()SPUR Ideas + action for a better city Issue 527 /Sept-Oct 2013

THE URBANIST

R CIS Presented by:

SPUR AIA San Francisco,

Center for Architecture + Design

Environmental Design Archives at UC Berkeley

California Historical Society

San Francisco Public Library

()SPUR SPUR BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Chair Board Members Anne Halsted Carl Anthony

Veronica Bell Executive Chris Block Vice Chair Larry Burnett David Friedman Michaela Cassidy

Madeline Chun Vice Chairs Michael Cohen Alexa Arena Charmaine Curtis Andy Barnes Oz Erickson Emilio Cruz Manny Flores Bill Rosetti Geoff Gibbs Carl Shannon Gillian Gillett Lydia Tan Chris Gruwell V. Fei Tsen Ed Harrington

Dave Hartley Secretary Aidan Hughes Mary McCue Chris Iglesias

Laurie Johnson Treasurer Vijay Kumar Bob Gamble Susan Leal

Dick Lonergan Immediate Past John Madden Co-Chair Jacinta Mccann Linda Jo Fitz Hyrdra Mendoza

Ezra Mersey Advisory Councll Terry Micheau Co-Chairs Mary Murphy Michael Alexander Jeanne Myerson Paul Sedway Adhi Nagraj

CHAIRS & COMMITTEES

Program Regional Committees Planning

Ballot Analysis Larry Burnett

Bob Gamble Libby Seifel

Disaster Planning Operating Laurie Johnson Committees Chris Poland

Audit Housing John Madden Ezra Mersey

Building Lydia Tan

Management Project Review Larry Burnett Charmaine Curtis

Business Mary Beth Sanders Reuben Schwartz

Membership Tom Hart

Transportation Terry Micheau Anthony Bruzzone

Executive Water Policy David Friedman Bry Sarte Anne Halsted

SAN JOSE ADVISORY BOARD

Teresa Alvarado Karla Rodriguez Andy Barnes Lomax Chris Block James MacGregor J. Richard Braugh Connie Martinez Larry Burnett Janine Mccaffery Brian Darrow Anu Natarajan Garrett Herbert

2 SEPT/ OCT 2013

r

Brad Paul Rich Peterson Chris Poland Joan Price Teresa Rea Byron Rhett Rebecca Rhine Wade Rose Paul Sedway Victor Seeto Elizabeth Seif el Chi-Hsin Shao Doug Shoemaker Ontario Smith Bill Stotler Stuart Sunshine Michael Teitz Mike Theriault Will Travis Jeff Tumlin Molly Turner Steve Vettel Francesca Vietor Fran Weld Allison Williams Cynthia Wilusz Lovell Cindy Wu

Finance Bob Gamble

Human Resources Mary Mccue

Individual Membership Bill Stotler

Investment Ann Lazarus

Major Donors Linda Jo Fitz Anne Halsted

Planned Giving Michaela Cassidy

Silver SPUR Dave Hartley Teresa Rea

Dr. Mohammad Qayoumi

Suzanne Rice Robert Steinberg Lydia Tan Kim Walesh Jessica Zenk

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013

News at SPUR

Keeping BART on Track SPUR is continuing to watch the BART labor dispute very closely, and

we're trying to provide advice wherever we can. This complicated

situation spans good government, transportation, labor and economic

issues that affect our entire region . During the July strike, we highlighted

the need for transportation resiliency, better traveller information

and communication, the potential for new mobility providers to aid

in transit and the need to create complete communities. We also

recommended using the strike or any disruption as way to test some of

the ideas from SPUR's Resilient City study - such as a carpool lane on

the Bay Bridge and four-person occupancy requirements for carpool

lanes. The stakes are high for BART, but we continue to believe there

is a deal that will allow BART to control its rising operating costs while

also being fair to workers.

Agencies Embrace Mobility Innovations Good news: The California Public

Utilities Commission (CPUC)

proposed a rule that private

ride-sharing services would be

permitted to operate - if licensed

by the CPUC. Operators would

have to run background checks

on drivers, institute driver-training

programs, meet expanded

insurance requirements and

maintain a zero-tolerance policy

on drugs and alcohol. Also this

summer, the SFMTA developed an

18-month pilot program to permit

private shuttle buses to access

100 Muni bus stops in exchange

for a fee for maintaining the stops.

The "Muni Partners" policy covers

both local and regional shuttle

buses. We believe the wave of

new transportation services can

help improve the quality of life in

urban areas, and we are generally

pleased at the direction these

regulations are going.

Bike Share Comes to the Bay Area! At long last, a Bay Area bike-share

program will launch on August

29, with a fleet of 700 bicycles

at 70 kiosks in San Francisco,

San Jose, Palo Alto, Redwood

City and Mountain View. As we

noted in our report "The Urban

Future of Work," 80 percent of

office buildings in the Bay Area

are within three miles of regional

transit, but only 11 percent of

commuters take transit to work .

The option to add a short bike ride

to the end of a trip could turn rail

commuting into a viable option for

a much greater number of people.

We look forward to evaluating the

possibilities of bike share in the

coming months. •

Cover: David Dana of Taller David Dana Arquitectura. The Urbanist is edited by Allison Ariefl and designed by Shawn Hazen, hazencreative.com.

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~ 8 Imagine the Ferry Building surrounded by office towers, a grand casino on

Alcatraz, the city wrapped in freeways and a subdivision covering flattened

hills north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Within these pages, you can.

This month, we are pleased to devote The Urbanist to "Unbuilt San

Francisco," an ambitious five-venue exhibition that provides San Franciscans

and Bay Area residents with an opportunity to confront visions for the region

that never came to pass.

If San Franciscans like to describe their city as "49 square miles surrounded

by reality," the visionary ideas that were too grandiose for even San

Franciscans to consider remain some of the most fantastic designs for any

city in the world .

I

Mano Ciampi, "Plan Tying Verba Buena

Center to a Reimaglned Mission Bay

Waterfront" (undated)

INTRODUCTION

Unbuilt 1

San Francisco Today's urban landscape is shaped in profound ways by the

buildings that never came to life, the plans that fell short.

The purest and most potent visions of American urbanism, the ones that most deeply convey its aspirations and hubris, are, often as not, the ones that don't get built. This is true of any city, any region, and it is profoundly true of the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. From the propulsive thrust of the Gold Rush to the tech boom of today, people come to this place in search of utopia, their utopia, a setting in sync with their ideal of how life should be lived.

San Francisco, after all, is a city perched on the tip of a small peninsula at the edge of a large continent - an act of the imagination rather than the outgrowth of ongoing economic forces such as the ones that fueled the ascension of Chicago arid Los Angeles. It's the capital "C" city of the region yet also a self-defined city of neighborhoods where many residents have little interest in what lies beyond the closest ring of hills.

