Design Review in San Francisco

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HERE’S HOW IT’S DONE IN SAN FRANCISCO

Author David Prowler was a VISTA tenant organizer, a San Francisco Planning Commissioner, a Community Planner in Chinatown, and the Mayor’s Project Manager for the Giants Ballpark and Mission Bay. He now advises public agencies, non-profits, and developers on development and planning. He is President of the Board of the Homeless Prenatal Program. This essay previously published in the SPUR Newsletter, January 2007, and adapted here by permission of the author.

Here’s how it’s done in San Francisco. The Planning Department staff or the Planning Commission, or even the Board of Supervisors, decides to draw up a new plan for an area. Maybe it’s because there have been too many controversies there, or because it seems like a good idea either to change or to preserve the character of that neighborhood. There is some squabbling about the boundaries, and then the process of creating a plan begins. The public is invited to give input at community meetings, given handouts, shown slides, and given a chance to ask questions or make criticisms. Six months later, the planners come back with a modified version of the original idea, pass out handouts, show the slides and ask for comments. This gets repeated for a decade. Or perhaps somebody wants to develop a piece of property. Maybe they hold a community meeting and present the idea (which is probably pretty far along). Some people like it and drop out of the process, while opponents rally for a showdown. In the meantime, the Planning Department staff cranks up a study of all the environmental damage the project could do. Years later there’s a hearing, then appeals.

Average San Franciscans are cut out of the process, nobody seems to have a clear idea of what urban planning can and cannot do, and sometimes it seems that the process itself is the product. It’s not a great system. We can do better.

Why the system doesn’t work
It’s hard not to notice at community meetings and public hearings that the crowd doesn’t look much like San Francisco. Look around on the bus, in the streets, at clubs and at the grocery store. Are these the people engaged in the discourse about the future of our city?

There’s a good chance you don’t go to community meetings or hearings either. I don’t blame you. But people do want to be heard and, believe it or not, we’d have a better city if they were.

It’s easier to see why people don’t participate than why they do:

• Irrelevance: Unless their view or parking space is in danger, most people just don’t see what city planning has to do with their lives. How would you explain to a single mom in the Tenderloin, a teenager in the projects, a couple starting to look for a place to buy, or a grocer what planning can do to make their daily life better or worse? It’s too abstract.

• Inertia: Plans are underway all over the city: Treasure Island; Mid-Market; the so-called Eastern Neighborhoods, which encompass fully 25 percent of the city; Market/Octavia; Transbay. But they seem never to end.

• Confusion: Most people don’t understand that planning sets guidelines and rules but doesn’t cause or prevent growth or change, or address economic or cultural needs. We expect both too much and too little. Of course, we can’t see what a plan prevents, because it doesn’t happen. And we can’t really identify what a plan caused, because the genesis of any change is so complex.

• Language and cultural barriers: Not everyone is comfortable speaking out. Maybe you don’t come from a culture with a tradition of community meetings and a government that wants your ideas. Thirty-nine percent of San Franciscans were born in another country— more than the number of San Franciscans born in all of California. And these immigrants came here for a reason. They found their previous countries intolerable and made a decision to leave their roots and move on. Not to organize or participate in some political system: to leave. Why expect them now to try to influence land use decisions? Maybe your English isn’t so great and you are shy about public speaking—46 percent of San Franciscans speak a foreign language at home.

• And plenty of San Franciscans are working hard and have kids at home—they just can’t slip away for a two-hour meeting of PowerPoint presentation and comments.

• Isolation: There is a nationwide decline in public participation. Used to be, people participated much more in civic life—they routinely attended PTA meetings, block clubs, League of Women Voters meetings, labor union meetings, even lodge meetings. Now, even poker is a solitary activity.

Often, it’s the same handful of people at every meeting, saying the same things. There is a subculture of people who attend community advisory committee meetings and hearings, just as there are subcultures of participants at sex clubs, book clubs, and AA meetings. We assume that people who join the planning club are better informed about the city’s issues and care more about the future of the city. But are they?

