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News :: Miscellaneous |
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San Francisco's Lesson Urbana Can Learn From |
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by sfbg via anon
(No verified email address) |
30 May 2001
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Editor's Note: San Francisco may be a lot bigger and further west than Urbana, but the lessons to be learned from the failures of San Francisco's development policies hold certain truths that are universally applicable, including here in Urbana. Does the following sound familiar? |
As the stories in this issue show, the past five years have been brutal on San Francisco's social and economic fabric. Thousands of low-income people have lost their homes. Thousands of would-be homeowners have been priced out of the market and have left town. The arts and nonprofit communities have been devastated. And for what? A bunch of empty office buildings and failed businesses.
The whole Internet explosion, as Michael Perkins points out in his book "The Internet Bubble," amounted to a huge transfer of wealth: the rich got richer and the poor got poorer.
In San Francisco the boom and bust also amounted to one of the greatest public policy failures of the postwar era. The city planning process was completely out of control: developers, who contributed some $3 million to Mayor Willie Brown's reelection campaign, called every single shot. There was no comprehensive planning, no analysis of what type of economic base would benefit the city and its residents in both the short and the long term. As a result, by this spring the San Francisco economy had become more dependent on high-tech than Detroit was on cars.
But the dot-com bomb also set off a political revolution. By last November city residents were so sick of live-work lofts and office developments crushing neighborhoods, so sick of high rents and home prices, so sick of corruption in the Mayor's Office that they elected a board of supervisors with a decidedly different agenda. A clear majority of the new supervisors ran as opponents of runaway development and supporters of more rational, controlled growth. And now, as Brown's power wanes in the final years of his term, there's a real chance to pass some significant legislation that will begin to change the way the city does its planning business.
For starters Sup. Jake McGoldrick has called for a hearing on "the effects of the city's planning policies that have accommodated the dot-com boom." He should demand that city planning do its homework and produce a complete inventory of the number of evictions caused by projects the city approved, the actual number of jobs gained and lost due to new project approvals, the impact of the loss of nonprofits and art spaces, and an account of what the developers that won the right to demolish existing businesses (like the studios at Bryant Square) actually plan to do with their space.
Then McGoldrick and his colleagues should demand that the planners begin the work of creating a sustainable economic-development plan for San Francisco – starting with a set of clear goals for what the city ought to be.
Meanwhile, Sup. Matt Gonzalez has called for a change in how members of the Planning Commission are appointed. Gonzalez wants the supervisors to appoint a majority of the commissioners – a move that makes tremendous sense. The district-elected board is far more in tune with neighborhood concerns than any mayor will ever be, and giving the supervisors a voice in the selection of that critical panel will shift the center of gravity away from the developers. McGoldrick has a similar sensible proposal for the Board of Appeals, and both measures (which would require a vote of the people) ought to be on the ballot as soon as possible.
San Francisco needs to turn its planning process completely around and shift away from developer-based planning and toward community-based planning. If the political changes that follow the dot-bomb disaster make that possible, there will at least be some positive outcome from what some activists are now, quite rightly, calling the Invisible Earthquake. |
See also:
http://www.sfbg.com/News/35/35/35eddot.html
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