The architectural results of these insistent1 often

contradictory impulses are the subject of the exhibits being held at five Bay Area institutions under the

broad theme of "Unbuilt San Francisco." Some of the works have endured in public memory, such as Daniel Burnham's "Report on a Plan for San Francisco" (1905). Others are forgotten by everyone

except history buffs, such as Bernard Cahill's less

ambitious city plan from 1899. Some projects were commissioned by clients ranging from developers and governments to neighborhood groups eager to offer an alternative to the proposals put forth by the

4 SEPT/OCT 2013

powers-that-be. And some are the elaborate dreams of architects who, constraints notwithstanding, strove to make us see the potential of our surroundings in a fresh way.

Not all of the visions are confined to San Francisco. Nor have we made an effort to fit them into a simple storyline with a moral at the end. Our aim is to explore the landscape that might have been, an

alternate universe that in turn offers insight to how we live today.

Unbuilt Yet Influential An unbuilt vision often has lasting implications. It is the action that causes a reaction, the emphatic move that sets an unexpected chain of events in motion.

Consider the 1969 design for a new residential

district at Lands End, filling the cove below the Cliff House that today contains open bluffs and the ruins of the Sutro Baths. Designed by the well-regarded architectural firm of Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons for a private developer who sought to built a resort community, the lone roadway would have wound

past woodsy townhouses down to a stepped-back seven-story block facing the Pacific, with a 20-story building to the north. If the barrack-like townhouses were reminiscent of mid-century dorm housing at a

small liberal arts college, the oceanside block would look at home in Cancun.

It is hard to believe anyone would have taken such a formulaic approach to the one-of-a-kind treasure that is our coast. But it was a serious proposal dating

Summary: The works on view in "Unbuilt San Francisco" show us how people defined the future, and why those visions in turn sparked resistance. It 's a parallel history of San Francisco and the Bay Area, for better and for worse.

By John King

John King is the San Francisco Chronicle's

urban design critic.

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THE URBANIST

The cove at Lands End where Sutro Baths

once flourished was the site of proposed

resort developments in the 1960s

and 1970s, such as this one designed by

Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons (above).

More recently, Renzo Piano in 2006 con­

ceived a mixed-use complex for First and

Mission streets that would have included

1,200 foot towers (left).

SEPT/OCT 2013 5

INTRODUCTION

back to 1965, the same year that the Marin County Board of Supervisors approved the master plan for Marincello, a planned community with an intended population of 30,000 people on 2,100 acres of the Marin Headlands.

Look beyond the particulars of these projects and whatyou'll see is the bottom-line mentality of the age, the mindset that empty or underutilized spaces were voids waiting to be filled. You'll also grasp why the Bay Area's environmental movement caught fire in the 1960s: Regular citizens saw the need to defend the natural spaces around them. Without the perception of imminent danger, there's no incentive to fight back. With projects like Marincello and the Lands End enclave came the threat of permanent loss, and this fueled the drive to create the Golden Gate National Recreation Area - an unprecedented urban national park that today includes both areas.

The original projects may never have come to pass, but their impact is lasting and profound.

Other failed quests have more subtle repercussions, exposing the public to architecture that differs from the norm. Certainly that's the story with the 10-story Prada boutique the design of which was unveiled in 2000 for the corner of Post Street

and Grant Avenue, one block from Union Square. Dutch starchitect Rem Koolhaas and his Office for Metropolitan Architecture envisioned a partially

submerged, open ground floor topped by a pair of four-story cubes skinned in thick, bead-blasted steel

6 SEPT/OCT 2013

and riddled with 8,000 glass portholes. In between the cubes would be a public terrace and coffee bar, hidden behind mesh but open to the air.

Never mind that Koolhaas was the 2000 recipient of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize; his

design set off months of debate before it was approved by the Planning Commission, despite

the objections by staff who said it would violate the sanctity of the historic conservation district

around Union Square. So why is the building in the exhibition? The commission gave its blessing on September 6, 2011 - five days before 9/ 11 and months after the dot-com boom began to fade. Winning the necessary approvals is one thing. It 's another thing to finance a high-concept boutique that included such embellishments as a base­isolation system to lessen the impact of earthquakes - as if the dresses and shoes inside were as fragile

as the historic architecture of City Hall, where the expense of base isolation made sense. Eventually, Prada gave up the fight and put the corner up for sale, moving into an expansive restored space across the street.

By challenging convention, Koolhaas and Prada forced the city 's decision-makers to acknowledge

that 21st-century city building can't simply reproduce the past. We need room for surprise. A few years later, another developer (Grosvenor) and architect

(Brand + Allen) proposed to wrap the existing building at 185 Post with a sleek veil of glass, like a

Above, Marincello, a vast subdivision for

the Marin Headlands that was approved by

the county in 1965 but unbuilt beyond the

entry gate, was among the controversial

Bay Area projects that led to creation of the

Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

The Prada flagship designed by Rem

Koolhaas (top right) met with local

opposition but was cancelled due to lack

of funds. Lower right, architect Charles

Bloszies' "Recycled Batteries" (2008)

proposed that the old and vacant bunkers

along the coast be transformed into

wind turbines to create energy for

nearby buildings.

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jewel box with the past displayed inside (not that the brick structure underneath is a treasure, even by all-old-is-good standards). Planners happily waived the concept through, if only to show they weren't

out of touch. The result is as distinctive in its own diaphanous way as the portholed cubes of steel would have been .

Provocative Visions Another aspect of the most ambitious unbuilt work is that it can distill the goals and fears of an era with

a clarity that often is more revealing than what got built in its stead. We see the initial impulse, rather than the filtered result of political compromises, value engineering and bureaucratic nips and tucks.

That is true of Koolhaas' provocative Prada building (which looks almost tame today). It is

equally true of the five reed-like towers that another Pritzker Prize winner, architect Renzo Piano,

conceived for the northwest corner of First and Mission Streets in 2006. Piano likened the septet to a cluster of bamboo stalks - albeit bamboo stalks climbing 600 to 1,200 feet, amid alleyways and older buildings just a few stories tall.

"It's a sad story ... I loved that project," Piano said later of his scheme, which never saw the light of day beyond an article in the San Francisco Chronicle when the initial plans were filed with the city. It's a project

that, in retrospect, signaled the high tide of a boom, the mass delusions that come when the good times

THE URBANIST

are so good that developers convince themselves that this time things are different, this time the bubble won 't burst. How could economics justify straight square towers reaching 300 feet beyond

the Transamerica Pyramid, yet so slender that their typical floors would be less than half the square footage of other towers nearby?

But Piano's far-fetched cityscape was also enthralling. What he contemplated was an elegant riposte to the skyscraper games of the past decade, the relentless quest for novelty from Guangzhou to

Dubai. His towers were clad in terra cotta rather than glass, had clean lines rather than pirouetting forms, were self-effacing and sky-busting at once. The ground-level weave of pathways in its own way was the most willful act of all, a medieval terrain beneath heights categorized by the profession as "supertall."

A statement like this could only be made at a

moment in a city's history when the future seemed open to audacious acts of design imagination. Other potent visions in the exhibitions respond to aspects of the future that seemed grim .

