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Stephen S. Pearce, D.D., Ph.D., is senior rabbi of Congregation Emanu-El of San Francisco. During his tenure, he started the temple’s hunger justice initiative and founded a long-standing collaboration with San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church. Rabbi Pearce is an active member in the city’s interfaith community, coauthoring Building Wisdom’s House: A Book of Values for Our Time with Bishop William E. Swing and Father John P. Schlegel. Before coming to Congregation Emanu-El, Rabbi Pearce was on faculty for 20 years at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City. While on faculty at St. John’s University he earned his Ph.D. in counselor psychology.
 

Besides making our streets prettier, what does our urban forest of street, park and backyard trees do for us? Trees are good for cities in lots of ways. They significantly increase property values. They provide shade, keeping energy demand in check on hot days and cooling the pedestrian realm. They clean the air, sequester carbon (slowly reducing global warming), provide habitat for birds, make streets more walkable and reduce urban flooding by retaining stormwater: A single tree may intercept and absorb up to 2,400 gallons a year. A recent SPUR report discussed the future climate-adaptive benefits of trees in helping to mitigate urban heat-island effect, the phenomenon where heavily urbanized areas become significantly warmer than nearby areas due to heat-retaining materials like concrete and asphalt. We recommended that cities conduct a tree-canopy census and identify opportunities for better shade-tree coverage in underserved and intensely urbanized areas. (A crowd-sourced map of such trees in San Francisco, calculating their benefits to the city, can be found — and expanded — at urbanforestmap.org. Register your own tree!)

With just 12 percent canopy coverage — the area of ground covered by trees, from a bird’s-eye view — San Francisco is one of the least tree-endowed cities in California and in the United States. San Jose maintains 15 percent canopy coverage, Los Angeles and Oakland have 21 percent coverage, and New York has 23 percent coverage, just above the national average of 22 percent. Green-minded San Franciscans would probably be surprised to learn that our city ranks 21 out of 22 major cities with regard to tree canopy.

Historically of course, San Francisco was almost completely devoid of trees — home to sand dunes and brackish marshes. As the city grew, trees were planted on streets, in backyards and in parks. Today, we have about 670,000 trees in San Francisco on public and private land, of which 109,000 are street trees in the public right of way. These trees are planted, established and maintained by both private property owners and the Department of Public Works (DPW). Generally, larger streets and streets with planted medians are maintained by DPW; others are cared for by adjacent property owners. But our numbers decline every year. Why? Because the mortality rate of urban trees is 3 to 4 percent each year. In San Francisco, this means we lose about 4,000 trees a year. Between the efforts of DPW, which plants about 400 trees a year, Friends of the Urban Forest (FUF), a nonprofit dedicated to tree-planting, which plants about 1,200 trees a year, and homeowners and commercial property owners acting on their own, at most we are planting 2,000 new trees in the city every year. This means we are not even keeping up with the death rate: Our canopy is in decline. Recent budget cuts at DPW have made matters worse. About 24,000 trees currently cared for by DPW are in the process of being relinquished to their adjacent property owners. This means that some property owners will be forced to take on both the maintenance and the liability of having a tree they didn’t plant and might not want.

This puts our urban forest at great risk.

To address this problem, FUF, the San Francisco Planning Department, and DPW recently hired AECOM to study options for a permanent source of funding for tree maintenance. (The financing study and the Planning Department’s initiation of an Urban Forest Plan were recently featured at a SPUR forum.) The study considered what policy and management changes would be needed to reverse the decline of the city’s canopy and recommended a few potential sources for financing even broader public management of street trees, such as a landscape and lighting assessment district or a parcel tax. The study found that a more comprehensive municipal program would provide net benefits to San Francisco residents and that tree-owning property owners would save money annually with a municipal program (since they wouldn’t have to pay for pruning/maintenance, sidewalk repair and legal claims associated with sidewalk falls). Today, DPW spends a significant amount of its time on one-off emergency tree-care requests. A more comprehensive municipal program would enable the city to employ best practices in tree maintenance and pruning, which would save costs by as much as 50 percent through improved efficiencies. A comprehensive municipal program could also expand the city’s urban forest by at least 50 percent, adding thousands of new trees each year.

