Pattern: the Past: Historic Contextual Urban Preservation Design At mid-century, many Shocked by the wholesale people did not perceive older demolition of urban renewal, and buildings—especially wooden, disappointed with the alien, sani- kit-built Victorian houses—as tized environments that followed, architecturally valuable. They many people in San Francisco were abundant, out of fashion, and elsewhere began to defend and often dilapidated. But by the qualities of traditional urban early 1960s, many citizens fabric. Often, these were the were becoming alarmed by very elements the Modernism the wholesale demolition of sought to replace: a mixed and older buildings, and the lack of a messy vitality, surprise and hap- meaningful mechanism for their penstance, incremental change, protection. social, spatial and functional “We Won’t Move” The Fall of The International Hotel Homeowners and amateur diversity. In the Fall of 1968, about 150 tenants at the 3-story International historians classified and lovingly Even as urban renewal Hotel at Jackson and Kearney received eviction notices. They restored Victorian homes, and projects gained momentum were mostly elderly Filipino men. The I-Hotel was at the center of organizations like the Victorian around the country, a few critics, Manilatown, a block long stretch of Filipino businesses well-known Alliance and Heritage (the including Jane Jacobs, William to the local community and many migrant workers and seamen who Foundation for the Preservation Whyte and Kevin Lynch began spent downtime there. The property, near the expanding Financial of San Francisco’s Architectural articulating what was missing/ District was slated for commercial development. Heritage) began pressuring city being lost in the modern vision. The evictions became a cause celebre among a many groups con- government to be more assertive They put forward nuanced cerned about affordable housing and tenants’ rights. Student activists in protecting historic buildings. observations of cities’ human and an array of political organizations, including Asian, Latino and One of Heritage’s first projects fabric: the intimate scale, and gay groups organized protests that lasted nine years, through the sale was arrange the relocation of fine-grained vitality that was of the property to a Hong Kong investor and the departure of many 14 houses from the Western lost when neighborhoods were tenants. Finally, in August 1977, deputies led by Sherriff Richard Addition’s A-2 area, then demolished and could not be Hongisto (who at one time gone to jail rather than enforce the evic- under the wrecking ball. Many replicated in sanitized single-use tions) squared off with demonstrators and evicted tenants by force. It public and residential buildings environments. In particular, they was a devastating blow, and further galvanized activists’ sense that were quickly listed, but older made an argument for the life commercial expansion was a heartless enemy of urban communities. commercial buildings like the of the street, a complex urban City of Paris department store space that is as much a living and evolution. These ideas room, theater, and marketplace resonated strongly among those as a “trafficway”. who found the prevailing views of urban “experts” strangely anti-urban. Allan Jacobs, who served as planning director from 1966-74, personified this new attitude. As an outsider from the Philadelphia, he had both an urban sensibility and a fresh per- spective on the conflicts raging over redevelopment. He presided Locally, researchers like over a department with a far less Donald Appleyard and Elizabeth invasive approach to planning, Moudon produced in-depth creating the Urban Design Plan studies of San Francisco’s and a series of neighborhood urban form, tracing its history, improvements.

24 Urbanist > June/July 2009 6. The Downtown Friedel Klussmann Plan In 1947, Friedel Klussmann The Downtown high-rise formed San Francisco Beautiful boom produced a series of ballot in response to Mayor Lapham’s initiatives by growth-control plan to scrap what remained advocates, along with bitter of the city’s cable cars. “The case-by-case fights over new Ladies,” as they were known, buildings and warring studies on asserted the cable cars’ impor- the fiscal impacts of high-rises. tance to tourism, and built a A long-term compromise seemed formidable citizen’s movement, essential, and the Planning eventually making them a A building that typifies Department, led by Dean Macris, national “moving landmark”. It Downtown Plan design set out to develop the city’s first was the first of many successful guidelines: The older building Downtown Plan. The intent preservation campaigns. is protected, and the building continued to be demolished, was to provide a framework for mass steps back as it rises. leading Heritage to publish continued commercial develop- Rooflines must provide “visual Splendid Survivors, a downtown ment that would reduce impacts interest” which many architects historic survey that influenced on the downtown’s livability and feel enforces postmodern the Downtown Plan’s ambitious character, protect historic build- aesthetics, and Allan Temko preservation policies. ings, and channel growth away glibly referred to “as a profusion from adjacent neighborhoods. of funny hats”. 5. “Manhattan- The Downtown Plan created new downtown boundaries, ization” and the of traditional fabric would be excluding Chinatown, The High-Rise Growth preserved. Permitted height Tenderloin, and North Beach, and bulk of new buildings zone Wars and Telegraph Hill, and shifting were considerably reduced, and In the 1960s, global economic development south and east, design guidelines introduced. forces led to a shift in the U.S. Bank of America Building (1969) toward the Transbay Terminal The Downtown Plan repre- economy, away from manu- and Transamerica Pyramid and Rincon Hill. It protected 266 sented a “grand compromise” facturing and heavy industry, (1972) which were viewed as historic buildings, and defined in the high-rise growth wars, and toward information-based threatening northward expan- conservation districts, like Belden significantly shifting the location, industries such as technology sions of downtown. Alley, where intact pockets and finance. The Bay Area’s form, and impact of commercial beautiful setting, open culture development, while allowing San and major universities positioned In 1971 and again in 1972, a local businessman named Alvin Francisco to respond success- it to compete in an innovation Duskin put a measure on the ballot that would have limited all fully to global economic shifts economy, by attracting creative, Downtown development to 72 feet — shorter than many Victorian that called for a service and educated workers. San Francisco commercial buildings. He enlisted artists to create a coloring book innovation-based economy. burgeoned as a “headquarters in support of the measure. Although the measures failed (in part city” for the emerging service- because in one case the wording inadvertently raised neighborhood Prop M based economy. heights to 72 ft.) the concerns clearly resonated for many people, Ironically, it was immedi- Between 1965 and 1982, and high-rise development remained a major issue into the 1980s. ately following approval of the the city’s office space more than Downtown Plan that a powerful doubled, to over 60 million gross growth-control initiative finally square feet, resulting in dramatic passed. In 1986, Proposition M and controversial changes to capped office development at the character of the downtown. 400,000 square feet per year Many felt that the city’s unique and introduced a “beauty contest” qualities were under siege from to determine what could be built. what Herb Caen called a “verti- Its actual impact has been mod- cal earthquake,” and opposition est, since real estate cycles have to high-rise buildings surged. kept average annual demand at or Especially controversial were the near the annual limit.

Urbanist > June/July 2009 25 The Eco-Urbanists Forging a green metropolis for the post-carbon age

The last two decades have seen a reframing of A New Attitude: activists also began turning their From Growth attention to infill development debates over growth, density and change in San as the essential counterpoint to Francisco. For many critics, the growth-control Control to Smart conservation. Urban Ecology policies of the Contextualists have enshrined Growth published “Blueprint for A an essentially conservative attitude toward the The past 20 years have seen a Sustainable Bay Area” in 1996 broadening in Bay Area environ- emphasizing links between den- city, unsustainable in the context of a crippling mental consciousness beyond sity, affordable housing and tran- housing shortage, explosive regional sprawl, the conservation of nature sit. The Greenbelt Alliance, Bay and a looming climate crisis. A new generation toward sustainable development. Area Transportation and Land In the late 1970s and early 80s, Use Coalition (now TransForm) of activists and planners view density at the a few green visionaries took and Livable City, have taken urban core as the critical ingredient in a more an interest in the integration of similar stances, a shift that has sustainable, equitable and prosperous Bay Area. ecological systems and dense at times caused tension with urban communities. Later, in those who view development as This movement is built on a simple insight: city 1989, a group of planners and the enemy of conservation. dwellers have a much smaller ecological footprint architects created the Ahwanee than their suburban counterparts. They drive Principles for Resource-Efficient The Case for less, live in smaller, more efficient homes, and Communities, laying out basic Density: Climate, concepts for the creation of share public amenities. Eco-urbanism celebrates compact, walkable mixed-use Sprawl, and the the virtues of traditional city neighborhoods, but neighborhoods. These became Built Environment also strives to add new districts that are compact, the basis of the influential 1996 San Francisco’s 2004 Climate Charter of the New Urbanism, Action Plan sets an ambitious walkable, inclusive and efficient, translating growth which brought sound planning emissions-reduction goal: a 20 into urban vitality and public life instead of traffic and community design funda- percent reduction from 1990 lev- and pollution. It seeks a more accessible city, mentals to a wide new audience. els by 2012. Thus far the pace Bay Area environmental of implementation is not likely to through ambitious improvements in transit and cycling infrastructure, and new strategies to bring down the cost of housing. Buildings, streets, and public spaces are challenged to engage the problems of energy, water, waste, and climate, modeling the complex interconnectedness of ecological systems. It is a vision that offers a way forward, an affirmative agenda that strives to internalize the lessons of earlier generations while turning to face our immense common challenges.

26 Urbanist > June/July 2009 meet the target. SPUR recently ecological footprint of each new released a major study compar- resident depends above all on ing implementation options by whether they live in transit- and cost and effectiveness. pedestrian-oriented city centers The two largest sources of or auto-dependent suburbs. greenhouse gases—cars and buildings—are closely linked to The Housing Crisis: city planning decisions. Adding Density, Equity, 40,000 households to transit- rich San Francisco (10 percent Affordability more than ABAG mandates) Housing scarcity affects low- would result in a reduction income people most of all. Low- of 218 million vehicle miles income people are more transit traveled. Job growth in San dependent, more vulnerable to Francisco would also have a high rents, and more likely to major impact, since 50 percent work multiple jobs. The public case study: Folsom+Dore amenities provided in dense of downtown, San Francisco Architect: David Baker urban settings–transit, parks workers commute by transit, Developer: Citizens Housing more than five times the regional and walkable streets--benefit These 98 rental units of sup- average. everyone, but are especially portive affordable housing serve The most powerful emissions- important to those of modest tenants with special needs, such reduction option is more means, who can’t fall back on a as physical and developmental compact land use at the regional car or a private garden. disabilities, HIV/AIDS and chronic scale, which could reduce emis- SPUR supports policies that homelessness. Folsom + Dore promote the construction of is the first new building in San substantially more housing at Francisco to receive a LEED Silver all income levels, by secur- rating. Residential parking has ing resources for permanently been greatly reduced, making affordable housing, upzoning way for a hybrid car-share vehicle along transit corridors, creating and protected bicycle parking. middle-income housing that is “affordable by design” and units were built in San Francisco, urgency for improvements reducing parking requirements. out of 3,340 total new units— to the system. The next year, In 2002, SPUR helped craft San the most since 1965, but still far Proposition E consolidated Francisco’s Citywide Inclusionary from adequate. Muni and the Department of Housing policy, which was Parking and Traffic into the strengthened in 2006 to require Municipal Transportation market-rate housing to provide Transportation: Agency, with the goal of some units below market rate: A New Urgency implementing transit-first Location has a powerful 15 percent onsite, or 20 percent Transit is the backbone of priorities. In recent years, correlation with greenhouse offsite or via “in-lieu fees”. In urban mobility and the key public pressure, sustained gas emissions. Residents and Redevelopment Areas, San reducing carbon emissions. advocacy by SPUR and others, workers at the urban core emit Francisco has spends nearly Although Muni serves more than and internal reform efforts have far less, but most growth has 50 percent of tax increment 700,000 people per day, and begun to bear fruit. The T-Third occurred in suburban areas. funds on affordable housing, San Francisco has a vastly larger light rail line, serving Bayview well above the 20 percent state transit ridership per person than and Visitacion Valley, opened in sions by 3 million metric tons mandate. anywhere else in the region, 2007, and will connect to the per year. The region’s explosive Affordable housing in San we have not managed to fund Central Subway to Chinatown growth and lack of regional land Francisco is generally produced and operate a system that and North Beach, beginning use planning have resulted in the and managed by nonprofit hous- would draw large numbers of construction this year. More proliferation of low-density sub- ing developers, who provide an people away from their cars for recently, Muni has launched urban development across the array of specialized housing serv- most trips. In 1998, attempts the Transit Effectiveness Central Valley and into the Sierra ing seniors, the formerly home- to implement a new Automatic Project, which targets the foothills. We cannot stop regional less, families with children and Train Control resulted in the busiest routes for major population growth, which is people with HIV/AIDS. In 2008, “Muni Meltdown,” stranding improvements in speed and driven by job creation. But the 823 new affordable housing thousands and creating a new reliability.

