Reshaping U.S. Downtowns: Momentum Grows for Office-To-Housing Transformations

Downtown Boston Office Buildings. Image © Shutterstock

Share

Share

• Facebook

• Twitter

• Mail

• Pinterest

• Whatsapp

Or

https://www.archdaily.com/1009433/reshaping-us-downtowns-momentum-grows-for-office-to-housing-transformations

Cities across the US are struggling to fill their office spaces. Major cities like Washington DC, Boston, and San Francisco have increasingly vacant downtowns, while the urban centers of small Rust Belt cities struggle to survive altogether. This trend is consistent beyond the US, with over three-quarters of Europe’s office buildings at risk of obsolescence by the decade’s end. The cause of this, in most cases, is simple: an oversupply of offices and a shift towards remote work. These vacant buildings can trigger a negative domino effect of economic and social challenges for cities, and their surplus, coupled with a housing shortage, has sparked discussions among cities and architects about the impending necessity to transform offices into housing.

+ 2

San Francisco’s Financial District. Image © Shutterstock

Adapting office spaces into housing might seem straightforward, but it comes with its share of challenges, spanning zoning, technical, and financial complexities. Zoning regulations and codes hinder flexibility in program usage and the exploration of new housing types. There are also technical hurdles related to HVAC, plumbing, and natural daylight access, which makes some office buildings better candidates than others. Moreover, financial hurdles loom large, with all-time high mortgage rates and the still high price of office buildings.

Empty Office. Image © Shutterstock

As daunting as all of those challenges might seem, historically, the concept is not new. During the 1990s, both NYC and Los Angeles passed city ordinances to encourage the adaptation of empty office buildings to housing. In NYC, due to the ’90s recession and the 9/11 attacks, the city passed zoning changes, tax incentives, and government bonds to finance developers willing to repurpose unused office buildings. These helped convert about 20 million square feet of the lower Manhattan financial district into 17,000 homes. LA also saw a similar wave of conversions after the city passed an adaptive reuse ordinance in 1999, which resulted in about 15,000 housing units.

Related Article

Our Cities Aren’t Dead Yet!

Currently, in the US, similar changes and incentives are happening at the federal and city levels to offset the costs and challenges related to these conversions. Most recently, in October of this year, the Biden-Harris administration announced actions to support the conversion of high-vacancy commercial buildings to affordable residential use. These actions include new financing, technical assistance, and the sale of federal properties. At the local level, cities are also proposing incentives. Boston is offering property tax breaks to developers, while Portland, Oregon, is waiving fees and providing improvement standard exceptions.

Aerial Render, Weaver Building. Image Courtesy of Brooks + Scarpa

In response to these discussions, architects are unveiling imaginative visions for what these transformations could look like. Brooks Scarpa recently reimagined the Robert C. Weaver building in DC for the BRUTAL DC design exhibition. Their vision includes 300 units of housing, reduced office space, and community amenities. They addressed challenges like natural daylighting and HVAC location by replacing the outdated core with a shared central courtyard garden. Their design allocates nearly 45% of the space for affordable housing, promoting shared living options and showcasing the potential for repurposing large office buildings into new housing models.

Central Courtyard Render, Weaver Building. Image Courtesy of Brooks + ScarpaPlan

There is currently momentum in cities in the US to develop incentives to convert offices into housing. It is not in vain; urban centers need these changes to survive. The investments in reshaping these urban landscapes could pave the way for a new wave of office-to-housing transformations, holding vast potential for innovative housing solutions. Hopefully, these financial incentives and zoning changes will grant developers and architects enough freedom and opportunity to innovate and explore new models for social housing, creating more equitable and human-centered downtowns.

The post Reshaping U.S. Downtowns: Momentum Grows for Workplace-To-Housing Transformations appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Anthony Jancso noticed that San Franciscans—in the tech community and beyond—can’t help but opine on the city’s myriad challenges. So he decided to do something about it: organize a hackathon with the aim of using AI to solve the city’s problems.

He’s part of the tech-focused nonprofit Accelerate SF, which is hosting a two-day hackathon the weekend of Nov. 4 with an unorthodox mission. 

“The core mission here is to just build the technology that solves problems in San Francisco,” Jancso said. 

The event, which has buy-in from local politicians like state Sen. Scott Wiener and Supervisor Joel Engardio, is part of a growing trend of San Francisco-based AI experts and companies turning their attention to the problems of municipal government.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, center, rides a BART train in San Francisco on Aug. 22. | Source: Jason Henry for The Standard

The city itself is already implementing AI and machine learning in some departments, even if policies around the use of generative AI—technology that can create images, text and video—are still in the works. 