Supervisor Scott Wiener, long a champion of the urban forest, recently held a hearing at a committee of the Board of Supervisors to begin the conversation around what could be done to sustain our street and park trees in light of the fact that they are not successfully competing for the city’s general fund dollars. I testified on behalf of SPUR that a more sustainable solution is needed, and that we hope to continue the conversation around how to maintain both our street trees and our park trees for the next generation.

Many people at the hearing — representing a broad geographic distribution around the city — mentioned that trees were important to their neighborhood and that they would be willing to tax themselves to pay for trees, as they are a benefit that everyone shares in, not just property owners. Several people urged that we plant lowest-canopied areas first, if we can ramp up planting. One of the most memorable lines was, “Trees are the only urban infrastructure that grows in value over time.”

In 2013, we look forward to participating in more conversations and hearings and advocating to change the trajectory on maintenance to ultimately expand San Francisco’s urban forest in the future.

Recent years have been filled with experts decrying the sorry state of public finance in California. And with good reason. Three California cities have filed for bankruptcy protection since June. Since 2008, local governments in California have shrunk by nearly 190,000 employees (11.2 percent) and property values over the same period declined statewide by 21.3 percent. Meanwhile, the state budget experienced consecutive annual budget deficits of $60 billion (2009-10), $19.3 billion (2010-11), $26.6 billion (2011-12) and $16.6 billion (2012-13).

What comes next?

The Institute for Government Studies at the University of California at Berkeley convened an impressive panel of experts last month to move that debate forward. Discussions covered more than the magnitude of the problem — although there was plenty to say about that. There was also talk about the factors contributing to the crisis and what we might be able to do about it.

While few disagreed about the overall state of finances in California, panelists spoke of a combination of factors that may have led the state deeper into recession:

·      Existing structural challenges have been exposed by the recession. The recession has revealedfundamental imbalances between receipts and expenditures, such as weaknesses in the financing of state and local pension plans and retiree healthcare obligations. These systems were designed to be sustained through continual growth but they had never before been tested by a downturn like the one we’ve recently experienced.

·      State actions to balance budgets may have intensified the impact on local governments. Steps taken by the governor and state legislature to stabilize state finances and limit the impacts of the economic downturn — such as the elimination of redevelopment agencies — may have compounded the impacts of the recession on local governments. The elimination of redevelopment agencies was projected to save the state up to $1.7 billion, but it has also left cities without financing for affordable housing or other redevelopment initiatives.

·      One-time solutions have been exhausted.With a sustained downturn, the collection of strategies used to weather a short-term recession have long since been used. What is left are much more painful discussions about service reductions, e.g. closure of state parks.

·      Competing traditions have left the state paralyzed.State and local governments in California have been constrained by competing traditions: an appetite for generous public services and a citizenry actively engaged in ballot-box planning. Proposition 13, the 1978 measure that capped property assessments, and Proposition 218, which requires voter-approval for new revenues, are significant barriers and have constrained the ability to generate revenues to sustain funding levels.

·      Irrational optimism is preventing necessary decisions. Worse than a “perfect storm” of economic factors is the weight of history in how California moves forward. Despite the depth of the recession and the impacts of state and local reductions, there is still an overwhelming belief that the state can grow out of this problem as it has in the past. Nowhere is that belief stronger than with the growing challenge of funding public employee pensions and retiree healthcare, with a projected shortfall of between $200 billion and $500 billion just for state pension funds, depending on the estimate. Unfunded retiree healthcare obligations add an additional $60 billion. There is little agreement about how to mitigate those challenges.

The pension issue is emblematic of the broader paralysis of the state. There is consensus on the existence of the problem, but no agreement whatsoever on just how bad it is or how it should be solved. In spite of critical funding constraints, there is no agreement over whether to raise additional revenue or to reduce benefits. Financial experts appear to agree that state and local pension systems need to revisit how pensions are calculated, but enacting changes for anyone but current employees — the bulk of the current unfunded liability — is an extremely difficult proposition. A few cities have attempted to tackle the task: San Francisco negotiated changes to its system, and both San Diego and San Jose passed reforms at the ballot; Los Angeles is still on the horizon. The pension reform proposal for the State of California, signed into law last month by Governor Brown, leaves the benefits of current employees untouched but requires them to share in the expense of increased benefit costs.

