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Downtown Plan Showing Wear

Posted by: Tim Halbur

27 May 2009 - 6:00am

A battle over the height of a proposed skyscraper in San Francisco emphasizes the need for an update to the city's 25-yr old plan, says critic John King.

"To put the age of San Francisco's once-vaunted Downtown Plan in context, consider this: The year it was approved, budding community activist Barack Obama rented his first apartment in Chicago.

It was 1985, and San Francisco approved an ambitious plan to strike a balance downtown between old and new. Major growth was steered away from Union Square and the Financial District. Height limits were lowered. Historic preservation gained clout.

But one era's innovation is the next generation's dated rulebook. That's why San Francisco needs to mark the plan's 25th anniversary next year by crafting fresh guidelines for the commercial core - ones that take into account how the city around it has changed."

Full Story: Signs of tarnish as Downtown Plan nears 25
Source: San Francisco Chronicle, May 26, 2009
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"I'm hoping to hybridize something like the land trust with the co-op and the condominium to create a really viable, flexible but durable institutional structure that allows the value that’s generated by users of the space to be able to be reinvested in that space and its programming." -- Ava Bromberg.
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