The Assessor-Recorder’s Office, for instance, uses a machine-learning model to predict property values and identify properties in need of appraisal. The 311 mobile app also harnesses AI technology to guide users to the correct service request.

But other cities are ahead of San Francisco when it comes to experimenting with artificial intelligence, and they are tapping companies just a hop-skip away from San Francisco City Hall like Hayden AI, Abnormal Security and Glass. Those startups are tackling tasks ranging from optimizing public transit to securing government data.

Making Buses Better With AI

Passengers wait for a Muni bus on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco on April 1, 2022. San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup Hayden AI has AI-equipped cameras that can be installed on city buses to catch drivers who park in bus-only lanes. | Source: Nick Otto for The Standard

Hayden AI was inspired by CEO and co-founder Chris Carson’s experience riding a Muni bus. He noticed the driver was forced to manually record whenever a car stopped illegally in a bus zone. There had to be a better way, he thought.

The San Francisco company has developed an AI-based camera technology for government-owned vehicles like buses to automatically catch scofflaws. In Philadelphia, a pilot involving seven bus lines highlighted 36,392 violations over a 70-day period, potentially totaling millions of dollars in fines. (The city did not ticket any offenders during the pilot.) 

But there is a possibility that the technology could be adopted more broadly across bus lines for Philadelphia’s transit agency, called SEPTA. The city recently passed a bill permitting the use of automated cameras to enforce violations on bus-only lanes, using data from the pilot as evidence of the need. 

“Although 19% of vehicles were [caught], repeat offenders constituted 77% of violations, so we have some power users, you might say,” said Matt Zapson, a planner for SEPTA. The study found more than 10,000 bus riders were negatively affected by the blocked lanes, which delay buses and distract drivers. 

Jenna Fortunati, Hayden AI’s communications manager, said the company is not currently in conversations to upgrade San Francisco’s manual system—which it has had in place since 2014—but hopes to eventually work with the city.

Hayden AI has proposals to incorporate its computer vision-embedded cameras into other municipal vehicles like street sweepers, to automatically ticket vehicles blocking their routes. 

Cameras installed on buses could be used to also detect parking violations in bike lanes, a long-standing problem in San Francisco, Fortunati added. 

Sounding the Alarm

Local governments are often low-hanging fruit for hackers with sprawling systems and limited IT budgets.  This year, for example, the City of Oakland suffered a ransomware attack that led to a trove of private information being released onto the dark web.

San Francisco-based Abnormal Security uses AI to keep tabs on employee computer use for anomalous behavior—signs that a hacker has penetrated the system. The technology compiles a baseline of a user’s behavior in email, Slack and other workplace apps—and sounds an alarm whenever it notices something is off. The organization can then block access or force login changes, among other security measures. 

Tas Jalali, head of cybersecurity at East Bay transportation agency AC Transit, said using Abnormal’s technology, his team was rapidly able to block account takeover attacks and phishing efforts. Outside of that more active role, Jalali said the software can filter through spam and “graymail” that can gum up employee inboxes, saving at least 120 employee hours a month.

The challenge of introducing its product to local government agencies boils down to the company’s software playing nicely with existing requirements and systems. For instance, AC Transit uses Microsoft’s email software—a common corporate standby. But some government agencies use antiquated email software that is incompatible with Abnormal’s technology. 

The price of doing nothing is growing. According to IBM, the average cost of a data breach in 2023 was $4.45 million, a 15% increase since 2020. 

“There’s a tremendous amount of potential damage that can be done when educational institutions or health care institutions that are affiliated with the city are hacked,” said Dan Shiebler, the head of machine learning at Abnormal Security. “Defending against that often means incorporating artificial intelligence.”

Bringing E-commerce to City Hall

Glass, another San Francisco startup, makes optimized e-commerce marketplaces for local governments and has partnered with the likes of Seattle, Long Beach and, most recently, Santa Monica. | Source: ivanastar/Getty Images

Glass is a San Francisco startup that is trying to take the consumer e-commerce shopping experience and bring it to local governments.

Founder Paola Santana’s pitch? Local governments have significant purchasing power, much of which is non-contract spending. Glass, she said, is aiming to simplify that process by merging the convenience of Amazon or Google shopping with the necessary mandates that government purchases require. 

