GOOD:

“Vacancy to Vibrancy: How Pop-Ups Invigorated a San Francisco Neighborhood

Imron Bhatti. April 9, 2013

Despite big names moving into the neighborhood, San Francisco’s Mid-Market—and many neighborhoods across the country—is still full of vacant spaces. Millions of square feet are going unused. SquareFoot is putting that space to use, connecting entrepreneurs to underutilized space, and using pop-ups as a vehicle for neighborhood revitalization.

Photo: Original Image via (cc) flickr user Randolph Gardner

SF Examiner:

San Francisco lays out $200 million in bike projects in next 5 years

Will Reisman.  Jan 27, 2013

The City is proposing $200 million worth of changes to its cycling network in the next five years.

Building 12 new miles of bike lanes, upgrading 50 miles of existing paths and installing more than 20,000 new racks are all part of the plan.

Biking has increased by 71 percent since 2006, and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which manages cycling policies in The City, is hoping to build out its network to meet the demand.

At the board of directors’ annual workshop meeting Tuesday, the agency is expected to discuss potential scenarios for bicycling expansion.

As part of its five-year strategic plan, the agency proposes to upgrade 50 intersections to accommodate bicycles and deploy and maintain 2,750 bikes as part of a grab-and-go bike-sharing network.”

Photo: Anna Latino/ Special to the S.F. Examiner

Architizer:

Lights Out: What If Cities Swapped Electric Lighting For Star-Studded Skies?

Cities have got a lot of things going for them, but starry skies are not one of them. All those lights and the pollution they bring with them tarnish the star-studded nights the less populous parts of the world enjoys. Photographer Thierry Cohen solves the problem, sorta, in his “Darkened Cities” photo series. His solution—to rid cityscapes of their electric lights and reintroduce the celestial vistas hidden away under the thick veil of pollutants–is a bit excessive, but the results are dazzling.”

Photp: Thierry Cohen

“The Atlantic Cities:

How to Make Privately Owned Public Spaces Truly Open to the Public

By Emily Badger. Dec 17, 2012

Some of the best privately owned public open spaces in downtown San Francisco are, by nature, a little hard to find. They’re on upper-floor terraces with fantastic views of the city, or in interior plazas of office towers that look from the sidewalk like places where you don’t belong. Part of their charm comes from their hybrid nature: These “POPOS” can be more intimate sanctuaries than traditional open spaces, with office-caliber amenities – leather chairs and potted olive trees – you’ll won’t find in Golden Gate Park.

San Francisco’s 1985 downtown plan required large new office and hotel developments built since then to incorporate such public spaces, in proportion to the size of the properties. But it’s the kind of ordinance that’s been easily thwarted in spirit. As the San Francisco Chronicle’s urban critic John King wrote several years ago, some buildings have embraced their POPOS, “others are more Scrooge-like than welcoming.”

Now, more than 25 years after the idea was first built into San Francisco’s downtown plan, the city is now updating the requirements to reinforce the initial goal of truly opening up private buildings to public citizens looking for a quiet lunch break, a reading nook, or a toilet. That means no more hard-to-read, out-of-the-way Public Open Space signs (King has documented some really disingenuous examples). No more private corporate events in these public spaces. No more misdirectional cues on how to find them.”

Image: popos.sfplanning.org

The Global Urbanist: 

In defence of America’s informal settlements: the campers of San Francisco

We tend to believe that wealthy countries like the United States don’t have informal settlements. Not only is this false, but it allows western governments to further marginalise an already misunderstood community. In the first of three articles on America’s informal residents, Martha Bridegam meets two residents of one such harassed community in San Francisco.

In August this year, city and state authorities in San Francisco raided a camp of makeshift homes under a freeway ramp and beside a commuter rail yard near the downtown area, destroying some residents’ property and evicting them from the site.

