This is a blog designed to provide background and perspectives from within the warehouse district of San Francisco’s changing, industrial east side. Land use debates over the future of these neighborhoods, at the crossroads of South of Market, the NE Mission and Potrero Hill districts, will impact the City and larger Bay Area for decades to come.
City College will open a new campus on Mission Street this summer ‘07, with state of art equipment to train local residents for good paying jobs in the emerging medical and digital technologies at their doorsteps. Yet SF City Planning has just released proposed rezoning plans for the area, promoting auto repair and manufacturing as the economic development strategy for low income residents along San Francisco’s BART line.
The main changes in the proposed new zoning will prevent the development of private housing and knowledge-based businesses in the Mission, in order to encourage owners to sell their land to the City for subsidized housing projects. In a city made up of 2/3 renters, the economy and socio-political structure of San Francisco is extrodinarily complex. As a geologist and environmental assessor, I want to provide an additional perspective on the unintended impacts these land use choices may have.
A unique enclave has evolved from the pioneering efforts of Project Artaud in the 1970s, which became the first legal conversion of warehouses into live/work units in San Francisco.
Land around Franklin Square Park is ground zero for urban planners, because large parcels of land there will have corresponding large impacts on the surrounding neighborhood and City.
Large industrial concerns have dominated the eastern waterfront and inland along railroad spurs, extending deep into historic neighborhoods like the Mission. As technology changes the business…
You can find links to maps and reports by City Planning on our web site.
http://www.madrinagroup.org
