Organized Labor

by Christopher Honey
Contributing Writer

As San Francisco, like many other urban areas, struggles with questions of growth and development, it is also moving beyond the old debate of pro-growth versus no growth. Instead, city leaders are beginning to create a dialog around communities that want high quality, environmentally friendly, sustainable growth.

As one of the leaders reaching out to find consensus with other groups, Michael Theriault, Secretary-Treasurer of the San Francisco Building Trades Council, now sees reason for hope about future growth in San Francisco. “In the past, the relationship between building trades members and anti-sprawl advocates and environmentalists was sometimes seen as adversarial,” he said.

“But not anymore. Now, as we’re beginning to talk we’re finding areas of commonality,” Theriault added. “We’re trying to forge new links that will make us full partners in the effort to build livable, vibrant communities here in San Francisco.”

The area where all the partners can agree include new, environmentally sound building methods, investment in infrastructure and building up density, rather than out into the suburbs. “These are also areas where our skilled workers can help,” Theriault added.

Gabriel Metcalf, Executive Director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), agreed. “We want to create a pro-growth environmental movement – or a pro-environment growth movement,” he explained.

For Metcalf, as for many other community activists, the key question then becomes, where are we building?

There is a general consensus among many groups who focus on community development, transportation, and sprawl that the answer to where is to build in the future has two parts.

The first is to build more densely in already urbanized area, rather than spreading outwards and sprawling into suburban and rural land.

The second is to concentrate new development near public transportation and stores and businesses so people can shop and work within walking distance. The result would be to reduce the need to drive, cutting down on the traffic congestion that plagues San Francisco.

While this may sound like planning 101, it’s not what’s been happening in American cities for the last half century. In a sense, it is a return to old fashioned towns and villages – built around a central square where people worked and shopped. The town center was also near the railroads that were America’s primary means of transporting people and goods.

But in another sense, smart, planned growth and development is also very new – building higher densities using new techniques with high environmental performance. As John Rizzo, chair of the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club put it, “smart growth is all about planning – including building near existing transit and in urbanized areas.”

“It’s a forward way of looking,” said Metcalf, “that takes the best ideas from the past. We have a modern way of living and we have to reflect that.”

Stuart Cohen of the Transportation and Land Use Coalition sees investment in intelligent transportation infrastructure as a key part of the equation. “We have to make sure that regional transportation investment doesn’t just flow out to feel suburban growth, but also supports our central cities,” he said.

Investment in transportation infrastructure, especially mass transit, will allow for continued growth in San Francisco, without degrading the quality of life in the city – bringing people in without clogging the streets with Los Angeles style traffic.

“How we get to San Francisco and around San Francisco is part and parcel with how we grow San Francisco,” said Cohen. “Matching infrastructure with future development and supportive policies is the key to maximizing development while improving the community and the environment.”

Fortunately, he sees San Francisco as being on the path to a clear vision of how the city wants growth to take place and that vision is being matched with intelligent transportation planning.

Sn Francisco does not exist in a vacuum, isolated from what is happening in the halls of the capitol in Sacramento or in neighboring cities like Oakland and San Jose or in the rest of the state. The city must participate in regional and statewide debates about how investment in infrastructure takes place.

With billions in bond money for investment in infrastructure on the ballot this November, San Francisco must become a key player in the ongoing debate over how and where that money should be spent.

How the city grows in inextricably entwined with a broad range of infrastructure investments. Communities must be deeply involved in the planning process in a way that goes beyond just attending public meetings where they choose between pre-determined alternatives – build here or there; build or do not build.

Advocates point to a program like Better Neighborhoods, a San Francisco planning process that starts from a community’s perspective as a model in involving communities in the development process.

Better Neighborhoods begins by asking what a community needs rather than what a developer wants. The process looks at a community’s assets, at the things it does not want to change or lose – such as local businesses, open space, or even a more nebulous idea, like the character of a community – and starts from there.

Through this kind of process, experts say, growth can be utilized to bring new vibrancy to a community. It is organic and responsive to its residents, who are not outside the process looking in, but rather an integral part of it. They are also not responding to a developer’s proposal – buying “as is” or not at all.

“We all live in the Bay Area. Our members are as concerned about our quality of life as any other group,” said Theriault. “We all want to see vibrant, responsible growth in our communities.”