The San Francisco Chronicle’s Kevin Fagan described the camp this way: ‘a sprawling mini-city of tents, suitcases and makeshift Conestoga wagon-style trailers, and a 50-strong homeless population that had been there for years. It was the biggest street camp in San Francisco.’One resident has denied it was so large, but it was certainly substantial for a town that discourages group camps.”

Photo:  Here, in a scene typical of the city, a small community of informal residents cluster their RVs—recreational vehicles or caravans—discreetly together under a freeway viaduct. Martha Bridegam 

The Atlantic Cities:

Greening Cities Through the Power of Public Urination

• JOHN METCALFE
• OCT 24, 2012

Ever walk down the street and notice a sad, brownish scrub of a plant? Just pee on it!

That’s the joyful message from a team of San Francisco designers who want to nourish the city’s plant life with a reservoir of citizen urine. This unusual plan came about after they connected the facts that 1) pee is loaded with chemicals like nitrogen that help plants grow 2) people are just giving it away all over dumpsters and alley walls. Since we can’t have that, they fabricated a public urinal called the PPlanter that transforms steaming whizz into precious, golden fertilizer.

Their “urban biofilter” did not snag No. 1 in the recent San Francisco Urban Prototyping Festival, as perfect as that would be, but it did receive $1,000 in grant funding. Now they’re nearly halfway toward realizing their urine-coated dreams at Indiegogo. How does this amazing technology work? In short, somebody who needs to really go – the inventors are targeting beer drinkers and homeless people – holds it in long enough to reach a PPlanter. Guys level a stream into the urinal (ladies, you get the pleasure of using a “disposal funnel”) where a bamboo filtration system converts it into drank that’s delicious for plants.”

Architizer: 

“Blade Runner Meets Flower Power In IwamotoScott’s City Of The Future

October 19, 2012

In the year 2108, San Franciscans will drive their hydrogen-powered hovercars through subterranean expressways on their way to picnic by water-producing fog flowers and geothermal mushrooms.

This is the concept that IwamotoScott Architecture‘s Craig Scott presented at a TEDxCity2.0 event in San Francisco October 13. The mini-conference was one of the many independent TED events presented in 70 cities worldwide—and an untold number of Livestream feeds—to advance the cause of urban innovation and collective action. Previously we brought you an update on the retro-utopia Arcosanti, and now we turn to a totally futuristic ecotopia called Hydro-Net. Read/ogle more!

Scott’s talk reprised a proposal he and his partner, Lisa Iwamoto, made for a 2008 History Channel competition called City of the Future. Their concept for a symbiotic city powered by hydrogen-producing algae, geothermal energy, and fog took the grand prize in the San Francisco competition. The renderings are admittedly fanciful—Scott broached the subject of hovercars only after a sheepish “It’s possible we’re not bound to the ground…” But the substance of Hydro-Net focuses on known challenges (rising sea levels, access to fresh water, population growth) and taps resources that will be in abundance come 2108.”

Photo: IwamotoScott Architecture

“Low-Income Housing That Anyone Would Love To Live In

Ariel Schwartz. September 25, 2012

Housing for the poor doesn’t need to be horrible. The Richardson apartments in San Francisco are offering up high-class digs in the hopes of helping to lift its residents out of poverty

Low-income housing generally isn’t all that nice; stories like this about single-room occupancy buildings (SROs) with infestations, leaking pipes, and overflowing toilets aren’t uncommon. That’s starting to change, however, now that cities are realizing that quality low-income housing can provide a stepping stone to stability for residents. In San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood, the recently completed Richardson Apartments provide formerly homeless residents (many with physical and mental disabilities) with beautiful living spaces and social services. 

The SRO, a project of David Baker and Partners Architects, is part of a larger neighborhood redevelopment. After the 1989 earthquake in San Francisco, a freeway that ran through the city became structurally unstable and collapsed. Now, decades later, projects like the Richardson Apartments are popping up below the site of the former freeway. The Richardson building was completed in September 2011.