AI is built into the product to help government purchasers fulfill their particular needs, which can vary vastly from city to city.  Some cities may have local business or sustainability mandates, while others may simply want the lowest costs to stretch their budgets further. San Francisco, for instance, has a “green procurement” initiative, emphasizing the purchase of eco-friendly products in its government purchases.

“When we go and source that product in real-time from vendors, most times we find between 5% to 30% off prices than what the government would have paid,” Santana said. “It’s streamlining the process and getting the best value for taxpayers’ money.”

In Seattle, where the emphasis is buying from women- and minority-owned businesses, Glass was able to create a one-stop shop for city employees with products from multiple sources, which it boasts has saved time and taxpayer money.

Closer to home, Santana says Glass is in talks to roll out its product with San Francisco’s Office of Workforce and Economic Development and the Department of Public Works, among other departments. 

Local entrepreneurs are keen on introducing AI to improve San Francisco City Hall functions around administration and governance. | Source: Camille Cohen/The Standard

“We just think the San Francisco government being more exposed to this technology, seeing what is being built and having more conversations with tech startups will unlock many problems that they’ve been dealing with for many decades,” Santana said.

That’s part of the hope of next month’s Accelerate SF hackathon: Pinpointing what problems can be addressed with artificial intelligence—and getting technologists and lawmakers to break bread in a public forum.

Already, they count buzzy AI startups Scale AI and Chroma, along with the Mayor’s Office of Innovation, as sponsors. Judges for competition comprise leaders in the emerging industry like Notion co-founder Chris Průcha as well as longtime public officials like City Attorney David Chiu.

By the end of the hackathon, Jansco hopes to find AI-based solutions to make tools like SF OpenBook, a “super hard to use” database of the city’s finances, more accessible to the masses. 

“I hope that, in addition to the wonderful tools that will be made, it’s also starting a conversation and a dialogue between tech workers and the city,” Jancso said.

The post San Francisco AI Startups Reshaping Native Governments appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor within our policy. guidelines here.

Scott Liess is the owner of Eco-Flow Plumbing, a 24 hour plumbing company serving the Santa Cruz area.

A native of New Jersey, Liess grew up in the plumbing industry while helping out at his uncle’s plumbing company. At the age of 20, Liess began working for his uncle and stayed for two years. He later moved to California, where he freelanced and traveled while doing plumbing work. At 23, Liess moved back to New Jersey, where he attended plumbing trade school for three years.

Liess struggled with school and by the age of 26, as he describes it, “disconnected from mainstream reality” and focused on meditation, travel and healing work. Less continued to do occasional plumbing jobs and eventually realized that plumbing was his forte.

Eventually settled in Santa Cruz at age 30 and got his plumber’s license. In 2008 he started his business Eco-Flow Plumbing with just a truck and a few tools. Outside of his career, Liess finds his passion in music and what he calls “the human potential”. He enjoys sports and, as he puts it, “flow sports” such as surfing and snowboarding.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Training

• Completed an internship in preparation for a plumber’s license in New Jersey
• Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association (PHCC) of California

Lookout: What is your job and can you explain what it is?

Scott Liess: I own a plumbing company. I offer plumbing work and hire people to provide this service.

Lookout: How did you get into the plumbing industry?

Liess: My mother was an accountant in my uncle’s company and just took us to work. My brother and I got into the groove and learned crafts from a young age. I probably started doing adult plumbing jobs when I was about 5 or 6. I was just a little helper, handing out tools and holding things. Customers were also happy to have children on the job. You know it’s a cool thing. Like the Yoo-hoo [drink] The factory was right there so you went to the factory and they gave you Yoo-hoos.

Lookout: Can you describe how you became the owner of Eco-Flow Plumbing?

Read: Reluctantly. I’ve tried different things. I wanted to become a yoga teacher or take the healing path of psychotherapy. School just wasn’t my thing at all and I had big problems at school. I tried and it didn’t work. It was also difficult for me to take advantage of someone else’s pain or suffering. But plumbing just came to mind. Nobody had to explain it. Anything other than history or geography just seemed alien to me.

After some travel, I just said [to myself], “Look, here’s the deal: you know this craft and you know you can do it.” Also, there was no way I could have worked for anyone, so that was really my only option. You must be willing to sacrifice relationships and fun. That’s not to say you can’t have those things, but when people depend on you for a paycheck, it becomes a priority.

Lookout: What was it like opening a store during such a tough economic time?

