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#5 Careful Concentrations: Up-zone some areas in order to preserve or re-nature other areas
#6 Nodes of Knowledge-making: Attract universities and research centers to Downtown and the Presidio
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#5 Careful Concentrations: Up-zone some areas in order to preserve or re-nature other areas
Orange areas suggest building mid-rise or high-rise housing (darker orange = taller)
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By building tall along key transit lines, the city can create a future with adequate housing and sustainable transport without having to remove beneficial zoning restrictions in other areas.
The city should channel growth where it makes most sense, turning strategic areas into tower-lined Gold Coasts hemmed with new parks and greenways to absorb their shadows, provide attractive vistas, and provide for the recreational needs of a dense population. This combination of residential towers and adjacent green space would enable the city to procure not only far higher population density, but also more park space, higher quality park space, more greenways for safe and rapid bicycling, higher property valuations, and better concentration of people along transit corridors—all while minimizing shadow impacts.
Higher population density, in turn, would reduce per-capita carbon consumption, protect suburban greenbelts, support world-class urban amenities, and strengthen the public treasury.
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Stop squandering ideal high-rise housing sites
Outside downtown, only a few areas are suitable for high-rise housing. To qualify, an area must have walkable access to high-speed transit and negligible shadow externalities (the latter condition is met by areas that either lie lower than the surrounding land or border uninhabited spaces like parks, freeways, parking lots, industrial buildings, or bodies of water). Areas satisfying both conditions are few, but they can accommodate large population growth if used properly.
Unfortunately, the Bay Area has a tendency to squander these precious areas on low-rise and mid-rise housing. For example, Brisbane’s new Baylands project will only house a projected 10,000 people in its sprawling 700 acres. Despite occupying a space tailor-made for high density (a blank-slate development area with excellent transit access and virtually no external shadow impacts), Baylands will have less than two-thirds the density of the wealthy, towerless Marina District, or even the pancake-like Sunset District. Indeed, Baylands’ planned density (14.29/acre) is not much higher than that of Piedmont (10.36/acre), a wealthy East Bay suburb located more than a mile from the nearest train line. With projects like Baylands regarded as “dense” development, it’s no wonder our area suffers exurban sprawl, greenbelt erosion, insane commutes, unaffordable housing, bankrupt transit systems, and ridiculously infrequent transit departures.
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Proposed redevelopment zones: Mid-rise, tall, and towering
To address these problems, the map suggests forty or so TOD zones along key transit corridors (including two proposed gondola-lift skyways). It suggests building apartment complexes that are either mid-rise (light orange), tall (medium orange), or towering (dark orange), depending on how high each zone could be built without causing unreasonable shadow impacts. All together, these orange zones could accommodate upwards of 160 high-rise residential towers and hundreds of other tall and mid-rise apartment buildings. Most of the towers are located in the south of the city, interwoven with greenways and abundant park space, including over 200 acres of new public gardens and greens.
Notes on the proposed redevelopment zones:
- The redevelopment zones include a dozen or so “Towers” clusters containing anywhere from 2 to 60 towers. Needless to say, any mega-developments should be built out piecemeal over time, as economic conditions warrant.
- I drew redevelopment zones over neighborhoods that seemed to me to have less historic importance and more potential for increasing in value. For example, I highlighted the outer reaches of the N Streetcar along Judah, rather than its inner reaches along Irving. Similarly, I highlighted Lincoln Way only west of 8th Avenue.
- I also imagined how to tap into the huge unrealized value of high-rise apartments overlooking green spaces like Golden Gate Park, Pine Lake Park, the SF Zoo, Lake Merced, and the Harding Golf Course.
- The redevelopment zones are meant to avoid any architecturally important blocks (this is why, for example, the Lincoln Way zones are split in two).
- I would not suggest interspersing towers with open space, à la Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Instead, I would suggest concentrating open space and towers in separate strips, resulting in Central Park West-like apartment rows that overlook expansive parks and long greenways.
- Lincoln Way, which has few traffic lights, should get Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) service to support the proposed high-rise housing growth. This BRT line would also serve the proposed Ocean Beach Boardwalk. It could reach downtown via Kezar/Oak or the proposed Buena Vista Tunnel.
- I have not included high-rise housing for Fulton Street (Golden Gate Park’s northern border), for it would cast shadows northward over neighboring houses.
- The map envisions higher development along freeways and busy streets like Mission Street and San Jose Avenue. Low residential buildings don’t make sense on busy streets, because the first couple of floors is where the noise is worst.
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Eminent domain
The city could seek to domain properties by citing the interrelated public crises of housing supply and transit viability. These crises, it could argue, are only resolvable through large-scale transit-oriented development strategically coordinated at the city/county level. It could then form a private corporation to buy the land, and maintain a minority stake. This would incentivize the majority owners to build and build well, while incentivizing the city to cut through red tape.
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Market-generated abundance
Ultimately, only market-generated abundance will solve the city’s housing crisis. Hence I suggest unabashedly that the proposed growth areas be zoned for market-rate development.
To induce developers to build as much as possible, the city should let them build as many luxury units as they like (the greater the number of rich folks who live in new luxury units, the fewer of them will be out there competing for existing homes with the rest of us!).
The city should, of course, require developers to build a certain percentage of lower-cost units. But it should let them do so largely by making those units smaller. Eliminating minimum unit sizes will not only increase the number of available units, but also encourage people to live more compactly (I say this as someone who has lived most of my adult life in tiny apartments and with no car). Living compactly reduces our carbon footprint, lowers our cost of living, and encourages us to take advantage of public spaces like parks and libraries.