The most obvious example of the latter might be the efforts to accommodate the automobile in the decades before and after World War II. Like every city in the country, San Francisco was confronted by a fast-increasing number of automobiles trying to navigate streets that often had been mapped before

the car was even invented. The answer, said many "experts," was to stretch a new net of roadways

SEPT/ OCT 2013 7

INTRODUCTION

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above the city. One such scenario came from Donald R. Warren Co., which in 1943 proposed to ring Union

Square and the Financial District with a six-lane thoroughfare that would have space underneath for

10,000 cars - a misguided proposal that helped

clear the way for the double-decker roadways along

the Embarcadero and west of City Hall that in turn

spawned the locally fabled "Freeway Revolt" in the

early 1960s. For San Franciscans of today this might be the

most harrowing what-if of all, a city sliced and diced

beyond recognition. Yet these early engineering

schemes were rooted in a truth of their time: Traffic

was a very real issue that was being addressed

with technical efficiency. There were architectural

responses as well, such as the confounding but

alluring designs by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin for the so-called Panhandle Parkway. There's

a sinuous beauty in his renderings of concrete curves snaking through the landscape toward Golden Gate Park, the visual poetry that results when one of the Bay Area's most lyrical designers strives to

imagine an urban world that can accommodate the

automobile. The parkway did not come to pass.

thank goodness, but Halprin's participation shows

the extent to which the conventional wisdom of

midcentury America saw automobiles as a necessity of modern life.

Visual Seduction Whatever the era, whatever the style or scale, the

strong thread binding the exhibitions is the power

of imagery to open our minds to contemplate new

urban forms. Architects, after all, are visual creatures: bold

images become a way to tell a story, make a point.

One recent example, modest in scope but alluring in execution, is architect Charles Bloszies' notion

of adding windmills to the oceanside bunkers of

the Presidio to harness energy. We know such an

idea would never be allowed in such a carefully

scrutinized national historic district tucked inside a national park. Then we look at Bloszies' lyrical

depiction and wonder, why not?

This is not a recent trend : the brash aura of Vincent

Raney's proposed United Nations Capitol makes you

wish he had captured the international eye, even if

in real life it would have been modernistic grandeur

run amok. Nor is this bold imagery confined to single

structures. Daniel Burnham's plan for San Francisco

was commissioned by a group of businessmen,

and the text that accompanies it is pragmatic,

spelling out the details of a plan "so devised that

the execution of each part will contribute to the final result." But Burnham's accompanying illustrations

conjure up a gauzy realm of Greco-Roman splendor,

such as a palatial public stairway up the side of Twin

Peaks. This is the true City Beautiful , and you can

understand why the plan's reputation endures, even

if few of its recommendations were followed . Visual beauty has the power to shape discussions

and plant a seed. So do straightforward diagrams

as was the case when Hargreaves Associates did a

series of conceptual studies to restore Crissy Field

along the bay. We know the final result: the spacious

marsh next to a vast lawn that memorializes a long­

gone airfield. But the landscape architects didn't have a free hand: The interest groups assembled

by the National Park Service ranged from military

historians to native plant buffs ijnd wind surfers. In

response, the Hargreaves team assembled six large

imaginary site plans, theoretical approaches to the

100-acre site. The most audacious of these plans

reintroduced marshes and extended them inland

past Mason Street, turning that road into a causeway

and pulling the green of the Presidio Main Post down

toward the bay.

Such a move was not to be; nonetheless, the

strong, colorful site maps offered a glimpse of the

area's ultimate potential. Eventually, two approaches

were presented to the public, one with a marsh

alongside a lawn and one that paired the lawn with dunes. The result is the most treasured new open

space in the Bay Area in a generation, and a marsh

is among the main attractions. To the south, Doyle

Drive is being rebuilt and lowered so that, yes, a

recreated landscape can spill down from the Main

Post to the bay. That, in the end, may be the most intriguing thing

about San Francisco's false starts, the roads not

taken , the buildings and plans that never fully came

to pass. They form a city of shadows. Some make you

smile; some make you recoil. Many were ahead of

their time. They showed us what could have been -

and what might still might lie ahead. •

As Hargreaves Associates prepared to

work on a design vision for Crissy Field,

the landscape architects drew up six "park

frameworks." This one (below) conceived

of an extensive set of marshes that in turn

would blend with an enlarged Main Post

Parade Ground, while a portion of Mason

Street became a causeway.

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SEPT/ OCT 201 3 9

UNBUILT SAN FRANCISCO

The View From Futures Past Presented by the California

Historical Society and SPUR Essay by Benjamin Grant and

Cydney Payton

San Francisco was called from its windswept sand hills in great haste. Hills were cut, valleys raised, tidelands and bay waters filled as a rectilinear grid of blocks and lots was laid over the natural landscape

of the peninsula. Although most "water lots" were filled and built out, some of these invisible territories remain today, submerged in an odd limbo between legal title and environmental protection.

By 1906, when most of the city was consumed

by fire, San Francisco was an established city with global economic and cultural ambitions. No longer the rough upstart, it was filling out its peninsula and

beginning to imagine reworking itself into a grand 20th-century metropolis, the "Paris of the West."

10 SEPT/OCT 2013

Daniel Burnham's 1905 plan for the city, conceived at

the behest of Progressive-era boosters who sought the city 's " improvement and adornment," looked to fundamentally restructure San Francisco, blasting neo-baroque boulevards through its utilitarian grid and pushing staid beaux arts unity over its jumbled Victorian filigree.

Burnham's plan ushered in a new preoccupation in San Francisco: civic debates over the architectural contours of the city, charged with moral and

aesthetic consequence. What is worthy of this special place? What is appropriate to the city's particular character? How do we solve pressing urban problems without eroding San Francisco's dueling identities as picturesque yet provincial? Who is empowered to

decide? From its beginnings, San Francisco was a place to

escape to and find oneself. It coupled entrepreneurial ambition with a licentious openness. For many people, the initial encounter with San Francisco was an experience of personal liberation - political, sexual, spiritual , pharmaceutical, natural. This sense of liberation cannot be unrelated to the city 's unique politics. The fierce affection that so many hold for this city, the intense aversion to change and the assertiveness of public debates over the city 's development has created a uniquely pressurized civic

culture. It seems that, for many liberated transplants, San Francisco was perfect at the moment they fell under its irresistible spell, and everything that came after has been sacrilege.

Attempts to reconfigure the city according to evolving notions of progress, beauty and justice

have often proved controversial and even traumatic. Certain sites in particular have been repeatedly revisited , with a succession of design proposals

El The Panhandle Freeway, rendered

here by Lawrence Halprin, would have run

through the Golden Gate Park panhandle,

between Oak and Fell Streets. It was the

subject of fevered debate in the mid 1960s,

and was ultimately rejected.

Ill Ernest Born's 1956 vision featured the

now eradicated Embarcadero Freeway

set against commercial and cultural

development.

Benjamin Grant is SPUR's Public Realm

and Urban Design Program Manager.

Cydney Payton is an independent curator

of contemporary art and architecture.

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UNBUILT SAN FRANCISCO

that highlight the ever-evolving visions of whbt San Francisco ought to be.