Read: It was hard. I drove all over the Bay Area to find work, but it was nice because I didn’t have overhead. it was just me I had a truck with tools and equipment. Then I just kind of slowly walked on. I worked alone for five years. As I said, I didn’t want to start because I didn’t know if I wanted to be all-in. I wasn’t sure I wanted to give him that much energy. But then life happens and you find yourself [saying], “I’ve gone so far, let’s keep going.” They start hiring people and getting pay stubs, get a little bigger, buy more trucks and equipment. Life goes on.

Lookout: Can you describe what a typical day at work looks like for you as an owner?

Liess: The typical day for me is usually a sauna or jacuzzi, then a cold bath and coffee. Then I make sure the guys know where to go and that they are prepared and know what materials and equipment they need to take with them. I am currently wearing several hats. I answer the phone, I’m busy scheduling appointments, preparing estimates and looking for new employees. Then I answer questions throughout the day [that] the guys might have, and [they] FaceTime me about the problems at work. At around 12 o’clock I go to CrossFit. I will come back [to the office] Sometimes go into the field and check on the staff, do quality control and make sure they are doing what they promise. One thing about the trades is that you constantly do quality control. I finish around 3-3:30pm

Lookout: What was a typical day like for you when you were a plumber?

Liess: It’s a grind, that’s a trading thing. You start at 7 or 8 in the morning and you’re out all day. The beauty of our work is that you travel the world. So if you want to have lunch, get it at your favorite place. You meet different people and are never stuck in one place for more than a few hours. For someone like me, there’s no way I can work in a booth behind the screen for more than a few hours a day.

(Kevin Painchaud / Santa Cruz Viewpoint)

Lookout: What are your favorite things to do and your biggest challenges?

Liess: Well, my favorite part of the job is the people. The biggest challenges of the job are [also] people, but that’s partly true. The job itself is hard work. You tend to people’s feces, you crawl under houses, you work at busy intersections. Most people want to spend their money on a vacation or a brand new Tesla or acupuncture. The last thing they want to spend money on is a new water heater. We work in customer service. Me and the boys get challenged by people at work. It’s all a balancing act to keep everyone on track and moving in the right direction. You know, post-COVID people are kind of ungrounded and a little freaky, so you can do this. People get scared, they don’t know what’s going on and then they have an emergency in their house. And you must go to her house. We’ve had to learn how to navigate and make sure we’re safe, clean, healthy and that customers are comfortable.

Lookout: Did you notice a difference between your career before and during the pandemic?

Read: The difference was [challenges with] the supply chain. Certain things were harder to get or the shipping lanes were temporarily closed. I remember the San Francisco Bay was full of ships right now. All prices went to the materials. They’ve doubled, tripled and you’ve seen it in every industry. We had to be more creative in picking the jobs you wanted to do, which means letting clients know, “Hey, we’ll do our best to get this, but you might have to wait two weeks.” I think , communication was more of a challenge. As a whole, as a collective in the world, it seems like people are a little nervous.

Lookout: What type of person do you think is best suited for this type of job?

Liess: So for the plumbing service, #1, it has to be someone who just has hard work ingrained in their psyche. That’s how they were raised and it’s just a part of who they are. #2, respect and reverence for work and tools. #3, a good communicator [who] works well with others and [is] a team player. Fourth, someone who is conscious and aware, but also mechanically able to understand things. You can work here and you can’t. You could do labor jobs like digging, sweeping and cleaning but to be a mechanic or plumber you need to be able to see the plan of the job in your head as it will evolve from nothing to complete installation.

Someone in the office who is capable of being an office manager, who is able to understand these things but also understands the guys and the people in the field. You have to understand the customers.

Lookout: Are there specific requirements for your job or specifically for being a plumber?

Read: We are looking for someone who is honest, wants to learn a trade, works hard and shows up. Someone who is fair, a good communicator. Someone has to be honest and respectful about going into a client’s house. Everyone who works for me, and it’s not many, I trust.

I went to a plumbing trade school for a license and when someone goes there that’s great. I don’t think they offer much of that anymore, or if someone went to college and wanted to learn a trade, it doesn’t matter. In California you have to work for someone for four or five years and then you get your license, so you only have to take one test. In New Jersey you had to do an apprenticeship [program] to get a license and the test was much harder than here.

Lookout: How much can someone make in this field?

Read: Somewhere probably between $15 and $20 an hour [starting salary]. Depending on where you are in your career, you can make anywhere from $25 to $65 an hour, maybe even more.

Lookout: What advice would you give to a recent graduate or career changer interested in a position in this field?