Urbanist > June/July 2009 27 to environmental review under The Green Building the California Environmental Movement Quality Act. With that review Recent efforts to build in nearly complete, the stage is harmony with nature are rooted set for construction of the plan’s in utopian escapes from the Citywide Bicycle Network. human community, and the City CarShare earthships and bioshelters that worked out many green building In 2001, bay area transit fundamentals made a point of activists Elizabeth Sullivan being “off the grid”. But as the and Kate White, working with efficiencies of urban life became SPUR and the City, created more widely appreciated, green the nonprofit City CarShare. building has come to the city and Based on commercial models become technologically and aes- in European cities, car-sharing thetically adventurous. In 1996, allows members to have car The U.S Green Building Council access while avoiding the high launched LEED, or Leadership fixed costs of car ownership. The in Energy and Environmental pay-as-you-go approach results Design, its benchmark standard Dreaming the Future of Transit in less driving and lower costs, for green building certification. It Transportation planner and advocate Brian Stokle created this as well as fewer cars in the city. assigns points for a wide range map as part of a series that envisions how transit might develop in of factors like energy and water the coming decades. Equal part planning, advocacy, fantasy and savings, sustainable materials artwork, it adopts some of Muni’s graphic conventions, but mixes and location efficiency. services, agencies and modes to represent a full network the way a In 2008, San Francisco rider experiences it. Highlights include the Central Subway, Geary enacted a Green Building and Van Ness BRT, high-speed rail, a SOMA BART line and a Ordinance that will require all second transbay tube. Stokle is one of many avid urbanists shaping new construction and large the future through blogs and informal connections. building renovations to meet some of the highest green build- Bicycling and reduced pedestrian and ve- ing standards in the country. The hicle accidents as well. In 2005, The bicycle is among the ordinance requires new buildings the Citywide Bike Plan won most efficient machines every to meet increasingly higher levels unanimous approval from the devised, and is an ideal mode of of two green building rating Board of Supervisors, but a law- urban transportation: light, fast, BRT: a new transit model systems: LEED for commercial suit quickly halted its implemen- affordable, healthy and clean. buildings and GreenPoint Rated tation order after a judge found Bus Rapid Transit provides Cyclists put themselves on the for homes. It also requires that it was—ironically—subject the operational characteristics city’s agenda through Critical of rail—smooth, uninterrupted projects to achieve specific goals Mass, the boisterous and con- service, predictability, and important in San Francisco, troversial monthly rides in which passenger amenities—with including water efficiency, onsite thousands of cyclists take to the the flexibility and low cost of stormwater retention, and provid- ing space for separated waste streets, upending their usually rubber-tired vehicles. Buses streams. marginal position in traffic. run in dedicated lanes and pull San Francisco’s cycling move- up level with platforms, where ment, led by the San Francisco pre-paid passengers board R esource Flows and Bicycle Coalition, has grown into through all doors. Pioneered Human Ecology: a potent political force, cam- in Curitiba, Brazil, BRT has Bay Area residents have a paigning for cycling infrastructure emerged as one of the most keen awareness of the resource and for a broader sustainable important innovations in urban flows that sustain our lives. One city agenda. New bike lanes on public transit, and is proposed of the most visible and powerful Valencia Street resulted in a 144 for the Geary and Van Ness aspects of this is the region’s percent increase in cyclists there, corridors in San Francisco. food culture, which since the

28 Urbanist > June/July 2009 The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has introduced Low-Impact Design Guidelines to promote green infrastructure throughout the urban environment, to protect waterways, prevent flooding, provide habitat and open space amenities, and conserve water. as their subject, and pursue This kind of dense intercon- a kind of “green civics” that nectedness, serving multiple, celebrates and explores the mutually reinforcing functions is built environment. PARK(ing) at the heart of the ecological city. Day, instigated by the Rebar collective, is an annual investigation of how public The California Academy of Sciences is the world’s largest space is allocated. Participants LEED-Platinum public building. Its undulating, 197,000 square-foot convert parking spaces into green roof can retain 3.6 million gallons of rainwater each year and temporary parks, treating has became an instant icon. The structure incorporates recycled meters as short-term leases steel and fly-ash concrete and is insulated with used denim batting, and creating impromptu and is passively cooled and ventilated. gatherings. Groups like The Bureau of Urban Secrets, 1970s has not only launched Green Infrastructure Mundane Journeys, and a revolution in fresh seasonal and Ecological city|space have pursued cuisine, but has nurtured a local Systems similar investigations. organic agriculture industry In an urban setting, water and the network of distributors, runs quickly off of imperme- farmers’ markets, stores,and able roofs and paved surfaces, restaurants to support it. The carrying pollutants with it. In Ferry Building—liberated from combined sewer and stormwater Crissy Field the freeway and rehabilitated, systems like San Francisco’s, Crissy field, which was re-opened in 2001, has heavy runoff can also lead to restored and reopened in become a mecca for local and overflows that send untreated 2003, combines historic artisanal food. Still, many poor sewage into local waterways. preservation, open space, and communities lack access to fresh Eliminating impermeable ecological restoration on a single food, spurring local activists to surfaces and increasing the multifaceted site. The design, create school and community retention of stormwater slows by Hargreaves and Associates, gardens, and to advocate for runoff and prevents overflows. reveals its history as an aviation markets and grocery stores in This creates a new imperative for hub while inviting intensive underserved communities. the sustainable design of cities: recreational use and restoring San Francisco has the highest re-imagining urban surfaces as fragile dune and saltwater recycling rate in the country, green infrastructure. wetland ecosystems. The Slow Food diverting 70 percent of solid Nation Victory waste from landfills, which “Green Civics” Garden grew in includes residential food waste and Visionary City Hall Park composting and the collection Imagination last summer, of waste oil to power city showing San vehicles. Still, we could do PARK(ing) Day, 2008 Francisco’s better if composting and The Eco-Urbanist moment has enthusiasm for recycling were mandatory, found expression in arenas greening, and producing more which could result in a 186,700 beyond city planning, through than 1,000 pounds of fresh, Metric Ton annual reduction in art, intervention and creative healthy food for those in need. greenhouse gas emissions. happenings that take urbanism

Urbanist > June/July 2009 29 In this competition scheme, Anne Fougeron imagines the Bay Area of 2108, in which a network of agricultural skyscrapers create a local organic food system for 10 million residents, fed by reclaimed water. It typifies the visionary qualities of Eco- Urbanism, combining bold thinking, contemporary aesthetics, local values and a fascination with ecological processes.

30 Urbanist > June/July 2009 Agents of Change image credits

The City Builders p6 map of San Francisco, 1852, Britten and Rey, David Rumsey Collection p7 left to right: Sand dunes from Cliff House, 1865, San Francisco Public Library; William C. Ralston, ca. 1872, SFPL p8 top to bottom: The Spring Valley Water Company system, 1922, U.C. Berkeley Geography Library; Cable cars at Powell and Sutter, 1896, San Francisco Public Library; Union Iron Works at Potrero Point, ca. 1918 Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation pamphlet p9 top to bottom: GG Park, by A.M. Freeman and Co., 1892, Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley; Sunol Water Temple, Willis Polk, 1922, SFPL; Frederick Law Olmstead; Dennis Kearney addresses The Workingmen’s Party, 1877, SFPL The Progressives and Classicists p12 Abe Ruef, ca. 1910 Courtesy SFPL p13 top to bottom: Alice Griffith, SPUR archives; San Francisco following 1906 earthquake and fire, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division; James Duval Phelan, 1915, SFPL The Regionalists p14 The Bay Counties, 1925, Regional Plan Association p15 top to bottom: Key System Streetcar Medallion, 1940s, BAERRA; Key Route timetables and maps, 1938, BAERRA; constructing Powell Street BART station, 1969, SFPL; Jack Kent, 1965, SFPL p16 left to right: Esther Gulick, Sylvia McLaughlin and Kay Kerr, mid-1960s; “Bay or River?” 1960, Army Corps of Engineers, Sylvia McLaughlin; GGNRA, 1971, by David Dugan; Amy Meyer, 1970s, GGNRA p17 early map of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, 1974, courtesy GGNRA Park Archives The Moderns p18 Valencia Gardens, 1943, CED archives, UC Berkeley; Catherine Bauer Wurster, CED archives, UC Berkeley p19 top to bottom: Parkmerced, 1951, SFPL; Dorothy Erskine, ca. 1950, courtesy John Erskine; Now is the Time to Plan, 1941, Telesis and the SF Planning and Housing Association, CED archives, UC Berkeley p20 top to bottom: San Francisco Trafficways plan, 1948, Deleuw and Cather Engineers, courtesy SF Dept. of City Planning; Golden Gateway marketing brochure, circa 1964 Courtesy SF Redevelopment Agency p21 The Fillmore District, 1940s, by David Johnson, courtesy D. Johnson/Togonon Gallery; Demolition in the Western Addition, 1953, SFPL; Japanese evacuees await processing, by Dorothea Lange, courtesy Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley The Contextualists p22 top to bottom: Protestors at “Save us from the Freeway” hearing at City Hall, 1966, SF Chronicle; Construction halted on the Embarcadero freeway, ca. 1960. Photo by Karl Kortum, copyright Jean Kortum, SFPL p23 left to right: Kenzo Tange’s proposal for Yerba Buena Center Redevelopment Area, 1969, photo by Gerald Ratto; George Woolf; Mission Coalition community meeting, ca. 1971, photo by Mike Miller p24 left to right: Contemporary contextualist housing; Protesters outside the International Hotel, 1977, Manilatown Heritage Foundation; Victorian houses being moved for preservation, 1976, photo by David Glass p25 left to right: Preserved historic building downtown; Cable Car Ladies, 1947; Alvin Duskin high-rise coloring book, 1971, courtesy John Kriken; Postmodern “hat” building, 2009 by Benjamin Grant The Eco-Urbanists p26 Bishop Ranch, Pacific Aerial Survey/HJW Geospatial, Inc. p27 top to bottom: Folsom + Dore, 2007, David Baker + Partners Architects; Bay Area CO2 emissions, 2006, courtesy MTC p28 top to bottom: “2030 Rail and Rapid Lines,” 2009, Brian Stokle; rendering of Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit, 2009, courtesy SFMTA; Critical Mass, Chris Carlsson p29 Calif. Academy of Sciences, 2008, Renzo Piano Building Workshop; Crissy Field, Hargreaves Asoociates; Park(ing) Day, 2008; Slow Food Nation Victory Garden, 2008, Katie Standke; Garden Participant, 2008, Katie Standke; Low impact design guidelines, SFPUC p30 Bay Area in 2108, 2009, Fougeron Architecture