In the 1950s and '60s, in San Francisco as ir other American cities, urban renewal schemes leveled whole districts, precipitating conflicts over t ~e shape of cities, the planning process and the exercise of power. Design schemes were repeatedly pro ~osed and abandoned, reflecting shifts in the broader debates about architecture, urban design anal development in the public life of the city.

Yerba Buena - where heavy industry flowered on sand dunes and bay fill - was the subject of p ore than a century of contentious wrangling. In the 1870s,

financier William Chapman Ralston's bid to er end downtown "South of the Slot" via New Montgomery

Street and the Palace Hotel ruined him, but similar ideas would be revived by developer Ben Swig in the 1950s and drive indiscriminate demolition in the late

1960s. Metabolist architect Kenzo Tange's 1967-69

megastructure for Yerba Buena Center perfef ly expressed both the ambitions and anxieties 9f San Francisco's boosters and its redevelopment agency. The gargantuan garages and corporate facili~ies he proposed would have spanned Mission and H6ward Streets, touching down only with massive spiral parking ramps. The plan offered a safely con tirolled extension of the Financial District, but its fortified

design revealed the underlying assumption t ~ at South of Market and its residents were irredermably

"other: I In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the struggles of

local tenants and hotel owners to resist eviction -encapsulated in Ira Nowinski's singular photobraph of two locals peering into a demolition site - captured the moral imagination of the city. The legal vittories of the tenants created an opening for new design

ideas. Subsequent proposals, in addition to c1eating court-mandated affordable housing, emphasiiZed public and cultural spaces but still maintained an inward focus. A series of gardens, follies a ~ d entertainments appeared, reflecting the heavily

programmed " festival marketplace" approac~ of the

period. At Yerba Buena Center, the arts becar e the bridge between the economic need for a convention

center and the public's desire for more humaml e and public-spirited uses for urban space.

As much as any site in the city, the Ferry Building

has been the subject of debate and civic reim~gining through a succession of proposals. Schemes for the

"Foot of Market Street " date back to Willis Polk 's Ferry Building peristyle (1901), which imagin~d giving

the city 's front door a monumental addition '«orthy of the period 's aesthetic ambitions. Later notipns

12 SEPT/ OCT 2013

B The Burnham Plan (1905) remains

the most comprehensive attempt to

reconfigure San Francisco. Burn ham's neo­

baroque diagonals and etoiles, inspired

by those in Paris, would have cut across

the grid, creating formal vistas to set off

City Beautiful monuments. In spite of the

opportunity presented by the following

year's devastating earthquake and fire, it

was never implemented.

Daniel Burnham Plan courtesy David Rumsey map

collection.

THE URBANIST

THE URBANIST SEPT/ OCT 2013 13

UNBUILT SAN FRANCISCO

lopped off the clock tower to suit a modernist sensibility, projected new towers on piers in the water and carved canals that would create a Ferry Building island. Of course the Embarcadero Freeway would become the key design challenge: first, in efforts to screen. tame or deny its impact. with fluttering flags and trees boldly rendered and

the freeway scarcely acknowledged in light pencil , and later, in the city 's soul-searching over whether

to demolish it and what should replace it. The efforts of engineers and architects

to accommodate the automobile produced schemes that are some of the most shocking to contemporary sensibilities. A series of plans, includ ing the 1948 Comprehensive Transportation Plan. imagined a city laced with freeways - like the

now-infamous proposals for elevated structures

in both the Golden Gate Park Panhandle and the Marina District. In 1948, traffic planners envisioned a massive parking structure that would extend from Third to Eighth streets between Mission and Howard, with freeway ramps alighting directly in the garage to solve the problem of urban parking and traffic once and for all.

Indeed, attempts to beautify and sell urban freeways would consume a remarkable amount of design effort at midcentury, as landscape designers were deployed in support of traffic engineers' increasingly embattled schemes. The best example may be Lawrence Halprin's stunning 1964 ink drawings of the proposed Panhandle Freeway. It was certainly not for lack of communicative prowess that the scheme fell victim to the Freeway Revolt.

The Region: Bridges, Burbs and the Bay As midcentury San Francisco turned inward to grapple with the political and aesthetic challenges of urban change, much of the Bay Area was

urbanizing for the first time. Throughout California, growth swallowed up orange groves, wilderness and mountaintops. The process of domesticating the natural landscape not only persisted but grew in scale and ambition. The bay was rapidly filled to make land for development, abetted by new institutions and new technologies. Development increasingly occurred not a handful of structures at

a time, but in tracts of hundreds or even thousands. The experience of witnessing the conversion of wild and rural landscapes to homes and strip malls was widely lamented.

As the Bay Area region grew - its population far exceeding that of San Francisco - a different set of problems emerged. Where should growth occur and

how could it be managed? Where and how should

14 SEPT/OCT 2013

open space be set aside? To what degree should the natural landscape be transformed to facilitate and integrate urban development? Schemes to level mountains and fill the bay, dozens of unrealized bridges and freeways, even a new city in the Marin Headlands - all reveal the Bay Area grappling with these questions under pressure from rapid growth .

Major infrastructure - like BART and the Golden Gate and Bay bridges - can, in hindsight. seem

inevitable, almost natural. But of course, these icons once seemed as speculative as they now seem certain . To prove this point, one need only look at the dizzying array of bridge and transit schemes that were never realized . In 1909, utopian engineer

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SJ\N FRANCISCO

OUTLINE of the San Franclaco &y Project CQni:oived Oy John Reb4tr I• here shown. New lo.nda to ho crealod by hydraulic !Ill oro lndlct1ted In red, while the rock quar· rloa which m!Qhl be oxcovaled to provide und&rQround ator.iQe 1pace for Q<u10\lne and munll!on1. and concea!rtrl hunr;ion ore 1hown ln tho qray ahadlm1.

SEE STORY ON PAGE ,,

m The 1942 "Reber Plan" was one of

several proposals that would not only

have filled huge swaths of the Bay for

development, but dammed it to produce

freshwater reservoirs behind land bridges.

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Fletcher Felts planned to build "The Suspended

Auto Motor Railway," which would have linked the

Call Building with Oakland's City Hall by way of a

high-speed, carless railway bridge over the bay.

Visionaries later proposed a second Bay Bridge,

immediately adjacent to the first; bridges connecting

San Francisco to Alameda and from Russian Hill to

Angel Island to Tiburon; and a roundabout linking

four bridges at Verba Buena Island. A 1947 study

compiled some 14 possible alignments on a single

map. BART was the subject of great debate as well.

Original 1956 plans showed lines to Marin and San

Mateo and underground out to Geary Boulevard.

Marin and San Mateo counties pulled out of the

scheme in 1962. Not only do the structures we build become

familiar while the also-rans fade from memory,

but they shape everything that comes after; they

are reinforced by their sr:: ~ i al and economic

embeddedness in the region we know. How might

the Bay Area be different if different alignments had

prevailed, if Marin had made its peace with taxes and

transit? How might a Southern Crossing have shaped

the region 's growth?