People come to community meetings and hearings for a lot of reasons. Sometimes it’s to learn and share good ideas, but sometimes the reasons are a little more obscure. Fear of change. Issues around control. Racism. Jealousy. Anger. One thing I learned when I was a planning commissioner: you can’t solve psychological problems with land use decisions.

The way we plan now works well for some. Planning commissioners and elected officials get to step into the vacuum and make deals. Consultants get hired as guides. The lengthy review processes help maintain the status quo. But meanwhile we have a type of “redlining by planning.” Who could know what can be done in a neighborhood while the rules are up in the air?

Not only are these exercises expensive and lengthy, they also squander the goodwill that residents have toward planning, burning out participants and driving away others. Maybe it’s time to step back and ask what we expect from the public dialogue about the city. We can create a space to learn from San Franciscans about the cities they live and work in.

I write “cities” because we each experience the city differently. I have a map of Paris that illustrates this. It has no streets or landmarks, just the outline of the city and two colors labeled “J’y vais” and “J’y vais pas”: I go here, I don’t go there.

The Vietnamese nail salon worker who lives in the Tenderloin and works in the Richmond, the widow who hasn’t left the Sunset since I. Magnin closed, the student who lives at Parkmerced but spends all her time on Valencia Street, the kid from the projects who goes to Wallenberg High School, the undocumented dishwasher—each has his or her own way to use the parts of the city they use, with little overlap. And each has a different relationship with the history of San Francisco and different hopes for the city’s future. We can’t weave these narratives together in a meaningful way by starting at the end of the story, with the buildings and the spaces between them.

We need to look not just at the ways people use the city, but also at how they use buildings. What is an office in a city where 18 percent of the residents are self-employed and others work from home? What is a café where half the customers are working on laptops?

How to involve such a heterogeneous crowd in the discourse?

• Don’t be afraid of new voices. It’s easy to fall back on the self-identified “leaders,” because they’re predictable and easy to find.

• Trust that out of an open, welcoming environment some better ideas can come.

• Trust that if ideas come from such an environment, they’ll come with a constituency of people committed to seeing them through. And even if it takes longer to get there, the civic leadership—commissioners, staff, the mayor, and supervisors—might be a little more likely to take stands. Maybe there even would be fewer appeals at the back end.

• City planning itself needs to be marketed. Show how planning can be relevant to people’s real lives. Make it less cumbersome, and show the value of results to city staff and officials, as well as the public.

• Maybe land-use planning shouldn’t be done in a vacuum. Maybe the discourse has to include crime, culture, jobs, and education all at once.

• Experiment with media. Maybe the dialogue would be more inclusive by tapping into where people really communicate, such as beauty parlors and laundromats. Maybe planning can be done with something like bookmobiles. Or groups of random people invited to talk about how they use the city, over dinners. Or a storefront. Maybe we should have an Office of Public Involvement helping all city departments, not just the Planning Department. Or even just hire professional facilitators to look at the goal of each planning venture and design the right process for the job.

• Use the Internet. We plan our vacations online; keep in touch via e-mail and text messaging; share our thoughts on blogs; and buy, rent, and sell on Craig’s List. So why do we expect people to spend afternoons at City Hall waiting for an item to be called, only to then get just three minutes to speak? I get the Planning Commission calendars online; why not enable people to click the calendar and comment? Comments could go to commissioners directly or in digest, staff could respond, and maybe people could post responses to each other.

• For people to feel welcome, you’ve got to speak their language. And the context has to be culturally comfortable, too. How do groups make decisions in the Philippines, in Latin America, or in China? It’s not enough to use the same old “7 p.m. Thursday in the community center/PowerPoint/question and answer/thanks for coming/we’ll get back to you” format. It doesn’t translate.

