Columnist Ken Garcia writes that San Francisco's neighborhood-driven political system has been a more powerful force in shaping the city's skyline than the planning department has.
Garcia says that politics are the reason that the city "...has so few beautiful new buildings and even fewer signature ones."
He quotes an architect that designed a very significant San Francisco tower, who came to the conclusion that San Francisco is a great city "without any great buildings."
"One of the problems with San Francisco - at least architecturally - is that it's a tremendously democratic city," Marc Goldstein told me. "And one of the reasons there's so much mediocre architecture is that there's so much mediocre opinion."
FULL STORY: For San Francisco democracy, the skyline’s the limit
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