The most ambitious unbuilt schemes at thE1 regional scale met their match in the rising

environmental movement. Marincello, a proposal

for a 30,000-person city in the Marin Headlands,

DA summary of proposed " trafficways"

in San Francisco from the city's 1948

Comprehensive Transportation Plan

included the Panhandle Freeway

connecting to freeways flanking Golden

Gate Park, as well as a "Southern Crossing"

bridge. These proposals and others would

spawn citizen revolt in the 1950s and 60s.

OE LEUW, CATHER 8 CO • CONSULTING ENGINEERS LAOIS LAS SIEGOE, CONSULTING CITY PLANNER AIRYIEW CITY SHOWING TRAFFIC WAYS or

TRAFFICWAYS 11 PLATE 9 MAJOR THOROUGHFARE ~

SECON DARY THOROUGHFAR E = FREEWAYS Ill!!!!!! EXPRESSWAYS

PARKWAYS ~

HN f'RANC:ISCO OEPARTMltNT OF CITY PLANN I NG

THE URBANIST SEPT/OCT 2013 15

E ,g

UNBUILT SAN FRANCISCO

Ii This 1909 scheme imagined rapid

transit from San Francisco to Oakland -

and beyond - nearly 30 years before

the Bay Bridge and more than 60 years

before BART.

B In the 1980s, landscape architect

Lawrence Halprin was hired to develop a

series of gardens for Verba Buena. While

this imagined Chinese Garden was never

realized, the overall Verba Buena Gardens

scheme was.

m In this photograplt from Ira Nowinski's

series from the 70s, residents contemplate

a demolition site at Verba Buena Center,

where mass evictions led to protracted

conflict - and numerous design schemes

- over the district's future.

THE URBANIST

was forged through the uncommon partnership of an oil company (Gulf) and an East Coast developer (Thomas Frouge). Marincello was approved in 1965,

and initial construction was underway by the time it was scuttled by public outcry in 1972, becoming part

of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area . The practice of filling the bay to make buildable

land spread from Front Street to Mission Bay to Berkeley and Treasure Island. It appeared that the bay would be filled until only slim navigation channels remained. Then came the famous "Bay or River?" graphic, traced from a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers map projecting bay fill trends, that helped galvanize the Save the Bay movement in 1964.

Filling the bay was enthusiastically supported by some as a key economic opportunity. This led to a massive 1968 scheme to top San Bruno Mountain and fill and develop a Manhattan-sized area of the bay was defeated by environmentalists. Boosters

sketched the region with most of its hills targeted as fill material , an approach that could eliminate two

endemic inconveniences at once. Plans referenced Dutch polders to demonstrate the feasibility of large-scale drainage. Perhaps even more far-reaching were schemes like the 1942 Reber Plan, which proposed to dam the bay at Richmond and south of the Bay Bridge, creating valuable freshwater reservoirs upstream, along with causeways for roads and rail and plenty of filled land. Typical of their time, these proposals gave scant attention to the critical dynamics of the bay estuary. (Interestingly, the specter of climate change has revived debates about large-scale engineering of bay hydrology, with competition entries showing massive tidal barrages

plugging the Golden Gate when storm surges threaten.)

The rise of environmental movements and the creation of regional institutions killed many such schemes, but a comprehensive approach to regional planning, such as that imagined by the Association of Bay Area Governments' 1970 Regional Plan, remains elusive. Although discussions of integrated

regional planning go back at least to the 1910s, inter­jurisdictional competition and a powerful home rule doctrine have stymied repeated campaigns, and the reg ion's footprint now reaches the Sierra Foothills. Resistance to sprawl is measured in precious lands saved from the bulldozer, but these are the remnant exceptions to a broader policy failure. An integrated region, with location-efficient growth, effective transportation infrastructure and protections for open space and agriculture, may represent the grandest unbuilt scheme of all.

Visual Civics and Visual Persuasion At both the city and regional scales, the proposals on view in "Unbuilt San Francisco" reveal competing interests and value systems. Models, renderings and plans - the rhetorical tools of planning and design - engaged each period's prevailing aspirations and anxieties, clamoring for the attention of decision­makers and citizens. Concern with a particular site, pmblem or opportunity often spans a period of decades and presents a window into the city 's changing attitudes, politics and values. Every bit as much as the cities we build, the cities we imagine and reject reveal the collective creativity of the urban

project and the imperfect civics of placemaking. •

SEPT/ OCT 2013 17

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18 SEPT/ OCT 2013 THE URBANIST

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,..-

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In 1950, with the 14-year-old Bay Bridge

already gridlocked, the Bay Area Council, a

regional business association, put forward

a proposed Master Plan of Toll Crossings.

The scheme featured two additional

transbay spans converging on Verba

Buena Island, which has been leveled to

accommodate a multilevel roundabout.

-~~ ~~ / .. ~

S~PT/OCT 201~. • ig ..

L·~· . .,· .. . ... ~

, ·~ ,,,., --~,, ,,,,,. ...

..,,,; ... ..n "~": . : . _' . -

Site of the Grent Panmna-Pacitic Internationnl Exposition-Sar. Francisco in 1915 W"rth a. ~ of THE OIAMBER OF CX>MMERCE OF SAN FRANOSCO

' ! ~1i;':::.:; . .;.·

UNBUILT SAN FRANCISCO

Public Spaces Presented by the San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library Essay by Thomas Carey

San Francisco imposes political, economic and

geographical limitations on realizing visions of the

developing city. The buildings we see today are

a reflection of the possibilities and constraints of

the times in which they were constructed . Some

of the sites we know so well today bear little or no

resemblance to their original proposed schemes

from long ago. From comprehensive city plans to architects' varying treatments of a single building,

this exhibit gives us a glimpse of what could have

been, views that never materialized.

In the 19th century, architect Bernard J. S. Cahill was the first to envision - and name - a "Civic

Center" for San Francisco. His "Plan of 1899"

incorporated the best of existing architecture in the

blocks bounded by Golden Gate Avenue, Mission

Street, Ninth Street and Polk Street. However, civic

leaders and architect Willis Polk looked instead to

Chicago's Daniel Burnham for his vision of a new seat

20 SEPT/OCT 2013

__ .. _J"T>oo ... __

of government. Burnham's 1905 plan to redesign

the city 's grid , sketched by Edward H. Bennett, was

sidelined by the 1906 earthquake and fire but not

entirely forgotten . This is evidenced by early designs

for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (circa

1910-1914), and later by Joseph Gosling 's sketches

for Bernard Maybeck's "Suggested Illuminated Water

Effects of a Monument and Cascade at Twin Peaks"

(1933), which show the influence of Burn ham's plan.

The Reid brothers' 1910 "Suggested Design for

Main Public Library Building" on the block bounded

by Hayes Street, Fell Street, Franklin Street and Van Ness Avenue was the first plan to give the library

its own building. However, the adoption of a Civic

Center plan in 1912 meant abandoning that site. The

final competition entries for the new Main Library

(1914) were strikingly similar. Plans for the lot where

the current Main Library (1996) sits went unrealized

for many years. After the demolition of the old City

I. 5a-.d Ill-'~ will> Tdcpph Hill ~ .b.....S.,olS..F--...

2. Harbor v- &-. ~ .... - bdwcai O.W.C-a..diheO.,olS..F..U-.

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~View, widi ... pu.d. ...... « ud~• -i beJ-t ~ c- - Ota. ir-..

