It would make vastly more sense to enact private vehicle restrictions on Market soon, before there are 1,200 new drivers in place to defend their right to drive whenever they want, wherever they want.

I do not believe it possible to plan for the kind of livable cities that comprise San Francisco’s real neighborhoods and arose organically because the city prioritizes the economic entitlements of developers.

“Here we practice the art of the deal, not the art of the city,” as the architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable has put it.

On the Homefront – After the Bubble – Will the Recession Derail Michael Bloomberg’s Grand Plans

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/realestate/keymagazine/15Key-lede-t.html

-marc

Regarding Trinity Plaza, the fact that it is Modern is not its problem. If only it looked like Mies….

Even if it were not completely car free, this next article shows that the way a street is built determines the speed of traffic. Even by the picture on the top you can see that a road with pedestrian-permeable edges will reduce the speed of traffic immensely. When a driver expects to see people in the street, that driver will drive more slowly, be more cautious or possibly even choose a different route. Well worth your time:
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//008746.html

The design of the Trinity Plaza replacement project is somewhat constrained, as the condition of the deal was 100% replacement of rent controlled housing so as to prevent displacement of existing residents.

The new building that is going up on Mission parallel to the SOMA Grand, blocking its westward views(!), is the affordable tower. Once that is complete, residents will be relocated from the Del Webb structures and they will be demolished and replaced with the artists’ rendering.

The good part about the new design is that it has a hole in it. That part of Market Street is where the northern and westerly winds gain velocity as they come down the Hayes hill. That there is a hole in the structure means that it will be a less worse wind player.

The problem with the coalition is that the Chamber of Commerce plays for keeps, and our advocates, not play for keeps.

-marc

Yes! MTA could do that tomorrow; forced right turns for private cars at 8th and 5th heading down Market, no right or left turns onto Market from Montgomery or Battery etc. etc. Why do we have to study everything to death – try it, if it doesn’t work change it.

I prefer the term Car Lite Market Street, instead of Car Free. There are not that many private autos going more then a block or two on Mkt but they mess things up but good, and they tend to be fancy expensive cars and SUVs….

I like that kind of talk!

can’t say i’m crazy about the anonymouse City Hall quotage. if the Mayor wants to participate in the discussion, fine, but it’s got to be on equal terms with everybody else. if there is some compelling reason to grant someone anonymitiy – like their personal security – then fine, but absent that, let the chips fall where they may. if the story runs without comment from the Mayor, then it runs without comment from the Mayor by the choice of the Mayor – simple.

but, good article.

i think the interested parties should start sitting down with Daly and sorting out the issues — put down some stakes and get to work. that’s how democracy is supposed to work. we don’t need the blessing of His Highness to proceed.

Judging from the rendering, it will make it dramatically uglier.

There is no law saying that new development has to have slick, sterile, modernist architecture. This design looks like the sort of thing Mies van der Rohe might have done 40 or 50 years ago. It is no longer the 1950s, and we should move beyond mid-century modernism.