Urbanist > June/July 2009 31 06/07.09 foa rw rd thinking The ironies of history

Gabriel Metcalf We began work on the first exhibit in the Urban Society changes in ways that escape the is the executive Center with the modest goal of telling the story understanding of the very people who make it director of SPUR. of San Francisco. Not just the traditional story change, and history is filled with ironies. Think of mayors and business tycoons, and not just of Daniel Burnham sitting in his shack on top of the traditional planning story that follows the Twin Peaks in 1905, devising his Parisian remake movements within the design professions — of San Francisco. The 1906 earthquake and fire but the story that weaves all the strands together. seemed to present the perfect opportunity to realize The story that can comprehend the General Strike some of the Burnham Plan’s main ideas, but the and the civil rights movement; the invention of urgency of quick reconstruction made it impossible. the elevator and the automobile; City Beautiful Meanwhile, the power structure saw its opportunity and bioregionalism; wartime migrations and to grab the desirable real estate of Chinatown, Prop. 13; all of it. thinking the inhabitants would be vulnerable after We worked the way SPUR always works, by the destruction. Instead, it turned out the Chinese gathering together some of the best thinkers to pool population was more flexible, could raise capital, their knowledge and perspectives, and added to and could move faster to rebuild than the rest of that the stories that other historians have gathered. the city. They outflanked the opposition politically And eventually, we re-learned what every historian by mobilizing Chinese government pressure on knows: that it is impossible to truly understand the federal government to ensure they were not what actually happened in the past, because even kicked out. In the end advocates were able to when we narrow our focus to one place, so many convince local leaders that rebuilding Chinatown in forces were at work, so many accidents turned out its original location — to both house the Chinese to matter, and so many dramas have been lost to residents and attract Western tourists — would time. benefit the local economy. Another irony: BART, conceived in the 1950s, Trhe I onies of History the heyday of postwar technological optimism, Walter Benjamin, writing about the impossibility was designed during the transitional decade of of ever understanding how the dark episodes of the 1960s, and opened during the 1970s to an modernity could happen, describes the despair of utterly changed landscape. No longer did every trying to comprehend history: community in the region uncritically welcome A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows the growth that BART was intended to enable. an angel looking as though he is about to move Instead, it opened to a wave of down-zonings that away from something he is fixedly contemplating. would have been inconceivable to its inventors, His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings forestalling the dream of a region of transit villages are spread. This is how one pictures the angel for at least four decades.2 2 Thank you to Michael Teitz for many enlightening of history. His face is turned toward the past. conversations about the Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one Tythe M s ery of “ironies of history” and for Social Change supplying me with anecdotes single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage for this piece. and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like This exhibit, and the opening of the Urban to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what Center on the 50th anniversary of the San has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Francisco Planning and Housing Association’s re- Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a formulation as “SPUR,” the “R” originally referring violence that the angel can no longer close them. to “renewal,” provides us with a moment to reflect The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to on our own attempts to make history. SPUR has 1 Walter Benjamin, “Theses which his back is turned, while the pile of debris never been just an observer, but has provided on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations, New York: before him grows skyward. This storm is what we a place for idealistic people, who cared deeply Shocken Books, 1969, p. 257. call progress.1 about San Francisco, to try to make the city better. With the benefit of hindsight, some of the efforts

32 Urbanist > June/July 2009 of previous generations at SPUR seem farsighted At the core of our project, we and wise, as in advocacy for BART, for regional government, for removal of elevated freeways, or for want to pierce the mystery a new economic base to replace the older industrial of social change. We want economy after World War II. But other policies pursued by SPUR appear deeply misguided, to understand how history is especially support for the removal of “substandard” made by human beings acting housing under the program of urban renewal. Urban renewal turned out to be the only time intentionally, but within the planners in America gained real power over private property, and the brutality of the program ensured context of larger forces and that planners are not likely to be trusted with that structures. kind of power ever again. Robert Fishman, the leading historian of American planning, identifies the real engine of change in the physical landscape of our country disastrously? How can San Francisco have become as “the urban conversation” between civic groups, so unaffordable? How can we be a city with so few newspapers, business interests, and social children? movements. In a country with a weak centralized Here is the mystery we have to understand: as government and a distrust of government we are trying to change history according to our regulation, this is how change happens: own vision of a good city, we are acting within Although the specifics of the planning problems forces that only become clear in hindsight — differ, the basic themes of the urban conversation changes in the structure of the economy, cultural are always the same: how to justify public action to a currents that determine how people want to society that is deeply individualistic; how to support live, technological advances that enable certain long-term investment strategies in a society built on possibilities but not others. short-term gains; how to justify the taxation of private At the core of our project, we want to pierce the profit for the common resources and the common mystery of social change. We want to understand good. This urban conversation — rather than any how history is made by human beings acting centralized government — has been the ultimate intentionally, but within the context of larger forces source of the authority that generated the outputting and structures. As a great historian once said, of investment in roads, bridges, waterworks, schools, “Men make their own history, but they do not make 3 Robert Fishman, “The libraries, and other public facilities…3 it just as they please; they do not make it under American Planning circumstances chosen by themselves, but under Tradition: An Introduction Fishman calls on us to return to the power of the and Interpretation,” urban conversation as the way to make progress on circumstances directly encountered, given and in Fishman (ed.), The the problems we face today: transmitted from the past.” 5 5 Karl Marx, The Eighteenth American Planning Brumaire of Louis Tradition: Culture and If the wonders of American planning have been Take this exhibition as a first preface to the Bonaparte, New York: Policy, Washington, DC: less in evidence in recent years, and if its powers interpretation of the layers of structure and agency International Publishers, The Woodrow Wilson Center 1963 [orig. 1852], p. 15. Press (2000), p. 5. have been less robust, one explanation is that that were involved with the creation of the city we planning has forsaken the language and strategies know today, with its complicated mix of good and of the urban conversation for the technical bad. discourse of the academy and the bureaucracy, and abandoned the strategy of public persuasion Gener aTIOns of for a delusive centralization that sought to bypass Civic Idealism 4 4 Ibid. the need for public support. We have organized the exhibit into a series of In other words, Fishman argues that the only generations of people, loosely representing social way to make real progress on the great planning movements that tried to remake the city and problems is to build civic will to solve them. SPUR’s region in particular ways. At various points these role through its entire history has been to help generations built on each other’s work or came into facilitate this urban conversation and serve as one conflict with one another. And from this interplay of of the leading voices thinking about the future of agendas, the city changed over time. the city. In our version of the story, the City-Builders But after a century of work, stretching back create the initial framework for urban growth, to the formation of the San Francisco Housing largely in the service of private profit. The Association in 1911, how can so many things have Progressives and Classicists try to reform the gone wrong? How can the region have sprawled so excesses of 19th century capitalism in various

32 Urbanist > June/July 2009 Urbanist > June/July 2009 33 ways, creating new institutions of self-government The Eco-Urbanists are perhaps and trying to beautify the city. The Regionalists gain prominence in the 1940s and continue until the naïve in their hope that we present, in many ways representing the path not can have it all: economic taken. The Moderns envision a complete redesign of the city according to rational planning principles prosperity, social equity and to solve problems of affordable housing and congestion. The Contextualists begin as a reaction ecological balance. But this is, against the abuses of the urban renewal and in fact, their ambition. freeways, but are so successful that they become the dominant viewpoint in the city. They are now being challenged by a new generation, the Eco- Urbanists, with a sensibility that embraces urbanity contribution to the broader project of urbanism? as the key to ecological sustainability. What does it mean for all of us to be working so The Eco-Urbanists accept the lessons of hard on a city of such a small scale, when, as many previous generations including the Enrique Peñalosa reminded us at his talk at SPUR careful understanding of place-making that the last year, Bogata, Columbia grows by a population Contextualists taught, but, given the urgency of equivalent to the entire city of San Francisco every larger-scale environmental problems, they take five years? these lessons in a new direction. It became clear to There are many answers to this question and the Eco-Urbanists that defending cities the way they perhaps it is enough to say that each city and already were was not good enough—that some each region on the planet has to try to become radical changes would be necessary in order to as sustainable and wonderful as it can be. But cope with the global climate crisis. For the first time my own viewpoint is that San Francisco has a since urban renewal, perhaps, a younger generation special role within the United States. In part, it feels permission to imagine a better city, rather than is the inheritor of the California mythology of the only fighting to preserve the preexisting city against place where people could go to make a new start, the forces of destruction. The Eco-Urbanists are which is itself a version of the older American perhaps naïve in their hope that we can have it all: mythology of the land that welcomed immigrants economic prosperity, social equity and ecological from all corners of the world to pursue projects of balance. But this is, in fact, their ambition. their own choosing, free from persecution. These It should come as no surprise to people who ideals live on in San Francisco’s cosmopolitanism have followed SPUR closely that many of us identify and celebration of difference, even as the city is closely with the ideals of the Eco-Urbanists. pragmatically much more closed than it wants to be We hope that you come away from this exhibit as a result of high housing costs. Layered onto this with the curiosity to know more, and that you will ideal of openness to the outside is San Francisco’s be inspired to add your own contribution to the progressivism, its self-image as the place where ever-changing city. new social movements will be born and will try out There is a cliché that city planning is simply their agenda on a city scale before ramping up to fixing the mistakes of past planners. And this is something bigger. true not just about planning, but also about so San Francisco has a mission to demonstrate the much of history. Social movements, even if they possibilities of progressive urbanism — that it is are victorious, tend to achieve consequences they possible to have an innovative economy and good did not intend. And yet, we cannot just sit on the business climate, while also fostering social equity; sidelines. There are urgent problems to solve. We that it is possible to protect the heritage of the past have to learn from past mistakes and approach our while also refocusing the region’s growth around activism with a sense of humility about all that we transit nodes in existing cities; that it is possible can’t know. But still we must act. to have a heavily participatory democratic process while also having public services that are work Trhe P oject of efficiently. Clearly, we have not yet gotten there, San Francisco have not yet transcended these contradictions into Sir Peter Hall’s majestic book, Cities in a higher synthesis. But the reason we all care so Civilization, tries to distill from history the lessons passionately about this city is because we know from humanity’s greatest cities, in their periods it stands for something, we know we are engaged of greatest cultural achievement, from classical with a great project to demonstrate the highest Athens to Weimar Berlin. What is San Francisco’s possibilities of American urbanism. Y