• Let’s learn from how planning is done in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and even other North American cities. It’s mind-blowing to see what planning has achieved in Berlin, Barcelona, or even Portland. This might require bridging the gaps between practice, academia, and groups like SPUR.

• Let’s be frank and clear about what land-use planning can and cannot do. It doesn’t by itself create buildings or good jobs. The City is trying to preserve blue-collar jobs by zoning to prevent housing (it’s been characterized as “zoning for gold mines and expecting gold”). But how about linking zoning with a strategy to create these jobs?

• Set timelines and develop the discipline to stick to them. The Giants’ new ballpark had a deadline: Opening Day. It was a challenge, and we stepped up to it. It was a blessing, too.

• Forget about consensus. We’re not going to get it, and too often the planners or the Board of Supervisors delay decision-making while waiting for it. But it gets farther away. We need leadership, not consensus.

• Be clear about what is on the table and when a decision will be made. Make sure people understand the goals and the trade-offs.

• Reconsider CEQA. We discuss projects and plans within the framework of CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, which mandates addressing only how much damage a proposal can do to the environment, not how can it help the city meet goals or help the regional environment by concentrating growth where there’s infrastructure. Here in San Francisco, we hold up even small-scale projects, such as the 17 residences and retail uses proposed at the empty lot at 19th and Valencia streets by the longtime residents and owners of a popular Mexican restaurant. Really, in a built-up city, along a transit street where just about every other spot is housing over stores, how much environmental damage could a project like this do?

• The planners should do a better job of differentiating between those projects that pose policy questions for the Planning Commission and the City and the smaller ones. As it is, single-family projects with disputes about a few feet can take up as much staff and commission energy as high-rises. Most of these disputes are what’re called Discretionary Review cases. All these share one thing: they comply with the Planning Code 100 percent, but some neighbor is still unhappy. So the Planning Commission hears the case. We need a better system of triage, and we should show some more respect for the Planning Code and allow projects that comply to move forward.

• We need other venues for working out landuse disputes and just talking with each other. Maybe the Community Board has more of a role to play in working out disputes among neighbors. Or perhaps there is a need for a semi-social format where downtown types and Mission types and City Hall types and regular people who care about the city can get together and have a discussion, and maybe a drink.

• The biggest challenge is a cultural one, and culture is the hardest thing to change. The attitudes of the San Francisco planning culture:

• Opponents are heroes.

• We can’t move forward without consensus.

• A decade is a reasonable amount of time to produce a plan.

• The voices we hear are sufficiently diverse.

• We are so afraid of change that delays, appeals and meaningless environmental review are goals in themselves.

I was struck by a description of Italy by the essayist Beppo Severgnini: “Controllers and controlled have an unspoken agreement. You don’t change, we don’t change, and Italy doesn’t change. But we all complain that we can’t go on like this.”

But we are a city of newcomers, who will inevitably change the culture. It’s time to open the process and be alert to new attitudes about the city and about change itself.
After all, it’s inevitable.

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THE LANGUAGE OF DESIGN REVIEW

Author John Schlesinger is principal of John Schlesinger, AIA, Architect. He is chair of AIA San Francisco’s Public Policy Committee.

“It’s massive, out of scale, and not in character with the neighborhood,” is an all too familiar rallying cry used by those opposing proposed projects. Whether or not the proposal deserves this moniker is incidental. It has become the opening lunge in a well-choreographed verbal fencing match, to which we design professionals are obligated to parry with a riposte, using our cache of architectural terms. The language commonly used in these jousts often employs familiar phrases that bypass an honest discussion about the virtues of the design. It exacerbates the problem when the public and the design professional define the same terms differently, resulting in these groups speaking different languages.