The city should also require developers, property management firms, and HOAs to let more people share a given unit of space. Up to a reasonable limit, people should be able to share spaces to make them more affordable. Even if lower-income families are not able to live in the same comfort as higher-income families, they should at least be able to inhabit the same communities, provided they are willing to make do with smaller and/or less comfortable units.
Lincoln Way (on south side of Golden Gate Park) could be like Central Park West but without any shadow externalities
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#6 Nodes of Knowledge-making: Attract universities and research centers to Downtown and the Presidio
Bilal Mahmood and others have promoted the excellent idea of using the city’s empty office space to induce universities to set up shop downtown. The map suggests a few possible locations, and adds the idea of inviting applications for a donor-named Institute of Technology at the Presidio.
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Re-purpose iconic old downtown buildings for university campuses or research institutes
Wharton San Francisco
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Most businesses prefer new office space to old. Universities, however, seem to actively prefer iconic old buildings. Students, apparently, prefer campuses with an air of antiquity. This affords the city an opportunity to extract maximum value from antiquated downtown buildings by using them to attract universities to set up new campuses or research institutes. Many universities—including many Asian and European universities—would jump at the opportunity to establish a foothold in America’s innovation capital.
The map suggests several iconic old downtown buildings as potential sites, namely:
- the Army and Navy YMCA building at Pier 14,
- the Matson Building at Market & Main,
- the Hunter-Dulin Building at Sutter & Montgomery, and
- the Humboldt Bank Building at Market & 4th.
I have no idea whether these particular buildings have enough space available. But if the city could identify some elegant older buildings with lots of empty space, it could seek to leverage them to draw downtown campuses or research centers. Besides filling empty office space, such institutions would enrich the city through knowledge production, information exchange, educated labor, and intensive consumption by resident students.
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Donor-named Institute of Technology at the Presidio
Proposed 0.9 square-mile campus (blue), served by three stops on the proposed Golden Gate Skyway (purple)
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The Presidio is a great place for a hike. On the other hand, it is also littered with scores of buildings that are of no use to visitors.
To make ends meet, the Presidio Trust works hard to find tenants for these buildings. But their predominantly residential character and remote, campus-like location makes them less than ideal for most uses.
Even if the Trust manages to keep most buildings occupied, leasing them to a random ragbag of occupants is hardly the most productive way to use this unique campus. Because the tenants are largely unrelated to each other, they fail to generate a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
The most productive use of this campus, it seems to me, would be as an integrated park-university. Several factors make the Presidio better suited to a university campus than to most other uses:
- The Presidio’s campus-like setting is ideally suited to a large, complex institution that can generate intellectual synergies from interaction among sub-units with diverse expertise, perspectives, and methods. In other words, a university. Leasing the Presidio’s buildings to a random hodgepodge of unrelated organizations wastes this opportunity.
- Most of the Presidio’s buildings were designed to be private homes. Homes are poorly suited to most business uses, but well suited to a university, which can use them to successfully recruit top faculty, managers, postdocs, and staff. The single-family officers’ houses would attract top faculty and managers. The more spartan apartment blocks along Lincoln and Washington Blvds would be sufficient to attract strong candidates for postdoc and staff positions.
- Currently, the Presidio’s buildings are largely occupied by (a) organizations that have workers commuting from off campus, and (b) residents who commute from the Presidio to jobs elsewhere. From an environmental standpoint, it would make more sense to lease the Presidio campus to a tenant (like a university) that can coordinate jobs and housing within one contiguous space. Due to the abundance of homes on the Presidio campus, all university workers would likely be eligible for housing within walking distance of their workplace.
- Leasing the site to a university would allow the Presidio to lease all its buildings to a single, long-term tenant, eliminating the burden of having to constantly find tenants and manage properties.
- As the sole or primary tenant of the Presidio, a university would be incentivized to preserve and enhance it.
Accordingly, I would urge the city to work through Congress to have the Presidio re-zoned for a university campus, then leverage this spectacular site to procure a multi-billion-dollar founding gift. With its historic location, breathtaking scenery, and direct access to downtown via a hypothetical Golden Gate Skyway, this site should be able to attract bids from top philanthropists seeking a prime location for a legacy institution.
In its request for proposals, the City or Presidio Trust could state that the winning bid will rate highly on the following criteria:
- The proposed endowment will constitute the largest academic gift of all time.
- The proposed endowment will trigger smaller matching gifts from other donors to endow individual schools, institutes, buildings, collections, professorships, etc.
- The university will preserve and enhance the site’s architecture, in harmony with its environment.
- The university will take charge of landscape management for the entire Presidio, including plantings that enhance the natural environment and habitat diversity.
- The university will provide educational opportunities to the public.
The City or Presidio Trust could also stipulate several requirements:
- ___% of the more architecturally valuable structures shall be preserved.
- All new buildings on the north slope shall match or harmonize with Presidio style.
- New buildings shall be limited to four stories plus a gable, except for a tasteful central tower (similar to the Campanile or Hoover Tower).
- The university shall permit entry by non-affiliates:
- Autos may transit on main roads like Presidio, Arguello, & Washington Blvds.
- Pedestrians and bicyclists may pass through freely, except during lockdowns.
The map suggests a patchwork Presidio interweaving areas of university buildings with areas of public parkland. The 0.9 square miles of proposed university land—larger than the developed area of UC Berkeley—would fill less than half the Presidio and allow easy access to open spaces.