34 Urbanist > June/July 2009 06/07.09 pr e s ecTIVes Planning in pieces

It used to be that you could judge the vitality ran from downtown to its terminus by the Pacific Mitchell Schwarzer of a neighborhood by the number of its restaurants Ocean. Armed with a zoning map, clipboard, and is is Professor of and cafes. Apparently not in San Francisco. It was pen, I spent a couple of days combing the street— Visual Studies at the early 1980s and I had just begun working almost two miles from end to end — and jotting California College as a planner for San Francisco’s Department down the name, type and size of each business. of the Arts, San of City Planning. My first assignment was the In the coming weeks, I surveyed Leland Avenue Francisco and Neighborhood Commercial Rezoning Study. After in Visitation Valley and Outer Mission Street in the Oakland. He has a brief orientation, my supervisor Robin Jones Excelsior District. It turns out none of my streets written widely on introduced me to the team and told me I’d be going nor many of those surveyed by my colleagues Northern California out in the field that afternoon. Scott Dowdee, a shared the same characteristics or were burdened architecture. veteran on the project, was assigned to instruct me by similar complaints. 24th Street in the Mission in the art of the survey. We dashed out the doors had a great many restaurants, yet its residents of the stolid, granite-faced office building at 450 weren’t protesting. 24th Street in Noe Valley had McAllister Street and into Scott’s sleek black Saab. fewer restaurants and cafes, but some vociferous Riding through the city, Scott offered a monologue neighbors believed there were far too many. on his North Carolina upbringing and the history of In lengthy team meetings in cubbyhole offices San Francisco retail streets. at 450 McAllister Street we parsed the survey In most of America, older shopping districts results and tried to define a balanced neighborhood had turned into dinosaurs. They’d sprung up in commercial street, considering issues like: the late 19th and early 20th century when people the consumer catchment basin; age and size; travelled by electric streetcar. Ever since the surrounding demographics; history; and, most of Second World War, as automobiles and trucks were all, the degree of citizen uproar. Our study, released pushing the urbanized frontier ever outward, their first in the spring of 1984, proposed increasing lifeblood had been sapped. From Philadelphia to the number of types of commercial districts, and Los Angeles, city planners were trying to revitalize recommended fifteen new individual commercial neighborhood commerce by sprucing up signage, districts where interim zoning measures would adding street trees, furniture and small parking address neighborhood concerns. On 24th Street lots, and facilitating favorable business loans. But in Noe Valley, for example, an overabundance as Scott told me as we raced up Twin Peaks, the of eating and drinking establishments would be issue here in America’s most gentrified city wasn’t regulated through special review for any new that retail stores were closing up shop. Commerce business. As stated in the report, “once the in the city’s numerous upscale neighborhoods was percentage of commercially-used frontage occupied thriving to the point where it upset a great many by eating and drinking establishments reached 25 residents. Along prosperous Union Street in Cow Hollow or Sacramento Street in Presidio Heights, neighborhood associations complained that new For much of its brief history restaurants, bars and cafes were crowding out essential services like shoe repair businesses and the city has been subject to hardware stores. San Francisco, at least when it conflicts between proponents came to eating and drinking, had too much of a good thing. for large-scale plans and That’s where we came in. The Neighborhood opposition against them, Commercial Rezoning Study was tasked to study the city’s retail streets to determine the precise mix between blueprints for the city of uses, uncover any imbalances, and propose as a whole and ideas stemming remedies. My first survey was Taraval Street, a retail strip in the Parkside where a streetcar still from narrower interests.

34 Urbanist > June/July 2009 Urbanist > June/July 2009 35 percent, no additional uses of this nature would be Plan to make a grand public gateway out of the permitted.” jumble of transit lines in front of the Ferry Building. I remember tying myself into knots over the Because collective visions are so hard to agree on definition of a “traditional mix of uses” and over San Francisco has sometimes clung to outmoded the means by which we hoped to achieve that ones, epitomized by the ongoing expansion of Civic result. As I saw the matter, retail commerce by Center decades after the idea lost validity and the nature opposed tradition, introducing change and district had proven time and again to be devoid of novelty — new products, new stores, new types urban life. And then there’s the UCSF campus at of businesse — to stimulate sales. Speaking with Mission Bay, a case study of how to over-plan an Robin Jones one day, I blurted out that I didn’t go idea into bureaucratic anywhereness. to planning school to ensure that some NIMBY Of course, San Francisco’s history, location (not-in-my-backyard) residents wouldn’t have to and environment have long encouraged, indeed compete with restaurant-goers for street parking demanded big moves. Because the city sits — a major source of complaint. I referred to the alongside the finest natural port on the West Coast, larger goals of city planning to mediate between the large swathes of land were sequestered by the marketplace and public good. Robin listened and government from the 1840s through the 1940s then cut me off with one word — iterative. “What for defense, resulting in the massive military bases we do here,” she said, “is respond to complaints at the Presidio and Hunter’s Point. Because of its and critiques from citizens, neighborhood groups peninsular location, massive efforts were needed and other players in municipal government. We to link San Francisco to the rest of the country: don’t start with ideals. We work within an existing from the ferry systems that connected with the planning process.” Later that day, a few years transcontinental railroad to the bridges across the before I left the field of city planning, I discussed Bay and Golden Gate to the BART system to the the word “iterative” with some friends and realized international airport some ways south of the city. it meant repetition. Because of the drought Mediterranean climate, It turns out that my experiences as a city planner water supplies are precarious and San Francisco in San Francisco reveal a larger phenomenon. For carved up huge watersheds on the peninsula and much of its brief history the city has been subject laid tunnels and pipes hundreds of miles in order to conflicts between proponents for large-scale to transport the precious liquid from as far as the plans and opposition against them, between glorious (and destroyed) Hetch Hetchy Valley in the blueprints for the city as a whole and ideas Sierra Nevada. stemming from narrower interests. Such conflicts Often, however, certain large-scale plans killed Daniel Burnham’s ambitious urban design masqueraded public benefits for personal gain or plan in 1906. Then it was the fault of individual ideological shortsightedness: those mid-century businesses. In recent times, it’s been individual urban renewal schemes at the Produce District and citizens. By the late 1970s, the era of post-war South of Market to evict “blighted” uses in favor of activist planning morphed into an epoch of activist upscale development; the vast network of freeways opposition and iterative planning. Alongside tax proposed by the State during the 1950s which cuts and government spending cuts, bold civic or ignored the reality that tiny San Francisco couldn’t infrastructural plans became part of San Francisco’s be treated like vast Los Angeles. past. The exhibition at SPUR, “Agents of Change: No wonder the recent reaction against visionary Civic Idealism and the Making of San Francisco” planning. San Francisco has long thought of itself examines a number of proposals to improve the as an assemblage of diverse individuals. The city urban environment since Gold Rush times. In exploded into existence during the Gold Rush, various eras—the freewheeling commercial city of when thousands of entrepreneurs from all over the the 19th century, the City Beautiful Movement, the world descended and famously crafted a culture of Regionalist Arts and Crafts Movement, Modernism, instant wealth and remarkable religious and ethnic Postmodernism and the contemporary turn tolerance. For a long time, the pursuit of wealth toward the environment—the development of San and happiness precluded civic visions — hence the Francisco has been propelled, yet often thwarted by historical absence of a world-quality newspaper, the difficulty we have in coming together around a library, or art museum. San Francisco also attracted collective urban vision. seekers and nonconformists — the romantics, For each great project that went forward, like artists, beatniks, revolutionaries, hippies, hipsters, John McLaren’s arboreal sculpting of Golden Gate computer nerds and activists that fill the city’s Park out of sand dunes, there are those stopped apartments each generation. Many of them turned dead in their tracks, like Willis Polk’s Beaux Arts their energies against big plans. John Muir and

36 Urbanist > June/July 2009 The very people who had tramped around By looking back critically at Europe in the postwar decades, who had become the era long lambasted by enamored with fine cuisine and strong coffee, were now supporting bans on eating and drinking neighborhood and preservation establishments because they supposedly upset activists, we might learn San Francisco’s “traditional mix of uses.” In this politically left-wing city you hear folks grumbling from its moments of blunt all the time that some new business or building thoughtlessness and yet be doesn’t fit in because it isn’t in keeping with tradition. inspired by its systematic spirit What might lie ahead? Since the descent of San Francisco planning into iteration was catalyzed to work toward a sensible, by the 1970s reaction to modernist urbanism, it’s sustainable and stunning urban my belief that any renaissance of planning must confront modernism’s successes and failures. vision of our own. At its worst moments, modernism had a way of steamrolling everything in its path and of the past and showing no regard for the preservation the late 19th-century struggle to save the Sierras of older buildings with architectural or historical and their forests dovetails into the battle of four significance. But at its best moments, modernism women who fought to Save the Bay in the 1960s. rigorously and originally reworked the complexities San Francisco’s famous neighborhood groups were of urban space, form, and living, bringing together themselves forged in struggle, first battling freeways what was happening locally with international and later turning their ire against urban renewal and economic, social and technological currents. Today, the “Manhattanization” of downtown. in the midst of the worst economic crisis since By the 1980s, the very notion of change itself the Great Depression and facing the catastrophic landed on the chopping block. Activists who had specter of global warming, bold moves are needed fought the Vietnam War, nuclear power and DDT, once more. I’m not advocating that we pick up began opposing just about any transformation to where mid-century modernism left off. Rather, by their beloved city. Disenchanted with the political looking back critically at the era long lambasted by direction taken by much of the country after the neighborhood and preservation activists, we might Reagan Revolution, the activists fought chain learn from its moments of blunt thoughtlessness stores, big box stores (even those that offered and yet be inspired by its systematic spirit to work hardware goods like Home Depot), skyscrapers, toward a sensible, sustainable and stunning urban contemporary architecture, increased density vision of our own. Who knows, maybe the folks in and, you guessed it, streets filled with cafes and Noe Valley will wake up and start to see far beyond Y restaurants. their fears of streets with no parking spaces.