Using “mass,” “scale,” “character,” “neighborhood,” “traditional,” “contemporary,” or other words for the sake of an argument becomes a roadblock to encouraging design innovation and excellence. In addition to the match arena where testimony is given during public hearings, we find these phrases in guidelines that local jurisdictions may publish. When fortunate enough to be given the salute, “it fits in,” we are relieved at having passed the test of design review. At the same time, we are often perplexed as to whether we have prevailed as a result of our hard work or merely received a backhanded compliment for endurance.

Who is granted the right to participate in this conversation? San Francisco does not follow the format of a singular design review board, where the primary debate is between appointed or elected officials and a project sponsor. Here, everyone gets to play. The City Charter mandates that any interested party—be it a neighborhood advisory panel, citywide interest group, or individual citizen—may weigh in on the merits of a project. This may occur well before it reaches a city agency, or after it has been submitted for formal review by the planning staff, the Landmarks Advisory Review Board, Planning, Redevelopment, or Port Commissions, Board of Appeals, and Board of Supervisors.

These front-end and back-end design reviews generate considerable amounts of exchanges between project sponsors, the public, and city officials, some of which are healthy and some of which are not. The plethora of review sessions often results in positions, either in support of or against a proposal, taking on a life of their own, like that of a slogan whose true meaning may have long been forgotten.

The current public review process and more stringent design controls had their roots in the late 1970s and ultimately reached their climax in the mid 1980s, when a voter revolt over the surge in building in both the downtown area and neighborhood districts created new limitations on development. Changes to the allowable size of developments and a more rigorous project review process were implemented.

By the early 1990s, AIA San Francisco realized the need to assist in reducing the enormous backlog of smaller residential projects that were being delayed as a result of the new regulations. The Advisory Design Review Panel program provided a pro bono mediation service by AIA San Francisco members. Project sponsors and opposing neighbors met on neutral ground, discussed points of contention, and were presented recommended solutions by the panel members. More often than not, compromises were reached, and the projects proceeded without further hearings or delays. As the chair of the first panel and one of the managers of the program, I recognized that a prevailing reason for its success was the use of a common architectural language without terms that would otherwise alienate the general public, bringing a comfort level to all participants by operating with similar degrees of understanding. City Commissioners took note of this success, embraced the mediation process and almost always adopted the Advisory Design Review Panel’s recommendations. After a three-year run, the program was cancelled due to political pressure from those who felt sidelined by the power of compromise.

Within the last few years, the political climate has changed, and some local officials have recognized the need to reconsider what criteria should be used to review architectural designs. Given this opportunity, AIA San Francisco’s Public Policy Committee proposed a series of design workshops for the Planning Commission. The premise for these presentations was simple: Without new methods of evaluating a proposed project, the City remains risk-averse to new and potentially innovative architectural solutions. By introducing a new vocabulary to the debate, the level of discourse, at least among those whose charge it is to rule on the appropriateness of a project, would perhaps become more democratic and less vituperative.

My first presentation in February 2006, with an introduction by Mayor Newsom endorsing this effort to the Planning Commission, was followed by two additional workshops over the next seven months. A narrative of these presentations may be seen on AIA San Francisco’s web site at http://www.aiasf.org/Job_Resources/Public_Advocacy.htm.

Two themes organized the effort. Understanding Context addressed the need for expanding the range of approvable design by using familiar terms in a new way, placing designs into three general categories: buildings that emulate characteristics of their neighbors, those that reinterpret certain elements of nearby buildings in a new way, and those that contrast with their surroundings while maintaining a high value of architectural and urban design. Designing for the Public Realm continued in the same spirit with larger projects, while also addressing urban design issues, such as density and amenities in the open spaces between buildings.

With a high level of interest, these workshops continue in a variety of ways. The Planning Department has embarked on its own staff training program, in which we continue to participate. The new definitions we have established for emulate, reinterpret, and contrast have entered San Francisco’s design review lexicon. As with any new language, complete immersion helps the willing, but also disenfranchises those who are not able or interested in plunging into unknown territory, particularly when their verbal skills are put at a disadvantage. Incremental steps outlining key objectives, such as citing context and contributions to the public realm, introduce a more legitimate checklist for project review. The true test will be whether over the next couple of years there will be a critical mass of participants, be they project sponsors, the general public, city staff, or public officials willing to sign up to talk the talk. En garde!