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.5. CaldemC&tt: Pulc,.....otlileliet.witli..-f i..da..M.mP.al.:0.-.._.~-w•kr i.-.o1....,.-..

6. 8-le-d -i 1.n.Mun.1 oailW117 - llJ' all per­.......... , ...... ii.-. Bo.ie-dwiU..pplyihc -pic*-tiqucdri...:•tbie-W.

El Virgil Theodore Nahl'sPanama Expo Site

of the Great Panama Pacific International

Exposition 1911

Ill The Plan 1899 was designed by architect

and cartographer Bernard Cahill, an early

proponent of the San Francisco Civic Center.

II "Suggested Illuminated Water Effects

of a Monument and Cascade at Twin Peaks"

drawn by Joseph Gosling for Bernard

Maybeck, reveal the influence of Daniel

Burn ham's 1905 plan for the city.

Thomas Carey is curator of the San Francisco

History Center, San Francisco Public library.

THE URBANIST

Hall following the 1906 disaster, a courts building

and a Hall of Justice (by Dodge Riedy, 1932) were

suggested, and finally, a modest structure was built:

the 1941 Hospitality House, later demolished to make

way for today 's library.

Louis Mullgardt revived the notion of a San

Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in 1925, though it

was left to other engineers to manifest. His vision encompassed a bridge with "functional skyscrapers

that doubled as piers" spanning the bay. It was

perhaps a more graceful treatment than the plan, 40 years later, for a "Panharidle Parkway " (1964), which

was essentially laid over an urban park. The Freeway

Revolt canceled these plans to move motorists quickly across the city. The "El-Way" imagined for

the lower Market Street area (1943) seems relatively less intrusive than freeways planned for the western

side of San Francisco. The Panama-Pacific International Exposition site

THE URBANIST

was literally all over the map in its early stages:

Lake Merced, the Tanforan race track and lslais Creek were some suggested locations for the expo.

Robert Behlow's 1910 plan incorporated Golden Gate Park, Lands End and Harbor View (now the Marina

District). San Francisco Chronicle publisher M. H. de Young favored the Golden Gate Park site, but later

joined in a unanimous endorsement of the Harbor

View option, of which only the Palace of Fine Arts

remains today.

This exhibition was supported by Friends of the San

Francisco Public Library.

SEPT/OCT 2013 21

UNBUILT SAN FRANCISCO

Ambition and Imagination Environmental Design Archives,

University of California

Essay by John King

"Ambition and Imagination" views the unbuilt

realm of San Francisco from five perspectives, some

obvious, some not. The most counter-intuitive section is "First

Takes" - buildings that exist around us, but began

in much different forms. There 's an early version of the revered Pacific Telephone Building, and a set

of working models for the Millennium Tower that

reveals how a 21st-century high-rise evolves in San

Francisco's regulatory and financial climate. There's also the original proposal for One Rincon - with a

pair of towers that are 20 stories shorter than what is

now being built.

"The Rhetorical Unbuilt" consists of schemes that

were meant to prod us to look at the city with fresh

eyes. These include a competition-winning scheme

by Jill Stoner that imagined the Embarcadero as a

22 SEPT/OCT 2013

canal and notebook sketches from 1990 by architects

Liz Ranieri and Byron Kuth who wanted to preserve a section of the Embarcadero Freeway as a reminder of

what was - a concept that predates New York City's

High Line by 20 years.

"The Phantom Skyline" offers what the name implies. a century of skyscrapers that never came to

pass. Renzo Piano's 2006 design for Mission Street

that envisioned five towers as tall as 1,200 feet is

here. So is a campanile-like tower designed for the

Spreckels family after the 1906 earthquake. There is even a pair of towers by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

- a proposal for the foot of Russian Hill that was

abandoned when the would-be developer died in a

plane crash.

Two other sections have a geographic focus. One

concentrates on the Civic Center - not just also­

rans in the 1912 competition for City Hall but also

such recent efforts as a glass-walled addition to

the Veterans Memorial Building by Mark Cavagnero

Associates and BAR 's postmodern makeover of

Trinity Plaza on the south edge of the district. a

concept far different from the modernistic slabs now

on the rise.

The final section is "Along the Shore." This includes everything from a 1979 study for a multipurpose

stadium where AT&T Park now stands to the casino

proposal for Alcatraz that prompted the 1969

occupation of the island by the group Indians of All Tribes, as well as proposals for Sutro Baths and the

Embarcadero. •

Special thanks to Adolph Rosekrans Architects

and the Joan Draper Endowment, Department of

Architecture, University of California, Berkeley, for

their support.

THE URBANIST

c

1! c. 0

~ Cl

El After the Federal Government closed the

prison on Alcatraz, proposals included this

one for new cultural facilities and housing

by architect Ernest Born. The island was

ultimately made into a national park.

THE URBANIST

Ill An early design by Arthur Brown Jr. for

what now is one of the city's best-loved

buildings, Coit Tower, was shorter and more

elaborate than what opened in 1933.

Bl A 2009 study by Mark Cavagnero

Associates on expansion possibilities for

San Francisco Opera included this new

glass-walled wing for the War Memorial

Building.

liJ These towers designed by Ludwig Mies

van der Rohe for Russian Hill were never

built - the would-be developer died in a

plane crash.

SEPT/OCT 2013 23

UNBUILT SAN FRANCISCO

Grand Visions Presented by AIA San Francisco/

Center for Architecture + Design

Essay by Margie O'Driscoll

The Jefferson Airplane's Paul Kantner famously described San Francisco as "49 square miles surrounded by reality." If reality only exists beyond its borders, then the visionary and outlandish ideas that were too grandiose for even San Franciscans to consider remain some of the most fantastic designs for any city in the world. "Un Built San Francisco:

that protects shorelines by mechanically managing

tides, designed by Kuth Ranieri. Also showcased are provocative ideas - such as Fougeron Architecture's "Cultivating the Urban Eutopia" - that challenge us to consider whether a vertical agricultural system, fed by reclaimed water, should become the skin of our buildings. Taller David Dana Arquitectura 's

Grand Visions" considers these never-realized plans masterful Bay Bridge project provokes us to imagine and buildings. preserving the current Bay Bridge structure as a

Among the photographs, original drawings, video location for high-density housing. and models in the exhibition, two themes illustrate the "On the Boards" illuminates grandiose collection of thought-provoking projects: "Dreams contemporary projects that will forever change the Deferred" tells the underlying story of the people, urban fabric of San Francisco. These projects include cultural impacts and opinions that envisioned - or Pelli Clarke Pelli's Transbay Center, Sn0hetta and destroyed - San Francisco's urban fabric while "On EHDD's plans for the expansion of the San Francisco

the Boards" celebrates significant planned projects Museum of Modern Art and Skidmore, Owings that will shape the city fabric over the next decade. and Merrill's design for one of the most eco-friendly

Highlights in "Dreams Deferred" include the neighborhoods in the world at Treasure Island. proposed home for the United Nations at the foot of Once completed, these projects will transform the

Twin Peaks by Vincent Raney and a "ventilated" levee city as we know it. •

24 SEPT/ OCT 2013

rJ For a student competition, David Dana of

Taller David Dana Arquitectura developed

an award-winning design to conserve and

give new purpose to the soon-to-be unused

section of the Bay Bridge.