And these are exactly the types of challenges that have driven several California cities into bankruptcy — Mammoth Lakes, Stockton and San Bernardino in 2012 alone. The structural costs of labor, healthcare and pension benefits have in these cases eclipsed the ability of cities to provide core services. In some instances cities are closing recreation centers simply to retain public safety services. We have clearly arrived at a time when we must prioritize services and invest limited resources wisely.

California, both the state and to some extent its cities, is at a crossroads: Either we operate within the constraints of this “new normal” or we come to agreement on solutions that can be jointly sold to legislators and taxpayers. In the past, consistent growth and fleeting downturns have allowed California to in many ways paper over the major challenges and rely on one-time fixes to weather the occasional storm.

It’s clear that time is over.

Hear recordings of the complete panel sessions >>

On September 21 SPUR celebrated PARK(ing) Day with an original form of alchemy: transforming asphalt into mini-golf and pizza.

The annual event, celebrated in more than 160 cities, invites the public to reimagine metered parking spots as new types of urban space. The 2012 celebration saw artists, designers and business owners around the world taking to the streets to create everything from temporary hair salons to bicycle repair shops to green space.

This year SPUR’s PARK(ing) Day creations included a parklet featuring lounge chairs and live music — built in partnership with Transform — outside our San Jose office and, in San Francisco, a miniature golf version of Golden Gate Park, complete with Stow Lake, the bison paddock and Ocean Beach. The mini-golf parklet, built over a five-week period by SPUR members Steve Fox and Leslie Crawford, was recognized on sites from Architizer to The Washington Post as a favorite contribution.

Our Golden Gate Parklet  included a miniature Stow Lake and tiny bison. Photo by Sergio Ruiz.


Setting up the parklet in front of SPUR's San Jose office. Photo courtesy Leah Toeniskoetter.

PARK(ing) Day happens just once a year, but its effects have been significantly more lasting. In the seven years since the concept first debuted, PARK(ing) Day has become the progenitor of a distinctly San Francisco model of iterative placemaking, using temporary interventions to build momentum for permanent improvements to the public realm. It began in 2005 when the San Francisco-based design studio ReBar reconceived a parking meter as a short-term lease to experiment with public urban space, then invited others to follow suit. The next year there were 47 PARK(ing) Day creations in thirteen cities. And the year after that, hundreds.

As PARK(ing) Day caught on around the world, a bell went off for San Francisco officials and activists accustomed to being constrained by limited resources, a change-resistant public culture and a regulatory review process so punitive that, on small projects, clearance could cost more than construction. Temporary, reversible projects, on the other hand, could be fast-tracked, and impacts studied in situ, all while changing both the fabric of the city and the discourse around it. Parklets in parking spots, plazas in alleys, Sunday street closures, separated bike lanes, retail hubs on vacant lots and urban farms — all have been the fruit of this like-mindedness between artists and policymakers around the benefits of travelling the temporary to permanent continuum.

A semi-permanent parklet on 22nd Street in San Francisco. Photo by Sergio Ruiz.

The impact of this San Francisco model is powerfully on display at the 2012 Venice Architectural Biennale, where the United States pavilion won an honorable mention for its arsenal of DIY, mirco-urbanism projects — models of iterative placemaking that are heir to PARK(ing) Day’s provocative intervention. Not surprising, a significant number of the firms representing the U.S. are from San Francisco.

These developments are very exciting. Temporary interventions invite the community to inhabit and test new spaces and programs and give shape to the permanent solution. But temporary cannot be a substitute for permanent. It cannot become the only option for creating and maintaining public space. The real legacy of the San Francisco model will lie in leveraging these temporary experiments into high-quality public spaces with an enduring civic presence.