36 Urbanist > June/July 2009 Urbanist > June/July 2009 37 06/07.09 th o e m derns Progress intentionally planned: Telesis and the Modernist agenda

Peter Allen is an The Telesis exhibit of 1940, “A Space for larger, more significant audience. urban historian, Living,” was a seminal event in the history of The programs of the New Deal, and the contacts and a Ph.D. city planning in the Bay Area. At the time, San made there, played a critical role in the evolution candidate at Francisco was one of the few major US cities of Telesis. Kent took his first planning job at the the UC Berkeley without an independent professional city planning Berkeley regional office of the National Resources College of department. Planning ideas were dispersed among Planning Board. Violich joined the New Deal’s Environmental smaller agencies and neighborhood institutions, Farm Security Administration, a program to provide Design. and the public had little understanding of the city housing to migrant workers and dust bowl refugees. planning profession. The Telesis exhibit would help At the FSA, Violich united with Vernon DeMars change all this, making the argument for strong, and Garret Eckbo. Eckbo’s work at the FSA and centralized planning, as reflected in the definition involvement with Telesis led him to recognize the of the group’s name: “progress intelligently planned “importance of social issues in landscape design.”2 and directed.”1 (Figure 3) DeMars, who would go on to be one of 1 Fran Violich, “Notes from a Telesis Study: The show opened at the San Francisco Museum the Bay Area’s most important postwar architects, Environmental Design of Art on June 29, 1940. Over the next several also spent time at the Rural Resettlement Agency, and Planning in the San Francisco Bay Region months, the exhibit brought in over 10,000 where he met Corwin Mocine and brought him 1939-1953” (November San Francisco residents to view the promise of into Telesis. Mocine was a landscape architect, but 1976), 4. comprehensive urban planning (Figures 1-2). Telesis turned him into a life-long planner. 2 Garrett Eckbo, Almost all Bay Area civic leaders and governmental Meanwhile, at the NRPB, Kent met Mellier (Mel) “Handwritten Notes,” in Garret Eckbo Archives, players attended the exhibit. The enthusiasm Scott, a journalist turned planner, and his wife Environmental Design soon led to the creation of a planning department Geraldine, a landscape architect. The connections Archives, University of California, Berkeley. in 1942, with Telesis members as its first staff with Telesis convinced Mel that, “housing was members. After the short, ineffective tenure of L. only one aspect of the urban environment and that 3 Mel Scott, “Telesis: 3 Promoting Good Design.” Deming Tilton as the first City Planning Director, planning was much more important.” The couple Telesis founder T.J. Kent would take over and craft was so impressed by Telesis they started a Los 4 On the Los Angeles exhibit, see “Dream San Francisco’s first general urban plan. Angeles branch and put on another exhibit, “Now City,” Time Magazine, The exhibit also inspired the San Francisco We Plan,” before they returned to the Bay Area for Nov. 10, 1941; “Now We 4 Plan,” California Arts and Housing Association to expand from housing reform the rest of their careers. Architecture (Nov. 1941), advocacy to a group concerned with city planning These, then, were the main founders of 17-21. overall, renaming itself the San Francisco Planning Telesis. By the summer of 1939 all were in the and Housing Association, which in turn, became Bay Area and all shared an interest in finding SPUR. new solutions to urban problems. They began meeting in various members’ apartments or The Telesis Membership architecture studios in the North Beach area. Their Telesis members were, for the most part, young membership quickly swelled to 40 at the time of architects or landscape architects, and perhaps the the exhibition, and over 100 thereafter. Numerous first generation of native Bay Area designers. Each other design professionals were regular members had adopted a broader concern for social problems or contributors, including William Wurster and during the depression and the New Deal, and Catherine Bauer. The most important long-term turned to planning to solve urban social problems. collaborator, however, was Kent and Violich’s first Perhaps the key image of the group’s beginnings supporter from 1939: Dorothy Erskine. Along is when Jack Kent and Violich set out in 1939 to with her husband Morse, Erskine was a leader in gather donations for the Space for Living exhibit, the San Francisco Housing Association. Erskine and their first stop was the home of Dorothy was a grass-roots catalyst, using her network of Erskine on Telegraph Hill. The meeting brought social and political connections to push for urban together two founding members of the group, and planning and renewal, before emerging as one of the key person that would help their group reach a the Bay Area’s most important environmentalists.

38 Urbanist > June/July 2009 Figure 1 (top): Sketch of Telesis Exhibit by John Dinwidde; Figure 2 (middle): Entry to the “A Space for Living” show. Fran Violich Collection, Visual Resources Center, College of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley; Figure 3 (bottom): Eckbo and Clementine Violich work on the 1940 Space for Living Exhibit. San Francisco Chronicle, July 30, 1940.

38 Urbanist > June/July 2009 Urbanist > June/July 2009 39 Figures 4 and Erskine immediately used her important moved on and were largely no longer involved. 5: Sketches by connections to make an impact for Telesis and Years later, Kent would note in a speech Vernon DeMars ensured that many San Francisco political leaders reviewing the history of Telesis that the solutions for the 1940 ex- attended the 1940 exhibit, and linked them to for public housing that Telesis had advocated hibition contrast future financial and professional supporters. did not prove to be good solutions, and they had current blight with modern never solved the slum housing issue. As Kent later architecture and Teis les and urban renewal described it, the eventual exposure of the “fatal, urban design.) The Space for Living exhibit presented anti-social flaws in central-city redevelopment A Space for architectural ideas such as the superblock, firmly programs” revealed their own “professional Living Show. grounded in the ideas of le Corbusier and the shortcomings.”7 Fran Violich Congress of International Modernism. In their first Collection, Visual Resources exhibit, Telesis declared that the “neighborhood T he Greenbelt and Center, College unit and super-block treatment will lend economic Regional Planning of Environmental stability and safer, richer, living.”5 Sketches While urban renewal represents the darker Design, UC by DeMars at the exhibit drew a sharp visual realization of the Telesis philosophy, the fight Berkeley. distinction between images of “urban blight,” and to preserve open space, though also only the clarity and order of the modernist designs that accomplished only in fragments, remains a brighter

5 “Telesis: The Group and could replace them. (Figures 4-5). achievement. It is important to note, however, that the First Exhibit, 1940,” In 1947, T. J. Kent hired Mel Scott to prepare Telesis saw urban renewal and preserving open in T.J. Kent Archives, The Bancroft Library, a report exploring the possibilities of urban space as related urban problems. To stop suburban University of California, redevelopment in the racially mixed neighborhood expansion and save the open space, downtown Berkeley. of the Western Addition. The report advocated that must be saved. The same vision that brought urban 6 Mel Scott, “Western the San Francisco Board of Supervisors designate renewal to the region’s dense urban populations of Addition District,” 3. the Western Addition as a “redevelopment area,” minorities, also sought to protect the region’s rural 7 T.J. Kent, “A History of and establish a San Francisco Redevelopment open space, all while ignoring the creation of the the Department of City Agency. In the report, Scott wrote of “wide stretches region’s spaces of intense pollution concentrated in and Regional Planning,” in Lowney and D. Landis, of urban blight are breeding grounds for crime other minority neighborhoods. Fifty Years of City and and delinquency, cancerous growths that threaten The Telesis 1940 exhibit asked: “The medieval Regional Planning at UC 6 Berkeley, 3. the vitality of the city.” (Figure 6) Kent, Violich, city could have a greenbelt, why not the modern and DeMars, along with other Telesis members metropolis?” Open spaces, Telesis argued, were all went on to play a role in the Western Addition being threatened by “a new kind of urban growth.” redevelopment, though by the 1950s they had The exhibit argued for a large part of the city to

40 Urbanist > June/July 2009 Figure 6: Cover of Mel Scott’s New City: San Francisco Redeveloped, showing the Western Addition Redevelopment zone.

be dedicated to open green spaces for the health planning agency was the only true solution for of urban citizens: “Why not bring the agricultural planning urban growth, preserving greenbelts, and greenbelt to the rescue of our cities.”8 Moreover the solving regional transportation issues. 8 “Telesis: The Group and the First Exhibit, 1940,” T.J. group argued that open spaces and the greenbelt The 1940 exhibition tied the founding of Telesis Kent Archives, The Bancroft would serve to control urban sprawl, funneling it to the need for regional government, writing that Library, University of California, Berkeley. See also, Corwin into denser, compact cities and towns. because the lack of strong regional government Mocine, “Planning for the By the mid-twentieth century, a majority of “exists in our region,” we “young men and women region, in California Arts and citizens lived within metropolitan regions, but these in the related professions of architecture, city and Architecture (April 1941). regions were greatly fragmented among various regional planning, landscape architecture and 9 “Telesis: The Group and the governments. In the Bay Area of the 1940s, this industrial design, have come together and formed First Exhibit, 1940,” T.J. Kent Archives. had resulted in over 100 local governments making this group — Telesis.”9 Through the regional separate land use decisions. While the functions agency, Telesis aimed to guide “the vast upcoming 10 T.J. Kent, quoted in Violich, “The Planning Pioneers,” 34. of daily urban life increasingly took place across development toward fresh environmental patterns,” the metropolitan region, government functions to “organize growth so it would not destroy the were organized as if each city were an isolated integrity of Bay Area cities.”10 (Figure 7) and sovereign island. Anticipating the calls of Bay In 1941, Telesis was already work on a Bay Area Area environmentalists and progressive planners in Regional Planning Commission Proposal, and a the postwar period, Telesis argued that a regional second exhibit of 1941 entitled “Regional Planning

40 Urbanist > June/July 2009 Urbanist > June/July 2009 41 Figure 7: Regional Planning demonstrated at the 1940 exhibit, “A Space for Living” show. Fran Violich Collection, Visual Resources Center, College of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley.