The 120-unit, five-story building is the kind of place that most city-dwellers would love to live in: It features sustainably harvested wood (including redwood and elm), a landscaped courtyard, a green roof, sunshades outside the apartment windows, solar hot water heating, solar panels, intelligent lighting controls, and low-VOC paints. The apartments also have amenities tailored to the population, including abuse-resistant drywall and cabinets, grab bars everywhere, and wheelchair-accessible showers. The building doesn’t have car parking, but it does have parking for bikes—not that tenants would be likely to have a vehicle or even need one in this transit-rich neighborhood.

With an average of 300 square feet per apartment, the living spaces in the building aren’t huge. But “all the things a formerly homeless person would need are right on site,” explains Amit Price Patel, the project architect. That includes a counseling center, a medical suite, a community room, and a residents’ lounge. There are also retail spaces on the ground floor: a Vietnamese sandwich shop, a picture frame shop, and most importantly for residents, a bakery and cafe that provides a “paid learning experience” for people who are disabled and homeless or at risk of becoming so.

The apartments are affordable for all who live there—residents pay 30% of their income as rent, up to a maximum of $870. And the building is saving money for the city, too. The 120 apartment residents used $2.4 million in city and medical services in the year before moving in. It’s a cost that is being dramatically cut with the onsite medical clinic.”

Via: Fast Company

“Micro-apartments next for S.F.?

Carolyn Said. July 13, 2012

Are itty-bitty apartments the next wave for urban dwellers in San Francisco?

The city is considering shrinking the minimum size of rental units, prompted by a demographic shift toward one-person households along with rising rents and an acute housing shortage.

“This seems like a logical, necessary response to housing in an extremely high-cost market like San Francisco,” said Tim Colen, executive director of the San Francisco Housing Action Coalition, a largely developer-backed nonprofit that is “solidly behind” cutting the size of the smallest allowable apartment by about a third.

The new minimum would be 150 square feet plus kitchen, bathroom and closet - 220 square feet in total, about the size of a one-car garage. The current minimum with all rooms included is 290 square feet.

“The goal is to provide flexibility to affordable and market-rate developers to produce all sorts of housing,” said Supervisor Scott Wiener, whose proposal to reduce apartment sizes will be considered by the Board of Supervisors on July 24. “The fact is 41 percent of San Franciscans live alone. There are a lot of people who don’t need or can’t afford a lot of space.”

Some housing advocates dispute the idea that micro-units address escalating rents, saying that the compact dwellings are cheaper simply because they’re smaller.”

Are itty-bitty apartments the next wave for urban dwellers in San Francisco?

The city is considering shrinking the minimum size of rental units, prompted by a demographic shift toward one-person households along with rising rents and an acute housing shortage.

“This seems like a logical, necessary response to housing in an extremely high-cost market like San Francisco,” said Tim Colen, executive director of the San Francisco Housing Action Coalition, a largely developer-backed nonprofit that is “solidly behind” cutting the size of the smallest allowable apartment by about a third.

The new minimum would be 150 square feet plus kitchen, bathroom and closet - 220 square feet in total, about the size of a one-car garage. The current minimum with all rooms included is 290 square feet.

“The goal is to provide flexibility to affordable and market-rate developers to produce all sorts of housing,” said Supervisor Scott Wiener, whose proposal to reduce apartment sizes will be considered by the Board of Supervisors on July 24. “The fact is 41 percent of San Franciscans live alone. There are a lot of people who don’t need or can’t afford a lot of space.”

Some housing advocates dispute the idea that micro-units address escalating rents, saying that the compact dwellings are cheaper simply because they’re smaller.

“It’s disingenuous to say it creates affordable housing, it’s just that you get significantly less space,” said Sara Shortt, executive director of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco. “This doesn’t create affordable housing, it simply creates another lifestyle option.”

She also worries that the “shoe-box” units could create a slippery slope of allowing other exemptions on considerations like natural light and ceiling height.