Liess: Learn as much as possible, go to fairs and exhibitions. It’s about getting hours. You don’t really know anything until you have those 10,000 hours on anything. If you do the math, that’s 40 hours a week for five years, that’s your average training time.

Lookout: What does the future of your company look like?

Read: We want to grow with our speed, and what is convenient, have the best equipment to do the tasks we need to do in the safest way. I think one thing we like to do is have the most innovative equipment. We prefer using machines to human labor and the guys really like using the technology. Much of the work we do is underground, that is sewer work. So we use cameras that go into the sewers and we use locators to locate the heads of the cameras to find out what breaks are there. We have machines that dig like excavators and we have machines that clean sewers.

Lookout: What are the prospects for careers in plumbing?

Liess: I think it will always be a good industry. As my dad would say, for every toilet seat, there’s an ass. It’s just a part of being human. As humans we need sanitation.

The post How I Obtained My Job: Scott Liess on careers within the trades and the way tech is reshaping plumbing trade appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Garima Vyas always wanted to live in a big city. She thought of New York, long the destination for 20-year-olds, but was well aware of the cost and complicated subway lines.

So Vyas chose another metropolis that is increasingly becoming the next best option for young people – Houston.

Vyas, 34, a technician, has lived in Houston since 2013. “I knew I didn’t like New York so this was the next best thing,” said Vyas. “There are a lot of things you want to try when you are younger – you want to try new things. Houston gives you that whether it’s food, people, or dating. And it’s cheap to live in. “

The choices made by Vyas and other members of the millennial generation about where to live have changed the country’s political geography over the past decade. You’ve left New York and California and settled in places where TV sitcoms are less likely with around 20 city dwellers, including Denver, Houston, and Orlando, Florida. Attracted by jobs and overlooked by cultural conveniences, they have helped add new craft breweries, condominiums, and liberal voters to these again-conservative places.

The US Census Bureau is expected to formally account for this change next week by disclosing the number of population shifts in the once-a-decade reassignment of Congressional seats. The sun belt is expected to receive seating at the expense of the states in the north.

In most projections, Texas gets three seats, Florida two, and Arizona, Colorado, Montana, North Carolina, and Oregon one each. Seats in Alabama, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, West Virginia and California are expected to be lost.

The moves have reshuffled politics. Once solidly conservative places like Texas have seen ever larger islands of liberalism in their cities, fueled by the migration of younger adults who are democratic. Since 2010, the 20- to 34-year-old population has grown 24% in San Antonio, 22% in Austin, and 19% in Houston. This comes from an Associated Press analysis of the American Community Survey data. In the November elections, two states that have grown rapidly in their largest cities – Arizona and Georgia – turned the Democrats upside down in the presidential contest.

Even if the population increase in Arizona over the past decade is one of the fastest growing states, with 7.1 million inhabitants, especially in the Phoenix area shown here, the increase was not enough to give the state a 10th congressional seat announced by Congress enter Census Bureau Monday April 26, 2021. (AP Photo / Ross D. Franklin)

These demographic winners are almost all in the sun belt, but climate isn’t the only thing they have in common.

“These places are growing not just because they’re warmer, but because that’s where the jobs are and the young people are moving there,” said Ryan Wiechelt, professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

There are other drivers of population growth, such as overseas immigration and births. But as foreign immigration subsided over the decade, and then collapsed during the pandemic, internal relocations have become an increasingly large factor in the country’s reorganization, say demographers.

Places with jobs have long attracted transplants, but that shift was different because house prices in previous employment clusters – such as Boston, New York, and Silicon Valley – rose so much that the cost of living became an increasingly important factor in relocations. said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist for Redfin.

“Since the last real estate crisis, young millennials have had to move to places with really strong job markets,” Fairweather said. “Now, during the pandemic, I think that’s changing – you don’t have to move to San Francisco if you want a job in engineering.”

Many young people still move to traditional destinations like New York and California for careers, experts say. You are now just leaving them relatively quickly and have a wider range of alternative job centers to choose from. “Every year these places attract a lot of young people, but they lose more,” said William Frey, demographer at Brookings Institute, of traditional seaside magnets, joking that his hometown of Washington, DC, “rents” young people.

Instead, places with cheaper housing, growing economies, and recreational facilities have become popular. Colorado was the third most popular place for young adults to move to since 2015. According to Frey’s analysis of early census data, more than 20,000 new young adults were recruited from other countries each year. The state has seen a boom in the past decade as its libertarian lifestyle, outdoor attractions, and growing knowledge-based economy have attracted young people from across the country.