for the Next Million People,” was intended to renewal advocacy, they continued to fight for show regular citizens all the regional activities they regional planning and the urban greenbelt. Kent, engaged in during their daily lives, and connect that along with Dorothy Erksine, founded the Citizens for to the need for regional planning. Corwin Mocine Regional Parks and Open Space, the first open- brought the Telesis position for regional planning space advocacy group in the area, which evolved to the pages of California Arts and Architecture into People for Open Space, and into today’s in 1941. Grasping the kernel of a problem that Greenbelt Alliance. Kent and his group played a has plagued planners for over half-a-century large role in steering the regional agency that did now, Mocine wrote that while the increased use emerge, the Association of Bay Area Governments, of the private automobile sapped support for into a defender of greenbelts. Likewise, under rail transportation, it soon created highways so prodding from Erskine, Scott published in 1963 congested that people would turn back to rapid his study, The Future of San Francisco Bay, which transit, only to find that due to lack of support, that described in horrifying terms for the Bay Area public service was now inadequate. “We,” Mocine wrote, the potential diminishing of the Bay through landfill “find ourselves caught in a chain of circumstances and shoreline development. The book provided 11 Corwin Mocine, that grows steadily more costly.”11 the foundation for civic activism that the Save the “Planning for the Bay trio of Catherine Kerr, Esther Gulick and Sylvia Region,” California Arts and Architecture, The continued legacy McLaughlin used to pass the legislation creating (April 1941), 23. of Telesis the Bay Area Conservation and Development Telesis would continue to advocate for regional Commission (BCDC), the agency that has protected planning in their 1950 exhibit, “The Next Million the Bay ever since. People,” at San Francisco Museum of Art, which The Telesis 1940 exhibit shows that we have would be their last. World War II and the drastic been arguing against sprawl and proposing smart increase in the Bay Area’s defense industries growth as a solution for over 60 years. Yet still the had dramatically changed the region, bringing debate goes on, centered on the same issues and tremendous growth. Telesis members were proposing the same solutions, while continuing absorbed into the mainstream of the increasing to ignore the implicit questions of race and the professionalized planning environment, taking jobs unequal geography of environmental protection. The in planning departments or teaching in Berkeley’s Telesis vision of 1940 was one never fully adopted, Department of City and Regional Planning, founded but its partial realization underscores some of the under the leadership of Telesis members. Bay Area’s most troubled — and most loved — While Telesis members abandoned urban urban spaces. Y

42 Urbanist > June/July 2009 06/07.09 mis us ng R eflections on preservation: How the past became the future

In 1958 when John Woodbridge and I Around this time the preservation movement Sally B. arrived in San Francisco from the east coast, was sparked by the loss of major historical Woodbridge is architectural preservation was limited to buildings buildings. Two examples follow: a writer, critic of the Hispanic colonial era and the Gold Rush. If ever a building had such significance and architectural Influenced by Modernism, the younger generation that it was certain to be preserved, it was the historian based of architects dismissed buildings of the late Montgomery Block, which stood on the southeast in Berkeley, Victorian period as the fanciful ornament known as corner of the intersection of Montgomery and California. “gingerbread”. Washington Streets where the Transamerica We wanted to see the houses designed by Building now stands. Montgomery Street was then William Wurster, Gardner Daily and others, which at the edge of the Bay. had appeared in the architectural magazines. But Erected in 1853 by Henry Wager Halleck, where were they? There were no guides, and even the four-story Montgomery Block, designed in a if the houses had been published, their locations restrained Classical style, had 28 ground-floor were not given. commercial spaces and 150 offices on the upper We learned that Wurster’s office had made a floors. The innovative part of the building, a huge map showing its work and that of other architects. raft of lattice-laid redwood logs, was designed by With a worn copy of the map — it was printed Halleck, who had studied civil engineering at West on blueprint paper and wasn’t easy to read — we Point. Bolted together in an excavated basement, explored the Bay Area’s modern buildings with the raft foundation permitted the building to enthusiasm. We entertained the thought of writing float as a unit during an earthquake rather than a guidebook to Bay Area architecture for others like breaking apart. This strategy was validated when ourselves. the building survived the 1906 earthquake When planning began for the 1960 AIA undamaged. convention, we were asked to create a guide for The lawyers and financiers who were the the attendees. The three members of the AIA building’s original tenants left when the financial committee who reviewed our selection of buildings world moved south on Montgomery. They were were William Wurster, who was also Dean of succeeded by actors, artists and writers, among the UC Berkeley Department of Architecture, them Jack London, George Sterling, Lola Montez Ernest Born, a faculty member and Elizabeth and Mark Twain. Called “The Monkey Block,” the Thompson, an architectural journalist. In general, building was an important bohemian center from they approved of our selections, but they drew the the 1890s to the 1940s. But in the post-World line at extending the range of historic buildings to War II decade its population declined along with include stands of the exuberant late 19th century its appearance and status so that when the land houses we had come to appreciate. What was later greatly increased in value, its demolition was celebrated as San Francisco’s “painted ladies” was proposed. considered tawdry and best left out of print. Although preservation had gained an audience, Although previous conventions gave out it was small and not organized to oppose a huge printed pamphlets and maps of their architectural real estate investment. The Montgomery Block attractions, these were not sold in bookstores. was demolished in 1959 and replaced by the Since our little $l.95 book, Buildings of the Bay Transamerica Building, which is now a city icon but Area, was the first nationally published architectural lacks the level of cultural history the Montgomery guidebook, it could be sold — theoretically. But the Block accumulated. local bookstores didn’t know where to display the Another early battle the fledgling preservationists book. At Stacy’s in downtown San Francisco the lost was over the Murphy family house in guidebook was shelved with engineering textbooks Sunnyvale. The city wanted the land for a park and in the back of the store. We never knew if any opposed spending money to preserve the house, copies were sold. which was perceived to be a “white elephant.”

42 Urbanist > June/July 2009 Urbanist > June/July 2009 43 Martin Murphy and members of his family and Finally, the public outrage over this friends traveled across the continent in 1844 and indiscriminant destruction and social injustice grew became ranchers in the Sacramento valley and so strong that the demolition of buildings in the the southern part of the San Francisco peninsula Western Addition’s A-2 area, which surrounded where they founded Sunnyvale. The family house the newly built core of housing and commercial was carefully designed, but since there were no buildings occupied by the re-located Japanese- sawmills near Sunnyvale, the house was framed Americans, was delayed and then discontinued. according to specifications in Bangor, Maine, and The hiatus allowed a group of volunteers organized then shipped in sections around Cape Horn to by Augustan Keane, a lawyer who lived in Alameda Sunnyvale where it was erected around 1850. but had his office in San Francisco, to survey the As with other wooden buildings of the times, the A-2 area. Our group walked the blocks of late structure was held together with wooden pegs and 19th century buildings, wrote descriptions of them leather straps instead of nails. and took photographs. We then turned the survey Although the Murphy house was a California results over to the Redevelopment Agency for what State Historical Landmark and arguably as we hoped would be a reconsideration of the plans significant as the houses of other early settlers, for the A-2 area. A formal acknowledgment of our its demolition by the City of Sunnyvale in work was all we received. Still, the demolition 1961 met with little opposition. Yet, evidence ended, and in the 1970s and 1980s the so-called of the growth of the preservation movement in Victorian style was rehabilitated to become the succeeding decades can be seen in the creation city’s pride and joy. The Redevelopment Agency of the Sunnyvale Historical Museum, opened even sent us a commendation for our efforts in the in September 2008, which celebrates the 1980s. contributions of the Murphy family. A replica of the The movement grew. In the 20th century’s Murphy House was built on an adjacent property closing decades, the past became the future. as a kind of apology for the destruction of the most In 1979 I was appointed to the California State important surviving artifact of the city’s pioneering Historical Resources Commission and served as its past. architectural historian until 1984. The commission Although the demolition of buildings of met four times a year to review applications for architectural and historic value had begun to nominations of buildings and historic districts to the energize preservationists, urban renewal was National Register of Historic Places. the real catalyst for the movement. When Justin As we toured the state and listened to the Herman became the director of the San Francisco people who attended our meetings and spoke Redevelopment Agency in 1959, his political and in favor or against the various designations, it administrative skills transformed the previously became apparent to me that in both large and unremarkable agency into a virtual bulldozer of the small cities many of the advocates for the creation city’s underprivileged neighborhoods. of historic districts in their downtowns were not so While urban renewal held sway from the 1960s motivated by the architectural significance of the to the mid-1970s, its visible effects empowered the district’s buildings as by the threat to the familiar preservation movement. In 1976 the celebration built environment by proposed new development. of the country’s Bi-Centennial directed public Justifications for registering ordinary buildings attention to the past and its vanishing treasures. became more elaborate and often linked to the As neighborhood populations were dislocated accumulation of history rather than whether the and their buildings razed urban renewal became buildings retained the appearance of their time. In known as urban removal. The Golden Gateway other words the debt to the past began to weigh replaced the produce district near more than the promise of the future. The Embarcadero between Jackson and Clay Where are we now? With the bursting of the Streets, the Yerba Buena redevelopment area south latest financial bubble, the absence of development of Market Street removed blocks of small hotels has brought awareness of how much our economy and boarding houses along with their blue collar depends on it to provide jobs. Since the recession residents, and the Western Addition Areas 1 and has lowered the pressure on both sides of the 2 demolished the late 19th century houses development/preservation equation, this time of occupied by the African-American population inactivity could be devoted to the kind of even- that replaced the Japanese-Americans who had handed planning that would mitigate future battles been relocated from their homes and businesses by evaluating the benefits of both. Y during World War II.

44 Urbanist > June/July 2009 06/07.09 eye s on the street City of plans (City of experiences) in history

Being human is itself difficult, and therefore all good contradiction, writes, “it is the latest chapter Jeannene kinds of settlements (except dream cities) have in that old San Francisco debate — do we want Przyblyski is an problems. Big cities have difficulties in abundance, to freeze every structure in the city in time and artist, historian because they have people in abundance. But vital never allow a developer to build anything new, and professor at cities are not helpless to combat even the most or do we need to accept the fact that every bay the San Francisco difficult of problems. They are not passive victims window isn't a work of art?”1 Art Institute. of chains of circumstances, any more than they are The question of how we hold on to the best of malignant opposite of nature. a city — architecturally, historically, as a matter Thanks to Amy — Jane Jacobs1 of quality of the urban experience and quality of Ress for her help life — is deeply bound to the question of how cities in researching As I sit down to write this essay, an article change, and in particular the tension between this article.

in the San Francisco Chronicle reports on recent “preservation” and “development.” It may seem 1 The Death and Life of legislation championed by former Supervisor Aaron easier to recognize what is good about a city after Great American Cities (Modern Library, 1961), Peskin intended to make it easier to designate it has withstood some test of time — to mourn p. 447. historic landmarks and districts. The columnist its passing if it fell under the wrecking ball (as C. V. Nevius, who loves nothing better than a whole swaths of San Francisco neighborhoods South Park on Rincon Hill began as the upscale neighborhood for the wealthy San Franciscans. When the Pacific Heights neighborhood blossomed, the upper class moved west and notions of an elegant South Park left with them. Photo: South Park, San Francisco 1867. History Center, San Francisco Public Library.

