Comments on: Planning Department Unveils San Francisco’s First Pedestrian Priority Street

By: J. Mork

J. Mork — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:29:57 +0000

Fisherman’s Woonerf — sounds good to me.

By: CBrinkman

CBrinkman — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:33:43 +0000

I agree with Fran that locations that serve locals more could have been chosen over a tourist intensive area – but in the Good to Great idea – it’s harder to go from good to great then it is horrible to great – Fishy Wharf in its current state is horrible – so the FWCBD is more willing to try something great. I hear that they are terrified that tourist traffic will continue to go south to the Ferry Bldg and soon the development on the other side of AT&T park. They need to kick it up not just a notch, but a bunch of notches.

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:09:28 +0000

It’s great to see the “Shared Space” concept being adopted stateside.

i think shared space is generally a disaster, though it does seem like we could tolerate it during this ‘phaseout period’ — while we’re working to phase out untethered motorized traffic altogether.

hopefully nobody dies during this experiment.

By: Joel

Joel — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 17:45:08 +0000

It’s great to see the “Shared Space” concept being adopted stateside. Europe has been reviving this idea originally inspired by older cities and villages, and testing it out in certain areas. Here’s the website that features some of their case studies:

http://www.shared-space.org/

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:40:45 +0000

was kind of hoping we’d see something for all the bikers who are trying to get back into the city, but are faced with a one-way jefferson street, with oncoming traffic, and hordes of pedestrians.

By: Fran Taylor

Fran Taylor — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:13:57 +0000

I’m not privy to the machinations of the Planning Department, but in terms of community deals around Cesar Chavez, CC Puede was split right down the middle on the 3400 proposal: One current member of the CC Puede steering committee presented the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center alternative to the private development, while another current member argued for the condos. Similarly, one current cochair argued for the project and the other against. We all acknowledged that we didn’t agree on this issue, and the group took no position.

The Fisherman’s Wharf plan looks great. I agree that it seems wasteful to spend all this money on tourists, but we can hope that they’ll take these ideas back home with them.

By: marcos

marcos — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:20:17 +0000

“”We don’t want to lose our edginess as a wharf, but we don’t want to be lost from history, either,” she said.”

The “experience” sector of our economy has to be very careful that it provides just enough urban edginess to be interesting but not enough to push tourists outside of their comfort zone.

There are many better places for San Francisco to spend $12m than on tourist amenities, given that many of our streets are dangerous to residents every day.

Also, I was thinking, was the Cesar Chavez improvements the quid pro quo for support of the 3400 Cesar Chavez EIR which would have called for a study of the impacts of luxury housing in the Mission? Here, we’ll give you a fancy new street treatment if you ignore the displacement of the poor from the Mission. $6m in improvements for perhaps billions in entitlement value and gentrifying the most progressive district, we’re getting crumbs for selling ourselves short.

-marc

By: CBrinkman

CBrinkman — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 20:50:09 +0000

I really hope that this goes through. It would be great to have a nice shared space to point to and say, see: it can work. Something like this would even attract locals down to the Wharf. Yay planning and FWCBD. Fingers crossed on implementation.