As a result, the Denver skyline is regularly littered with construction cranes. Apartment complexes are created from parking spaces. Because when these tenants have children and want to buy houses, waves of new subdivisions arise in the shadow of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.

With most graduate transplants relocated to Denver and the satellite communities, Colorado has grown from a solid Republican state to a competitive swing state to a solid democratic state. It’s a pattern that some policy experts expect could be repeated in other states that import loads of young people, even traditionally conservative Texas.

In this April 23, 2021 photo taken, Sydney Kramer, a graduate student at the University of Colorado, poses for a photo on campus in Boulder, Colorado. Kramer is typical of many newcomers to Colorado. The 23-year-old moved to the university town of Boulder in January to begin studying atmospheric and ocean sciences. She could have stayed in Miami, a natural place for someone who interests her and where she completed her undergraduate degree. But Kramer was depressed by Florida’s anti-science turnaround under the control of the republican state. (AP Photo / David Zalubowski)

Sydney Kramer is typical of many newcomers to Colorado. The 23-year-old moved to the university town of Boulder in January to begin studying atmospheric and ocean sciences. She could have stayed in Miami, a natural place for someone who interests her and where she completed her undergraduate degree. But Kramer was depressed by Florida’s anti-science turnaround under the control of the republican state.

“The government and politics haven’t necessarily caught up there yet,” Kramer said of Florida, noting that state regulations prohibited the use of the term “climate change” in some of the previous governor’s official documents. “Everyone here has a high level of education and is really informed about climate change.”

“This,” she said of Boulder, with its abundance of environmental and forecasting organizations, “is just a great place for my industry.”

The New Jersey native, who didn’t want to grapple with the high rents in New York City, was impressed with the excitement of her new neighbors talking about hiking, camping, and skiing, and the combination of outdoor activities and urban amenities the area has to offer . “It’s a really wonderful place for anything you can get for the cost of living,” she said.

Riccardi reported from Denver and Schneider from Orlando, Florida.

The post Census reveals younger adults are shifting south and west, reshaping America’s political geography appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Walk down Page Street, which is closed to thru-traffic, and you might encounter a front stoop instrumental concert, kids on training wheels or sidewalk chalk art. Head to North Beach and you’ll pass dozens of elaborate outdoor dining platforms. Or, check out Valencia Street, where merchants have created a vehicle-free destination to shop, dine and find entertainment.

These creative uses of public space were hard to find before the pandemic. Now, some can’t imagine a San Francisco without them.

Over the last 12 months, the COVID-19 pandemic has altered life for San Franciscans, but it’s also fundamentally transformed the face of The City itself. Our year-long battle with the coronavirus has forced residents, businesses and city agencies to adapt in order to survive.

Changes that might have once taken years have been pushed through swiftly, as The City converts streets into pedestrian promenades, parking spaces into outdoor dining venues and neighborhood commercial corridors into anchors of community life.

But as more people are vaccinated and signs of pre-pandemic life creep back, San Francisco faces another daunting task: forging a path ahead after a year of crisis.

Among the questions leaders must grapple with are: which parts of this new face of San Francisco should be made permanent? And how do we make sure benefits are bestowed upon many rather than few?

A section of Valencia Street was closed to vehicle traffic to allow for dining and open space in July 2020. (Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner)

Redefining neighborhoods

Almost overnight, as shelter-in-place orders took effect, neighborhoods that were previously the bookends of daily life for many San Franciscans became the primary place where people lived, worked and played.

As a result, the idea that thoughtful use of public space and easy access to green space, bike-friendly streets and other amenities such as playgrounds should be considered critical infrastructure started to take hold.

“San Franciscans have always valued their neighborhoods, but our neighborhoods are becoming increasingly important as we spend more of our time at home and need to access services and retail and institutions in our neighborhoods,” Planning Department Director Rich Hillis said, adding that key to that mission will be building additional housing, affordable and market-rate, in areas across The City.

In response to the realization that neighborhoods need to be both functional and fun, The City created Slow Streets, which closes select residential streets to thru-traffic, and Shared Spaces, which allows businesses to use parking spaces and sidewalks for commercial operation.

“The pandemic has resulted in a once-in-a-generation level of despair,” said San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Director Jeffrey Tumlin. “We’re using the public right of way to foster a sense of togetherness, public joy and hope.”

Creative use of public space also can maximize public benefit in a time of severely limited resources.