Margie O'Driscoll is the Executive Director

of AIA San Francisco and the Center for

Architecture+ Design

THE URBANIST

Ill Folding Water by Kuth Ranieri Architects

is a ventilated levee proposal designed to

protect shorelines by regulating both rising

sea levels and the delta and bay waters.

Ii

THE URBANIST

Ii For their project "Cultivating Urban

Utopia," Fougeron Architecture envisioned

San Francisco as a model sustainable city,

with agriculture woven directly into its

urban framework

SEPT/ OCT 2013 25

UNBUILT SAN FRANCISCO

Venues Exhibition Dates Gallery Hours

AIA San Francisco I Center for Architecture + Design 130 Sutter Street, Suite 600, San Francisco Exhibition open August 15 - October 25 Monday - Friday, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm Free admission

California Historical Society 678 Mission Street, San Francisco Exhibition open September 6 - December 29 Tuesday - Sunday, 12:00 pm - 5:00 pm $5 suggested donation, free for members and children

SPUR 654 Mission Street, San Francisco Exhibition open September 6 - December 20 Tuesday, 11:00 am - 8:00 pm; Wednesday - Friday, 11:00 am - 5:00 pm Free admission

The Environmental Design Archives at UC Berkeley, College of Environmental Design 280 Wurster Hall , University of California, Berkeley Exhibition open September 14 - November 8 Wednesday - Saturday, 10:00 am - 2:00 pm Free admission

San Francisco Public Library Skylight Gallery, 6th Floor, Main Library, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco Exhibition open August 24 - November 27 Monday - Thursday, 10:00 am - 6:00 pm; Friday, 12:00 pm - 6:00 pm; Saturday, 10:00 am - 6:00 pm; Sunday, 12:00 pm - 5:00 pm Free admission

Opening Reception Unbuilt San Francisco Exhibition Opening September 6, 5:00 - 9:00 pm at 678 and 654 Mission Street, San Francisco

For more information, please visit spur.erg/exhibitions/unbuilt-sf-view-futures-past

26 SEPT/OCT 2013 THE URBANIST

THE URBANIST SEPT/OCT 2013 27

CITY NEWS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE

Urban Drift

1' Valediction Artists Amanda Hughen

and Jennifer Starkweather have been collaborating on visual explorations of the Bay Bridge over the past several years: "Valediction " is their new

series of works on paper that focuses on the soon-to-be­demolished East Span of the structure. Part of the daily landscape of hundreds of thousands of commuters, it will soon exist only in our collective memory. "Valediction" is on view at Electric Works Gallery in San Francisco from September 6 to October 19. www.electricworks.com

Elon Musk vs. High-Speed Rail

Elon Musk, the restless innovator behind SpaceX and Tesla Motors, recently unveiled the details behind the Hyperloop, an elevated

system of steel tubes that he

28 SEPT/OCT 2013

says could move passengers enclosed in aluminum pods from Los Angeles to San Francisco in

35 minutes, at a total construction cost of $6 billion over 20 years. (Compare that to the current high­speed rail estimates of $70 billion). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the

technology world responded with

exuberant enthusiasm while the transportation world jumped on the plan's myriad implausibilities. Writing for Bloomberg News, Timothy Lavin reflects that this

sort of tension is the kind we could use more of. "The Hyperloop itself may never become a reality. But Musk has clearly captured the public imagination. In doing so, I

suspect he also issued a challenge that will be very hard to pass up -

one that may yield some dividends

we never expected."

"Elon Musk's Ingenious, Implausible Hyperloop," by

Timothy Lavin, Bloomberg.com, 8/12/13

Is This the Way to Grand Central? streets at their leisure, avoiding Conceptual artist Nobutaka Aozaki inclines if they desire. has been working on a partial hillmapper.com

map of Manhattan compiled of individual, hand-drawn maps he's -J, Playing House

collected from strangers. The "Architecture on the Carpet: The

ongoing project, "From Here to Curious Tale of Construction There," is part of his exploration Toys and the Genesis of Modern of the process of giving and Buildings" by Brenda and receiving directions. Dressed as a Robert Vale offers a novel view tourist. armed with a baseball cap of the development of modern and shopping bag, Aozaki walks architecture through the prism of up to strangers on the street and children 's construction toys. www.

asks for directions. He's focused thamesandhudson.com • on both major tourist destinations

and places where he goes out to eat or to meet friends. While he's found more and more that people are likely to rely on GPS mapping apps to give directions, he insists on hand-drawn maps scribbled on a napkin, receipt or stray piece of paper.

"Meet the Man Trying to Save the Lost Art of Hand·

Drawn Maps," by Stephanie Garlock, The Atlantic

Cities, 8/13/13

Hillmapper

Many can agree that the best way

to see and appreciate a city is to walk its streets. For residents and visitors of San Francisco however, this is not always an inviting pursuit. The seven major hills and their corresponding slopes can leave even the most eager pedestrian tired and defeated. Fortunately, U.C. Berkeley student Sam Maurer developed a smartphone app designed to help navigate those daunting

hills. Uphill and downhill streets

are marked in red and blue with varying intensity of color

depending on the steepness of the slope. People can travel the city

THE URBANIST

MEMBER PROFILE

Empowering Urban Entrepreneurs Julie Lein & Clara Brenner, co-founders of Tumml

Both Julie Lein (above right) and Clara Brenner, co-founders of Tumml,

an urban ventures accelerator, were always interested in urbanism, albeit

from very different perspectives. Julie was always a government/policy nerd, and had worked in political polling in San Francisco. Clara came

from an urban real estate and sustainability background. When the two met at MIT Sloan's MBA program, they realized they were both driven by

a passion to make cities better places to live.

So we have to ask: Just what is an

"urban ventures accelerator"?

Tumml is all about empowering entrepreneurs to solve our most

pressing urban challenges. We're

looking for the next generation

of Zipcar and Revolution Foods

- startups developing consumer­

facing products and services

that solve challenges unique

to our cities. We identifiy these companies at an early stage,

and provides hands-on support.

office space. and seed funding to

help grow their businesses and

make a significant impact on their

communities.

WELCOME

New Business Members

CB Richard Ellis Group, Inc. (CBRE)

Mineta Transportation Institute

New Members Russell Berkowitz

Robert Banovac Patrick Carney

David Barry Susan Carson

Timothy Beedle Ryan Croft

What are some of the products

and services you're most excited

about right now?

Of course we're a bit biased, but

we're most excited about the ones

coming out of the five companies

in the current Tumml cohort. For example, WorkHands - a

blue-collar online identity service

- helps match workers in the

trades and potential employers. providing an important workforce

development tool for our cities .