44 Urbanist > June/July 2009 Urbanist > June/July 2009 45 One Rincon But that’s just one set of perceived dichotomies, may turn out and reflects one set of perceptions about whose to be a relic development or preservation initiative comes of the Rincon at whose expense? For whom is housing Hill revival plan as the only preserved or developed: empty nesters or skyscraper of extended families? How about recreational the bunch to space? Does the city need more meandering be built pre- promenades for solitary strolling and biking, or economic bust. more picnic tables and soccer fields? Do human-scale gingerbread Victorians appeal to your sense of a cosy urban domesticity, or does a spare and soaring modernist architecture affirm your commitment to urban vitality and the promise of an urban future? Typically, most comprehensive planning, like most grand narratives about cities, starts with the bird’s eye perspective or overview, which tends to smooth out the contradictions of life on the ground. But for me, it’s at street-level, where all the crooked edges of individual initiatives and just life-in-general align and misalign with successive generations of administrative and prescriptive zoning, urban design plans and other measures, that a city is most particularly itself and most interesting. Here are just a few places in San Francisco where it’s worth walking around to see for yourself how ideas and plans about what a city has been, is, and might be are being put to the test of everyday experience. have done), or to marvel at particularly tenacious examples of survival (one of my special favorites Ldan s End is Klockar’s Blacksmith Shop on Rincon Hill). Indeed, although in my travels I saw very good Development, too, impacts architectural quality, sites and beautiful country, I saw none which quality of experience, quality of life, and capacity pleased me so much as this. And I think that if to attain historical significance, and is intended to it could be well settled like Europe there would do so with foresight rather than in hindsight when not be anything more beautiful in all the world, channeled through initiatives to plan and manage for it has the best advantages for founding in it change in the city according to current thinking on a most beautiful city, with all the conveniences what, exactly, makes a “great city.” desired, by land as well as by sea, with that harbor But here’s the rub: few of the qualities that so remarkable and so spacious, in which may be make a great city are easy to define, nor is it established shipyards, docks, and anything that particularly easy to obtain consensus around them. might be wished. 2 Herbert, Eugene Many of these qualities are subject to prevailing 2 Bolton, Font’s Complete — Fray Pedro Font Diary: a Chronicle of the fashion, especially when the nexus between Founding of San Francisco visionary master planning, development energy (University of California, When the Anza expedition was dispatched 1933), p. 341 (March 27, and new technology (whether cars or computers) by the Spanish colonial government in Mexico 1776). For more on this is especially strong. Ideas about “livability” and area, see the excellent to open up a land route to Alta California, they website at www.pier70sf. “quality of life,” never mind architectural or basically came up northbound 280. What’s org (accessed May 3, design quality, are all pretty subjective and deeply 2009). more, they made their way from native American inflected by who you are and where you see village to village, bartering small goods for food yourself in the economic and cultural pecking and directions. When they reached what would order. Nevius goes on to report that Peskin’s become San Francisco in 1776, the 240 “settlers” proposed legislation seems destined to pit doubled the non-native population of the region. middle-aged white preservation enthusiasts Meanwhile, the native population stood at well over against “young, disadvantaged people of color 300,000. The northwestern edge of the peninsula who are trying to carve out a life in the city.” was a favorite place of the Ohlone. A freshwater

46 Urbanist > June/July 2009 Photo: One Rincon 2009 by Amy Ress spring made a good place for an encampment, and in their own right (the Pier is a favorite site for a midden still stands to prove the abundance of guerilla-style installations by the graduate students shellfish and game. of the San Francisco Art Institute whose studios Since then, “Lands End” has been the site are located in the nearby American Can building), of pleasure grounds and railroads, military but we will lose something essential about “what fortifications and forestation efforts (first under the made San Francisco work” if we fail to address Works Progress Administration and now under the the potential of this area with imagination and National Park Service and Golden Gate National resourcefulness. Parks Conservancy). It has seen shipwrecks and trainwrecks, love stories and tragedies. Recently Civic Center Lands End has been refurbished to provide a newly Arthur Brown Jr.’s City Hall, opened in 1915, elegant urban promenade along this particularly is San Francisco’s beaux-arts crown jewel and wild stretch of coastline. If you stand where you emblematic of the City Beautiful movement that can look across the Bay to the Marin Headlands, held sway in city planning circles around the you can see what San Francisco looked like when turn of the century. Beautifully restored under Father Font arrived (it was mostly tree-less, coastal the administration of Mayor Willie L. Brown Jr. scrub dunes and hills), even as the San Francisco (although not without some predictable controversy he imagined is at your back. And standing there, over cost and Mayor Brown’s “imperial” tendencies), you can think about what was gained and lost the interior provides a stately civic setting for the when this shining city came into being in what very public rough-and-tumble of San Francisco was already one of the most densely populated politics, and the very personal relationship of citizen areas in North America even before the Europeans to government, whether it be negotiated by casting arrived on the scene. a ballot, getting married or paying property taxes. The same cannot be said of the grand plaza Dogpatch/Central that fronts City Hall to the east. Its fortunes have Waterfront waxed and waned with the decades, efforts to The shipyards and docks that Father Font resolve its design in constant tension with more imagined came to life on the Central Waterfront, pressing needs and uses, whether it be space for among other places, where they now stand mostly a city festival or block party, temporary military in ruins. Industry was a vital part of San Francisco’s barracks during World War II or symbolic homeless history from the Gold Rush through World War II, encampments during the economic downturn and waves of newcomers worked in the cordage of the 1980s, let alone the excavation of the factory, steel rolling mills and shipbuilding yards, underground parking garage that disrupted its slept in boarding houses and shanties, and original beaux-arts plan. But here’s the thing: it’s unwound in the saloons and bars where among the very unremarkableness of the plaza, anchored other entertainments, boxing matches were offered by the exceptional backdrop of City Hall’s soaring, to burn off steam. The old place names of the gilded dome, that makes it such a flexible space Central Waterfront carry their memory — present- for ongoing experiments in civic-mindedness, day Dogpatch was known as Dutchman’s Flat (a whether it be through the wide range of recent few rows of working-class scaled Victorians survive public art projects (everything from Burning Man on Tennessee and Minnesota Streets, their compact to Patrick Dougherty), the installation of an organic plainness a useful contrast to the more ornate “victory” garden to celebrate the contemporary Victorians the upwardly-mobile built in other parts ethos of sustainability or the construction of an of the City). The serpentine outcropping in the experimental green building. Civic Center Plaza can current PG&E yard at 22nd and Illinois is all that be a laboratory for defining who we are and who remains of “Irish Hill” (most of the rest of it was we want to be precisely because it has defeated chipped away to infill Mission Bay).3 most efforts to make it precious and frozen in time 3 C. V. Nevius, “’Historic Preservation’ Plan Won’t Heavy industry doesn’t seem to fit so well into — even as it stands in relation to one of our most Save S.F.,” San Francisco San Francisco’s future. The ship repair business deeply symbolic historic buildings. Chronicle (April 30, 2009). goes on, but most jobs in the area have transitioned to light industry or no industry at all. As the Rio nc n Hill biotech campus of Mission Bay grows to the north, Rincon Hill started out posh. South Park was and the Third Street Light Rail wears a slow but developed as an English-style Hyde Park to inexorable groove of gentrification through the area, be ringed with the 19th-century equivalent of the question of what to do with historic Pier 70 McMansions. It never got finished as envisioned, remains. Urban ruins hold a certain fascination and instead Rincon entered the long period of its

46 Urbanist > June/July 2009 Urbanist > June/July 2009 47 Photo: One Rincon 2009 by Amy Ress Irish Hill once housed the industrial working class of San Francisco, a residential neighborhood amongst the factories and shipyards. Few remnants of the Irish Hill neighborhood remain, let alone the hill itself (as seen here). Nowadays the area is called Mission Bay, and instead of ship builders, the biotech industry reigns.

48 Urbanist > June/July 2009 Photos: (Top) Irish Hill with Union Iron Works in background, 1890s. San Francisco Maritime Museum Library. 5 May 2009, www.pier70sf.org; (Bottom) Contemporary Irish Hill 2008 by Ruth Keffer (Top) Public artist Patrick Dougherty’s installation in Civic Center Plaza demonstrates the Plaza’s flexibility. Here, it acts as a stage for playful nest sculptures, but on another day it works equally well hosting political protests. (Bottom) Victory gardens of 1943, like the U.S. barracks that covered Civic Center Plaza during World War II, demonstrate the Plaza's function as a space of necessity. , 2009 by Amy Ress; (Bottom) Temporary Barracks at Civic Center Plaza, August 1943. 21, Courtesy San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.

The Upper Crust

48 Urbanist > June/July 2009 Urbanist > June/July 2009 49 Photos: (Top) Patrick Dougherty, Photos: (Top) Irish Hill with Union Iron Works in background, 1890s. San Francisco Maritime Museum Library. 5 May 2009, www.pier70sf.org; (Bottom) Contemporary Irish Hill 2008 by Ruth Keffer W herever you may be standing, right now I began walking my own city’s streets as a teenager and walked them so long that both they and I changed, the desperate pacing of adolescence when the present seemed an eternal ordeal giving way to the musing walks and innumerable errands of someone no longer wound up so tight, so isolated, so poor, and my walks have now often become review of my own and the city’s history together. Vacant lots become new buildings, old geezer bars are taken over by young hipsters, the Castro’s discos become vitamin stores, whole streets and neighborhoods change their complexion. Even my own neighborhood has changed so much it sometimes seems as though I have moved two or three times from the raucous corner I started out on just before I turned twenty.

4 4 Lands End — Rebecca Solnit Wanderlust: A History of “decline.” Mansions around South Park gave way to Walking (Viking, 2000), has long been rooming houses and bodegas, the nearby Sailor’s p. 194. a treasured Union of the Pacific functioned as job hall and The give and take between the old and new city spot, dating hangout for merchant seaman (offering among other doesn’t stop with these places. It can be found back to large amenities a barbershop, bar and boxing ring), and all around San Francisco, as much a product of Native American individual narratives as of official histories, with as settlements in anchored the “Battle of Rincon Hill” when workers the area. Here, confronted police during the 1934 waterfront many starting points as there are new arrivals to a view of the strike. The various approaches to the Bay Bridge the city, as many trajectories as there are human Presidio and have brought periodic gridlock and little pockets desires, as many missed opportunities as there are Marin Headlands of no man’s land. For a brief moment in the early unfinished city plans, as many lucky breaks as any in the distance nineties, South Park came back into prominence developer’s dream. in 1815. as the newly fashionable ground zero for the dot. So…pick a place where you feel fully present com boom. With the bust, it slipped once again into and fully acknowledged in the City — maybe it’s benignly hip obscurity. your house or apartment, where you walk your And then increasing demand for housing dog or get your morning coffee or hang out after combined with new ideas about urban densification work; maybe it’s wheeling down the bike lane on to focus new attention on Rincon. Putting towers Valencia, finding the first spring Clarkias blooming on San Francisco hills was already somewhat of on Tank Hill, barbecuing in the Great Meadow at a tradition. The Rincon Hill Plan would transform Golden Gate Park, marching in a protest down the area’s spotty patchwork of aging, low-density Market Street. Maybe it’s shopping at the Alemany housing, aging industrial buildings and aging Farmer’s Market or the one at the Ferry Building or infrastructure into a visionary new neighborhood Civic Center or Divisadero and Grove. Maybe it’s of residential skyscrapers carefully spaced the alcove where you got married at City Hall. Think amongst pedestrian-friendly thoroughfares offering about the things worth saving about San Francisco, neighborhood-serving amenities. In 2007, the the things that need changing, the things that seem Chronicle declared that in five or maybe ten years, to change no matter what. Check back in three old San Franciscans wouldn’t recognize this part years. In five years. In ten years. And remember Y of town. Only one tower got built before the 2008 how the City’s history became your own. global economic meltdown put most plans on hold. For now, the 641-foot tall One Rincon stands alone on the south-of-Market skyline, serving as an accidental monument to an idea of city-building “Vancouver-style” that may have come a little too late to San Francisco, or at least a monument to San Francisco’s ongoing commitment to mixing a lively debate about the city’s future direction with a healthy skepticism about making any plans at all.