The Great Highway was closed to vehicles in 2020. The change has proved popular with pedestrians and cyclists, but neighbors have complained of traffic impacts. (Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner)

The Slow Streets network has helped bridge mobility gaps left behind by 40 percent service cuts and the suspension of Muni Metro. Today, it’s possible to ride a bike from Ocean Beach to the Embarcadero on a virtually car-free route.

“It’s not just about the parks, but how do we create those spaces between the parks to also be part of that dynamic,” Jeff Cretan, communications director for Mayor London Breed, said of the push to experiment with ways to bring people onto the streets.

Relatedly, changes to curb management have helped reinvigorate commercial corridors by prioritizing businesses, outdoor dining and social engagement.

Shared Spaces is a prime example of turning a public good into a vehicle for economic recovery. As of March 1, The City had approved 2,117 Shared Spaces permits, with the goal of keeping those businesses open and workers employed, but also to creative avenues for recreation and community-building in an extended period of isolation.

“It’s our task to manage the public right of way to foster the greatest possible good,” Tumlin said. “So the question becomes whether the public good is best fostered by renting that curb space to store a vehicle or for people to be able to enjoy a meal?”

San Francisco’s top officials have supported bold uses of public space during the pandemic, with the mayor and the Board of Supervisors calling for elements of Shared Spaces to be made permanent.

“She has seen what it means for our neighborhoods, our residents and our businesses to bring everybody out on the streets so they can be around one another, even in a time as challenging as the pandemic,” Cretan said.

The future of downtown

But does this attention on neighborhoods forecast an end to downtown?

Despite a national narrative painting The City as being in a tailspin, local officials say not so fast.

It’s true that San Francisco has been hit harder by the pandemic than many other cities, based on data on small business closures, outmigration and unemployment.

Chief Economist Ted Egan attributes this to several factors, among them the sizable influence of the tech industry, which has swelled to account for roughly 18 percent of all private sector jobs in The City. That’s up from about 6 percent in 2009.

Now, with massive employers such as Salesforce and Twitter adopting hybrid work-from-home or optional remote models, many employees who once spent money at downtown merchants, lunch spots and transit stations have taken their dollars elsewhere.

Vehicle traffic was curtailed under the Slow Streets program. (Jordi Molina/Special to the S.F. Examiner)

Sales taxes reflect this shift, as these revenues dropped more in San Francisco’s downtown corridor during last summer’s surge than compared to elsewhere in The City, according to Egan.

There’s also the hit to San Francisco’s $10 billion business travel and tourism industry, which generated $771 million in taxes and fees in 2018. Nearly 20 percent of the industry’s worth could be tied solely to events at Moscone Center before the pandemic rendered conventions a relic of a bygone past.

Still, officials remain confident in the eventual comeback of downtown, calling the current moment just another iteration of The City’s storied boom-and-bust history.

And while they emphasize it’s unlikely to look exactly the same as it did before the pandemic, officials say basic economic principles of supply and demand will bring tenants to currently vacant commercial buildings.

The real question is whether the new occupants will fundamentally alter the structure of The City’s economy.

“That’s what I’m going to be paying attention to,” Egan said.

A pedestrian crosses Shotwell Street, a Slow Street in the Mission District on Monday, Feb. 1, 2021. (Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner)

A new way of doing business

With 80,371 households leaving San Francisco over just eight pandemic months in 2020, up 77 percent from the year prior according to U.S. Postal Service change-of-address requests, and the realization from large employers that they can decrease costs, boost employee happiness and attract a wider array of talent with a hybrid-remote policy, Egan expects economic recovery will be slow, but not stagnant.

Though more sluggish than hoped for at the pandemic’s outset, recovery will be bolstered by enhanced efficiency at the local level, calling on lessons learned from the accelerated pace of change that has characterized The City’s response to COVID-19.

Changes to public space, mobility patterns and planning processes that would have taken years to execute have been made in a fraction of the time during the pandemic.

“Too often we get in our own way from delivering projects, helping businesses open or building housing,” Cretan said. “So often The City’s bureaucracy and processes get in the way.”

Shared Spaces, for example, might have taken years to pull off before the pandemic, according to Hillis, but The City made it happen in a matter of weeks.

Less visible changes have also been made more expeditiously, including moving permit processing online, rolling out transit-only lanes and bikeways, using headways to schedule Muni and creating a virtual public comment process that allows more diverse participation.