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DESIGN REVIEW: LET’S TALK

Author Owen Kennerly, AIA, is principal of Kennerly Architecture and Planning in San Francisco.

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. – Aesop

Too often, architects feel cast in the role of the petty thief, lambasted for daring to push design beyond the conventions of a narrowly defined context. The most notorious instrument of their suffering is the Design Review process: that bureaucratic meat-hook commonly charged to “protect,” “preserve,” or “enhance” neighborhood character and to “discourage” “disruptive” projects that threaten to erode the fabric of community identity or the natural environment.

To the Optimist, these intentions are civic and noble in their quest to elevate the quality of the built environment. To the Cynic, Design Review constitutes an act of aggression on the equal rights of expression and property. Worse still, the ambiguity of its purpose enables the Design Review process to be co-opted by those seeking to obstruct, extort, or otherwise take control over forces they perceive to be not in their interest. In this context, design is the last thing Design Review is about.

So the question remains: Can Design Review, by its very nature, accommodate the visionary or even the benignly different? Or is it, at best, a blunt instrument to stop the very bad? The answer, of course, depends on the people involved.

What follows are specific examples in which the Design Review process enabled the path to a successful design project. The cases presented offer a range of building types and settings and include the following: a single family house remodel in the town of Ross in Marin County, a commercial rehabilitation and addition in Berkeley, and mixed-use urban infill in San Francisco. These cases share common aspects of their design review processes:

1. That the intentions of the process and those implementing it are indeed noble—i.e., not manifesting ulterior motives or agendas. In each case, there are no stylistic prescriptions enforced, while each asserts the protection of neighborhood character as its primary goal. Of the three, Ross is exceptional in that the protection of environmental resources is also cited as a specific purpose.

2. That those charged with its implementation are thoughtful listeners and, by way of education or interest, embody an informed and nuanced perspective on design issues.

3. That the specifics of the process itself allow for active dialogue with these individuals in which their role is not unlike that of a good client— one who brings specific needs and values to the table while recognizing the expertise of the design professional and his or her ability to create a solution that would not otherwise have been considered.

Recognizing the symptoms of these aspects—or lack thereof—in advance can help the architect and client strategize the way forward. What is a successful design project? Beyond meeting the client’s budget or appeasing the bureaucrats, a successful design project in this context is one that reconciles the perceived opposites of individual expression and collective identity. It is a project that allows the possibility of the unknown to change perception and to expand the idea of beauty in the context of a beloved community. A tall order, indeed.

A House in Ross
Santos Prescott & Associates were engaged by the new owners to rescue a grand shingle style mansion from 1970s “improvements” and to deliver the building stylishly into the 21st century. What from the start constituted careful interventions to open up circulation and to craft an elegant new glass and steel stair tower ran straight into concerns from the Ross Design Review Board about historic assets, suitable materials, and a clash of styles. Through a process of discussion and negotiation, what resulted is a project neither town officials, architects, nor clients could have foreseen: a blend of the old and new in which each is heightened by the other. The glass entry and stair tower was softened with a veil of cedar louvers—scaled to match the shingle coursing and providing needed protection from the western sun. The window material, entry stairs, and related landscaping all contribute to the final effect and were heartily supported by the Design Review Board. Project architect Bruce Prescott attributes the success of the process to the initiative and candor of the Town Planner, Gary Broad: “Because Gary understood the issues likely to be raised by Design Review, the team was able to engage in a productive dialogue to maintain the design intent while satisfying the town’s standards.” Lessons Prescott took away from the process include “working with staff before the meeting to ensure issues are understood and to keep design flexibility to allow additional changes.”