50 Urbanist > June/July 2009 Photo: Louis Choris, Vue du Presidio de San Francisco, courtesy c. 1815, of The Bancroft Library University of California, Berkeley Welcome to 06/07.09 lettef r rom the board of directors our new members!

I nDIVIDUALS Rachel Malchow Why I gave to the Bernadine Adams Yolanda Manzone Welcome to the Urban Center Harvey Allen Jesse Martinez Community Campaign for Alex Amoroso Richard McDerby Greg Andreas Mark Miller the SPUR Urban Center William Andrews Megan Miller David N. Arnav Lena Miyamoto Monica Arriola Andre Morand Richard A. Sucre, Betsy Baum Mary L. Murphy On behalf of the SPUR Board of Directors, we Fast forward 50 years, to the present moment. Noah Beil Francesca Napolitan Associate/Architectural Historian, would like to extend a warm welcome to all of you We are in a period of what can only be called “heavy Terry Betterly Bernard Niechlanski Page + Turnbull and proud urbanist David Boesch Ruairi O’Connell — our hard-working members and supporters — to lifting.” While the economy of the world is thrashing Geoff Bomba Paul O’Driscoll the SPUR Urban Center. Some of you are long-time around us, we are doing our best at SPUR to keep Margaret Brodkin Larry Orman supporters who have been in the SPUR family for planning and governance in this city and region on Darcy Brown Brian Overland “ I love the neighborhoods and thrive on the vitality of cities! Shelly Brown Marcia Packlick years, even decades, witnesses to the growth and track. And if that isn’t hard enough, we are also Erin Burg Hupp Matt Pagel change that have defined both our organization and working on the final stages of raising $4 million more I gave because I believe in SPUR’s mission, and realize that Caitlin Cameron Michael A. Pearce this great city and region we call home. to finish our capital campaign in a soft economy. the Urban Center is much needed in our community.” Joe Castorena Katie Pethan Others of you are new members. Perhaps you That said, we also find ourselves in a time of Ryan Chamberlain Karolina Pormanczuk Claire Cheng Carrie Portis joined because you value SPUR’s unparalleled great opportunity and excitement. On the national We need your support to help us reach our $18 million capital campaign goal. Zaheen Chowdhury Leslie Pritchett research in local and regional policy matters and want level, we are seeing the re-emergence of a strong Please consider making your gift ­— of any amount — today! Call Sarah Sykes at Christopher Colvin Adina Ringler to support our in-depth policy work. Perhaps you urban agenda after decades of policies supporting 415.781.8726 x123 for more information. Mark Conrad Cygridh Rooney want to learn more from our excellent publications and subsidizing unregulated suburban expansion. Kelly Corter Kelly Peter Sahmel Holly Dabral Tanu Sankalia and exhibitions in the Urban Center. Or maybe you’re Locally and regionally, we have made great progress Raymond del Portillo Brian Sauer a Young Urbanist, a member of our fastest growing in sustainable planning (with the recent passage of Todd Dell’Aquila Alisa Shen membership group. SB 375, California’s anti-sprawl bill) and investing in Earl Diskin Tatyana Sheyner Dina Dobkin Steven Shum regional transportation (securing over $9 billion in the SPUR Board of Directors C hairs and committees However long you’ve been in the SPUR community Michael Eiseman Heidi Sieck — and for whatever reason — the Urban Center is for last election for a high-speed rail system and moving Benjamin Sisson Co-Chairs Board Members John Madden Program Doyle Drive Earned Revenue Kristine Enea Vanessa Eng Robert Stevenson you. Thank you and welcome. We could not think of a forward with planning for the Transbay Terminal). We Andy Barnes Michael Alexander Jacinta McCann Committees Amanda Bill Stotler Courtney Fink William Strawn more fitting way to celebrate SPUR’s 50th anniversary, have also made great strides in local climate change Tom Hart Jim Andrew Jr. Mary McCue Hoenigman Ballot Analysis Executive Alison Fish Masako Martha and an even longer tradition of citizen involvement in policy, planning for a major earthquake and furthering John McNulty Eph Hirsh Suzuki David Baker Bob Gamble Andy Barnes Cecilia Fisher improving San Francisco. the smart growth agenda by channeling jobs into Executive Peter Winkelstein Michael Flaherman Andy Szybalski Fred Blackwell Chris Meany Peter Mezey downtown employment centers. Director Finance William Fleissig Starr Terrell Lee Blitch Ezra Mersey Greg Wagner SB 375 Gabriel Metcalf Terry Micheau Kathryn Fowler Julie Trachtenberg The opening of the Urban Center is perhaps the Zooming in even further — to SPUR’s new Margo Bradish Peter Mezey Andy Barnes Disaster Planning Nicole Franklin Paul Travis biggest change for the organization since the San headquarters in the Yerba Buena district — we are Pamela Brewster Leroy Morishita Tay Via Major Donors Adrienne Frieden Scott Truitt Urban Center Jacinta McCann Francisco Planning and Housing Association — a looking forward to an expansion of the organization’s Laurence Burnett Dick Morten Linda Jo Fitz Jessica Garcia Derek Turner Director Dick Morten citizens group founded in 1910 by Alice Griffith, Dr. platform for good policy, and an increase in our ability Michaela Cassidy Tomiquia Moss Brian O’Neill Marjorie Gelin Elaine Uang Diane Filippi Chris Poland Op erating Rebecca Glyn Dennis Vermeulen Emilio Cruz Mary Murphy Langley Porter and others to advocate for decent to reach and engage with a broader audience. In the Committees Individual Gail Goldyne Rene Vignos Housing housing conditions — was reorganized into SPUR in Urban Center, we will continue SPUR’s long-time Charmaine Curtis Paul Okamoto Membership Tommy Golen Willem Vroegh Vice-Chairs Ezra Mersey Audit 1959. tradition of lunchtime forums. We will also have Gia Daniller Brad Paul Bill Stotler Jawj Greenwald Randy Waldeck Lisa Feldstein Lydia Tan Peter Mezey That tradition of research and action continues exhibits, open to SPUR members and the general Kelly Dearman Tim Paulson Richard Gross Brian Walker Andy Barnes (top) Linda Jo Fitz Board Investment Penelope Grzebik Scott Walton Shelly Doran Chris Poland Project Review and Tom Hart are today, almost 100 years since the Association issued public, mounted in our new streetfront gallery. Please Bob Gamble Development Stanley Herzstein Kevin Hart Tony Wan Oz Erickson Teresa Rea Reuben Schwartz co-chairs of the its first report on anti-tenement reform, which led stop by to explore SPUR’s inaugural exhibition, “Agents Jim Salinas, Sr. Jim Andrew Julia Harter Jayson Wechter Luisa Ezquerro Byron Rhett Human Resources Michael Hicks Lisa Weiner to the State Tenement Act of 1911. The Association of Change: Civic Idealism and the Making of San Libby Seifel Sustainable Building SPUR Board of Linda Jo Fitz Bill Rosetti Anne Halsted Tina Hodgson Steve Wertheim Francisco.” The exhibition — also the focus of this Lyida Tan Development Management Directors. continued to be an active voice for housing concerns Josie Howard, M.D. Julie Whitcomb Norman Fong Victor Seeto Paul Okamoto Larry Burnett Silver SPUR through the next two decades, before they were joined special edition of the Urbanist — covers every major Justin Huang Christie White Frank Fudem Chi-Hsin Shao by Telesis — a passionate group of architects and urban planning movement in our city’s history. It tells Treasurer Bry Sarte Business David Hartley David Hunt Nicholas White Gillian Gillet Raphael Sperry Membership Patricia Klitgaard planners who saw better cities as the path toward a the story of how the San Francisco Bay Area came to Terry Micheau Transportation Devyani Jain Ruby Woo Chris Gruwell Bill Stotler Tom Hart Chris Jensen Dee Dee Workman Gillian Gillett Bay Discovery better society. In the 1950s, SFHA Director Dorothy be, and frames our current challenges in light of all Michael Teitz Terry Micheau Evelyn Johnson Robert Zirkle David Hartley Cruise Secretary Ellen Kaiser Jennifer Zweig Erskine founded Citizens for Regional Recreation and of the many successes — and failures — of previous Laurie Johnson Michael Theriault Jean Fraser Capital Campaign Claudine Cheng Richard Kim Parks (later renamed People for Open Space, and generations of urban planners and thinkers. James Tracy T ask Forces Ken Kirkey Chris Meany Teresa Rea Kassin Laverty businesses then Greenbelt Alliance), and started a movement At SPUR, we believe this knowledge of the past is Will Travis Central Subway Immediate Travis Kiyota Margaret Lee Crescent Heights Stephen Taber Young Urbanists to conserve regional open space by concentrating not just interesting and enlightening — but essential. Past Chair Patricia Klitgaard Jeff Tumlin Sonia Lehman-Frisch of America Gwyneth Borden Debra Leifer Lockton Insurance development in central cities. Led by Aaron Levine, It enables us to forge ahead with our own agenda by Vince Hoenigman Richard Kunnath Brooks Walker, III Downtown Gia Daniller John Leonard Brokers, LLC a planning expert from Philadelphia — and initially learning from the efforts of those who preceded us. Ellen Lou Debra Walker Transit Center Tim Leonoudakis Mechanics Bank Emilio Cruz funded by the Blyth-Zellerbach Committee — the We hope the exhibition answers many questions, but Advisory Council Janis Mackenzie Paul Zeger Jeremy Lizt Ryan Associates SFHA was re-organized into SPUR, and John Hirten that you leave with many more — and with some Co-Chairs Benjamin Lowe Verizon Wireless was hired as its first executive director in 1959. inspiration, perhaps, in becoming a present-day ‘agent Paul Sedway Ann Lyons William McDonough of change.’ Y Michael Wilmar Ian Maddison + Partners Nolan Madson

2 Urbanist > June/July 2009 Urbanist > June/July 2009 51 Issue 482 Agents of Change p5 Summer programming p26 Ironies of history p32 Planning in pieces p35 City of plans p45

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