Mike Porcaro lifts weights outside MX3 Fitness along Market Street in the Castro on Wednesday, July 29, 2020. (Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner)

“What we’re finding is we can have much more effective and democratic public engagement by actually experimenting in the streets with temporary measures, and using those as part of our evaluation process,” Tumlin said. “It is far faster, far cheaper, far more democratic and it builds real trust with San Franciscans.”

Proposition H, passed by San Francisco voters in November, streamlined the business permitting process so owners can get their shops operational quicker, and it gave merchants more options for using their space; Sen. Scott Wiener introduced legislation to modernize statewide alcohol laws to provide restaurants, bars and music venues more flexibility in how and where they serve booze; and Breed has supported legislation that would make it harder for individuals to use the appeals process to delay temporary projects or those related to health and safety.

Equity concerns

The pandemic has made it glaringly obvious that inequity runs deep throughout The City.

Areas with high concentrations of essential workers, lower income earners and people of color have endured higher rates of COVID-19. They’ve also been last in line to enjoy some of the benefits of San Francisco’s changing landscape, despite needing support the most.

“It is imperative to have accessible, equitable, well maintained and cared for public spaces for economic opportunity, social connection and public health reasons,” said Michelle Huttenhoff, planning policy director at the regional think tank SPUR. “Everybody needs to have access to such spaces within a 10-minute walk or bike ride from where they live.”

But that’s never been the case for people living in parts of the Tenderloin, SoMa and Bayview-Hunters Point; meanwhile, advocates say transformative COVID-19 uses of public space are off limits to the homeless or people experiencing housing instability.

Nathan Carda, owner of Nate’s Barbershop, cuts the hair of friend and client Anthony Killsright outside his Broad Street shop in Oceanview after barbers and hair salons were allowed to reopen for service outdoors on Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2020. (Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner)

“I love walking down the street and seeing people in parklets, at restaurants, trying to socialize in the best way they can,” said Shanti Singh from Tenants Together. “But do people who can’t afford rent and aren’t dining out, or don’t have a home at all, have that same access to COVID public space? Not really.”

Under Slow Streets, it took months for the Tenderloin to receive traffic calming treatments. Officials cited the outdated infrastructure, hilly roads and stop lights as reasons they couldn’t be implemented before finally closing some blocks.

While the SFMTA is conducting community outreach for potential Slow Streets in Bayview-Hunters Point, SoMa and Visitacion Valley, among others, what good is a road closed to vehicles if many residents don’t feel safe walking or riding their streets, or are unable to connect to transit networks?

Shared Spaces is even more fraught, raising concerns around sidewalk accessibility for individuals with limited mobility, affordability of outdoor operations and construction of potentially hostile dining platforms that degrade the dignity of people who are homeless.

Tenderloin merchants worked together to close part of Larkin Street to allow for outdoor dining on Friday, Sept. 25, 2020. City officials were slow to implement Slow Streets and other programs in the Tenderloin, citing issuse including the number of stop lights in the densely populated neighborhood. (Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner)

Businesses with Shared Spaces permits say they’ve been a lifeline, but merchants of color and in lower income neighborhoods without foot traffic, spending and strong merchant associations report struggling to afford the cost of building a platform, manage new technology and navigate the permit process.

Additionally, it’s been hard to tap into The City’s aid. Some business owners connected to the Latino Task Force, for example, say they’ve been unable to access much of the nearly $90 million in loans and grants from the Mayor’s Office designed specifically to support small businesses, especially those in historically underserved neighborhoods.

Physical environments of the neighborhoods also present challenges, as business owners must deal with overcrowded sidewalks or roads with potholes, for example.

Any permanent rethinking of public space in San Francisco must identify comprehensive remedies for the problems that pandemic-era initiatives have exposed. Officials say legislative proposals will aim to do so.

“These are deep systemic problems that we have to continue to work on,” Cretan said of the path to permanence for some programs. “There’s so much work that needs to go into this, but the pandemic has laid bare those inequities and shows the work we have to do.”

Grant Place Restaurant and Washington Bakery and Restaurant in Chinatown drew a handful of diners on Friday, July 24, 2020. Many Chinatown businesss owners have struggled to navigate the permit process for Shared Spaces and other city programs. (Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner)

cgraf@sfexaminer.com

Bay Area NewsCoronavirusPlanningsan francisco newstransportation

If you find our journalism valuable and relevant, please consider joining our Examiner membership program.
Find out more at www.sfexaminer.com/join/

The post COVID is reshaping the streets of San Francisco – The San Francisco Examiner appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.