On the drawing board

Patrick Kennedy of Berkeley developer Panoramic Interests hopes to build the micro-units in SoMa on the site of a former guitar store at Ninth and Mission streets - “right in the thick of the new Twittersphere there.” He anticipates housing young tech workers, fresh out of college, newly relocated to the city, unencumbered by possessions.

“That demographic cohort wants to continue their collegiate experience for an indefinite amount of time,” Kennedy said. “I envision this as a launching space as they get established.”

His planned 160-unit building, now in the entitlement process, will have lots of common areas: a huge lobby, a lounge on every floor and a rooftop deck. It will also have some larger apartments. It’s designed for car-free living; the only parking will be for bikes, with a City CarShare spot outside.

The ultra-efficient efficiencies will go for $1,300 to $1,500 a month, he said. Per city regulations, 15 percent of the units will be allocated as below market rate for low-income residents; he thinks those would rent for around $900 a month.

The current average rent for a San Francisco studio apartment is $2,075 a month, according to real estate service RealFacts. Those studios average 493 square feet, making the per-square foot price $4.21. Kennedy’s proposed units, at 220 square feet, would rent for $5.91 to $6.82 per foot - a big premium.

“It’s disingenuous to say it creates affordable housing, it’s just that you get significantly less space,” said Sara Shortt, executive director of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco. “This doesn’t create affordable housing, it simply creates another lifestyle option.”

She also worries that the “shoe-box” units could create a slippery slope of allowing other exemptions on considerations like natural light and ceiling height.

On the drawing board

Patrick Kennedy of Berkeley developer Panoramic Interests hopes to build the micro-units in SoMa on the site of a former guitar store at Ninth and Mission streets - “right in the thick of the new Twittersphere there.” He anticipates housing young tech workers, fresh out of college, newly relocated to the city, unencumbered by possessions.

“That demographic cohort wants to continue their collegiate experience for an indefinite amount of time,” Kennedy said. “I envision this as a launching space as they get established.”

His planned 160-unit building, now in the entitlement process, will have lots of common areas: a huge lobby, a lounge on every floor and a rooftop deck. It will also have some larger apartments. It’s designed for car-free living; the only parking will be for bikes, with a City CarShare spot outside.

The ultra-efficient efficiencies will go for $1,300 to $1,500 a month, he said. Per city regulations, 15 percent of the units will be allocated as below market rate for low-income residents; he thinks those would rent for around $900 a month.

The current average rent for a San Francisco studio apartment is $2,075 a month, according to real estate service RealFacts. Those studios average 493 square feet, making the per-square foot price $4.21. Kennedy’s proposed units, at 220 square feet, would rent for $5.91 to $6.82 per foot - a big premium.”

Via: SF Gate

Photo: An illustrated interior of a proposed small apartment. / SF

“In San Francisco, a One-Stop Shop for Building Better Streets

KAID BENFIELD. June 26, 2012

The city of San Francisco has launched a new website to help residents take advantage of city resources and programs for neighborhood-scaled street improvements such as parklets, bike parking, plantings, art installations, sidewalk fixtures, green infrastructure, and permits for car-free events. The site is co-sponsored by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and the city’s Planning Department, Department of Public Works, and Public Utilities Commission.

Writing in SF.Streetsblog, Aaron Bialick quotes Joana Linsangan of the Planning Department:

Before this website was launched, this information wasn’t available. For someone to go through the process, someone would have to go and contact various departments around the city.  People may not think they have the ability to do so, but if they want to, they can apply for a parklet, put out bike racks or put out planters in their neighborhood, at their storefront, and we’re trying to give them all the information to make it happen.

Bialick writes that easier access to permits could smooth the process for neighborhood street fairs and “more regular, small-scale, car-free events in the style of Sunday Streets,” a version of which was highlighted in different cities in an article last week by my colleague Marissa Ramirez. In San Francisco, the program seems large-scale and immensely popular, and the city also has a website dedicated to it with a schedule of which streets will be participating as the year goes on.”

Via: The Atlantic Cities

Photo: Eric Allix Rogers/Flickr