And Earth Starter, which helps

urban dwellers grow food in small

spaces - connecting people

with their own local food. These startups have innovative, scalable

approaches to solving our most

pressing urban challenges.

Jim Cunneen James Hicks

Katherine Doi Cayce Hill

James Dunbar Cassie Hoeprich

Kaia Eakin John Hollar

Jeff S. Fredericks Heather Imboden

Lydia Guel Ryan James

Anna Haynes Sally Jenkins-

Jim Hewlett Stevens

What's the urban problem you'd

most like to solve?

We hear too many people in

San Francisco complain that

startups and entrepreneurs don't

care about the communities in which they work. These critics

see technology companies (and

their employees) driving up

housing costs and pricing out

longstanding residents from their

homes. We want the startup

community to feel connected to

their city. Our goal is to build an

ecosystem of entrepreneurs using

technology to tackle challenges in

their own backyards. That means

creating products and services

that are inclusive of the diversity

of the entire city, as well as employing individuals from across

the community.

Sounds fantastic. So now

we'd love to learn what's your

favorite ...

City:

San Francisco . .. obviously!

Matthew S. Jones Naomi Nakano-

Kieran Kelly-Sneed Matsumoto

J.R. Killigrew J Madeleine Nash

Keenan Lee-Peters Jeff Oberdorfer

Chris Lepe Christian Park

Elizabeth Mattiuzzl Paul Pereira

Connie Migliazzo Raul Prebisch

Katie Morales Kimb Seelye

Building:

Julie's is Aqua, the Chicago

skyscraper designed by Jeanne

Gang.

Clara's is Union Station in

Washington , DC.

Urban View:

The view of the Bay from a table

on the terrace of Hog Island

Oyster Bar in the Ferry Building.

And your favorite book about

cities?

The Age of Gold: The California

Gold Rush and the New American

Dream by H.W. Brands does

an amazing job of telling the

story of the making of the state of California - much of which

revolved in and around San

Francisco. The author weaves

together the lives of many early

San Franciscans. It was cool to

learn the back stories of folks who've lent their names to our

streets and buildings (John

Fremont, Sam Brannan, etc). •

Arielle Segal Shivam Vohra

Alex Shim Lynda Ward

Blake Silkwood Mike Wasserman

Stephanie Silkwood Juliet Wilson

Garen Srapyan

Jessie Stewart

Pat Swan

Ned Thomas

0SPUR

The Silver SPUR Award is the most prominent award for lifetime civic achievement in San Francisco.

EVENT CHAIR:

Ken McNeely is President of AT&T

California, where he leads a workforce

of more than 36,000 employees. He

has led AT& T's efforts in California as

it transitions from a residential phone

company to one of the world's largest

wireless and broadband companies.

Ken 1s a board member of the

California Chamber of Commerce, the

California Business Roundtable. the

Silicon Valley Leadership Group and

This year, please join us in honoring:

Chief Judge Karen V. Clopton has been accessible to the public and more

promoting active public discourse, efficient. She served as a San Francisco

integrity and transparency in government civil service commissioner for four terms

for more than two decades. As the chief (1993-2000) and as chief of operations

adm1nistrat1ve law Judge for the California for the Port of San Francisco. Whether

Public Utilities Commission. she has made encouraging youth to get involved with

its crucial regulatory work more

Thomas C. Layton has been a dedicated

philanthropic leader, seeding and

supporting pos1t1ve social change for

almost four decades. As the president of

The Wallace Alexander Gerbode

Foundation since 1975, Layton has built a

track record of 1nnovat1ve and risk-taking

Daniel Solomon, FAIA is an architect and

urban designer whose career combines

professional practice with teaching and

writing. His commitment to the

construction and reconstruction of urban

neighborhoods extends beyond his

renowned project work; he is a

Senator Art Torres (Ret.), J.D. has been a

life-long public servant and advocate for

civil rights, healthcare, stem cell research

and environmental justice. In a career

spanning more than three decades, he

has distinguished himself by tackling

complex policy issues that affect all

California residents. Sen. Torres has

Thank you to our generous sponsors:

government through the Junior State of

grant-making that has served some of

the Bay Area's most esteemed leaders.

movements and institutions in their

nascent stages. His leadership in the

philanthropic community, encouraging

foundations to courageously support the

policy and advocacy work of their

co-founder of the Congress for the New

Urbanism and a passionate spokesman

for the cause of the city. Solomon's work

as a partner in the Mithun I Solomon San

Francisco office - including the LEED

Platinum David Brower Center in

Berkeley and the redevelopment of San

leadership roles in two core institutions

serving the Bay Area: he is president of

the San Francisco Public Utilities

Commission and vice chair of the

governing Board of the California

Institute of Regenerative Medicine. He

served 20 years in the California

Legislature. both in the State Assembly

~at&t .s. BANKJll.WEST 11---

Arup

Dignity Health

Forest City

McKenna Long & Aldridge

Parkmerced

Asp1riant

Andy & Sara Barnes

Golden Gate University

Google

David & Jane Hartley

Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Co.

Media Sponsors Bus mess Times

Port of San Francisco

Recology

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP

Union Bank

Wilson Meany

.lfk COMCAST

Charles Salter Associates

Comcast

Anne Halsted & Wells Whitney

Hanson Bridgett LLP

Vince & Amanda Hoenigman

The John Stewart Company

l

Bay Area Council, where he chairs the

Education Committee. In 2010, Ken

was named one of the 50 Top African

Americans in Technology.

America or teaching citizens how to

participate in the electoral process with

the League of Women Voters, Judge

Clopton has been deeply and widely

engaged in civic leadership for San

Francisco.

grantees, has made him one of the most

respected leaders in the field. Prior to

joining to the foundation, he was a

business executive and. later, the vice

president and national director of the

Coro Foundation.

Francisco's Hunters View neighborhood

- exemplify his commitment to the

evolution of community design. He is

professor emeritus at UC Berkeley and

Kea Distinguished Professor at the

University of Maryland, and has published

many articles and three books.

and State Senate. Involved in many

crucial bipartisan initiatives, he was

co-author of the groundbreaking

California Safe Drinking Water and Toxic

Enforcement Act of 1986 (Proposition

65).

Sponsor list as of 8/14/13

John Knken & Sheppard, Mullin,

Katherine Koelsch Richter & Hampton Kriken LLP

Richard & Marilyn Sutter Health/ CPMC Lonergan T1shman Speyer

Larry N1bb1 Tom Eliot Fisch Sergio Nibb1 Jim Chappell ROMA Design Group Presidio Bank Paul Sack N. Teresa Rea Se1fel Consulting Goodyear Peterson

Wilbur-Ellis Company

0SPUR 654 Mission Street

San Francisco, CA 94105-4015

(415) 781-8726

spur.erg

Time-dated material

11111' l'5 ®

Ideas + action for a better city

76 South First Street

San Jose, CA 95113

(408) 510-5688

spur.org/sanjose

Nonprofit Org.

US Postage

PAID Permit # 4118

San Francisco, CA

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