Elephant Pharmacy
It always helps when the subject building to be remodeled is a dog. But in Berkeley, nothing comes easy, for below the tattered ‘70s skin of the Copeland’s sporting goods store on Shattuck Avenue lurked a Mission Style market waiting to be liberated. Kava Massih Architects, working closely with Anne Burns of Berkeley’s Design Review Committee, crafted a refined and elegant hybrid that at once reconciled the historic concerns of the city with the progressive image sought after by the client. The architect understood—either intuitively or explicitly—that the restoration of the building’s prior identity as embodied in its barrel tile roof would balance the bold glass and steel façade inserted below. In the end, according to Kava Massih, “Anne didn’t superimpose her own likes and dislikes on the project.” She did, however, communicate the design intent to the staff committee and returned with feedback requiring that the façade be more articulated. Cedar display vitrines and glazing stops were integrated into the steel system, while a modern entry trellis at either end of the building and a glass and timber porch along the south bridged the stylistic gap with obvious but unsentimental references to Berkeley’s Craftsman Style heritage. Other Kava Massih projects, such as the Sierra in Oakland’s Jack London Square district have survived heavy scrutiny because the individuals charged with reviewing the design were fans of the architect’s work to begin with. “It’s not easy when you’re Morrisey and they want you to sing like Frank Sinatra . . . . If they like your work, that’s half the battle.”

Infill Housing in San Francisco
“A single building out of context with its surroundings can be disruptive to the neighborhood character and to the image of the city as a whole.”

Such is the call to arms in the San Francisco Residential Design Guidelines. Most of San Francisco does not have a formal Design Review process as described above. Instead, staff planners, concerned neighbors, commissioners, and supervisors weigh in with respect to the ambiguous intents and prescriptions of the Design Guidelines. The guidelines have been criticized for promoting the simplistic mimicry of neighboring structures. The language hasn’t changed much over the years, but the diagrams and drawings within have been updated to allow for stylistic diversity while the definitions of “context” have grown richer, acknowledging “neighborhoods of mixed character.”

Our recent infill work in San Francisco owes a lot to the growing sophistication of the planning staff, led by Commissioner Dean Macris. In addition to the pioneering 1990s work of architects Stanley Saitowitz, David Baker, and Tanner, Leddy, Maytum & Stacy, much of the planning staff is hip to quality contemporary infill in cities like Vancouver, Amsterdam, Chicago, and New York. As a result, we are no longer subjected to hardboiled interpretations of the Design Guidelines in which every project gets distilled to an insipid collage of its neighbors.

Two recent examples—one built and the other just starting construction—are a mixed-use building at 14th & Guerrero Streets and a new, eight-unit infill building on Nob Hill. The Guerrero Street project went through the planning process virtually unopposed. Working with staff planner Matt Snyder, we derived an assertively modern vocabulary from a quintessentially San Francisco syntax. Key elements for staff support included the gracious retail frontage and corner entry (enabled by a loophole in the code that allows the required rear yard to be used as a driveway); and the corrugated copper cladding for the corner was enthusiastically supported. The ubiquitous bay window was here interpreted as a boomerang volume that flexes over the property line within the prescribed bay window envelope.

The Nob Hill project was put through its paces, however, as we went before the Planning Commission for conditional use approval as well as two variances. When challenged directly by a commissioner about the project’s decidedly modern design, I cited the Design Guidelines’ reference to mixed neighborhood character, which begs the question of how best to “fit in” with a context that includes Brutalist high-rises, stucco Victorians, and the Terragni-esque Masonic Auditorium. The ensuing discussion among the commissioners and Zoning Administrator Larry Badiner centered on the purpose of the Design Guidelines to distill qualities of scale, proportion, access, and material and not to prescribe style. We received unanimous approval.

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Originally published 2nd quarter 2007 in arcCA 07.2, “Design Review.”

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