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August 13, 2010Weekly Snapshot BY ANIKA JESI Opening party for SPUR's student show, Here+Now, now on view at the Urban Center [Photo Credit: Colleen McHugh]Ruling Paves Way for San Francisco Bike Lanes: Bicyclists rejoice as San Francisco's four-year-old bike plan injunction is lifted, allowing the much anticipated implementation of 45 new bike lane projects city-wide.Time to Return to L.A.'s Core: One symptom of the economic downturn is that it has slowed gentrification, putting some neighborhoods in developmental limbo. This...
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August 12, 2010Planning Communities for Aging BY JON ROGERS [Photo Credit: flickr user Troy Holden]In 2011, America's estimated 78.2 million baby boomers will begin to reach retirement age, officially ushering in the "silver tsunami" - a term used to describe the impending onslaught of retirees into a society that is currently ill-prepared to handle the needs of an aging population. Most boomers currently live in suburbs, having ridden the wave of suburban flight in the 1950's and 60s. As boomers begin to retire, many people will...
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August 11, 2010Challenges (and High Hopes) for Electric Vehicles in San Francisco BY TIMOTHEA TWAY Plug-in cars in San Francisco [Photo Credit: flickr user felixkramer]PG&E's clean energy blog, Next 100, recently explored the idea of the rise of electric vehicles in the Bay Area. At the recent Plug-In 2010 conference, PG&E President Chris Johns predicted that the Bay Area will see around 500,000 electric vehicles (EVs) "plugging in" over the next decade. From a sustainability perspective, electric vehicles are a big improvement over their traditional alternatives, to be...
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August 10, 2010Public Art Installations to Guide Passengers of Central Subway BY ELIZABETH HOLDEN Reflected Loop [Image via San Francisco Arts Commission]We are visual creatures. As such, we derive our orientation of our relative location according to the landmarks and visual reminders around us. This is especially evident in how we navigate urban areas, by remembering a block near a notable statue or fountain in an otherwise crowded arrangement of buildings. It's a common situation - getting disoriented in an underground or enclosed public transit station (even for those who are...
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August 6, 2010Getting High Speed Rail Right-Enough BY GABRIEL METCALF The California High Speed Rail Authority met yesterday in San Francisco. The agenda was packed with many interesting things including a new station area development policy. But the real controversy was about the section between San Jose and San Francisco. I joined hundreds of people during public comment to weigh in on this one small segment. Over the past few years, a group of high speed rail opponents has been gathering strength in some of the Peninsula communities such as Atherton and Menlo...
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August 6, 2010Weekly Snapshot BY ANIKA JESI PlantSF [Photo Credit: Colleen McHugh]Paris's popular bike rentals spark electric car plans: Influenced by the success of its bike-sharing program, Paris plans to add the electric car to its repertoire of shared transit.Ground Zero mosque plans move forward after key vote: Despite proposals for symbolic land-use restrictions, NYC's controversial plans to build an Islamic mosque near ground zero are moving forward after a vote to demolish a building in the mosque's proposed site.Food...
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August 5, 2010SFpark Update SFpark has released a video demonstrating how the new and improved parking system can help reduce traffic, carbon emissions -- and road rage -- while driving on San Francisco streets. Find out more about the program in this blog post. SFpark Overview from SFpark on Vimeo.
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August 4, 2010Datablog: The Freedom to Visualize BY JORDAN SALINGER With just under a year in operation, San Francisco's "data liberation" website, DataSF, has inspired some compelling visualizations. One person who has actively taken advantage of this website is flickr user Eric Fischer. This past week he introduced an animated graphic that caught my eye. While it may take a few views to deduce, this animation shows a full day, starting and ending at 3 a.m., with each of the days layered on top of each other. Wanting to know even more about the...
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August 2, 2010Urban Bees on the Rise BY TIMOTHEA TWAY As a budding apiarist, I was devastated to hear about the Hayes Valley Farm incident last week. An unknown person sprayed two beehives with household pesticides - destroying the hives and killing thousands of bees. Hayes Valley, the community farm in San Francisco, used the San Francisco Bee-Cause beehives in to help educate Bay Area residents about beekeeping and urban farming.Dead bees at Hayes Valley Farm [Photo Credit: flickr user HayesValleyFarm] Despite this terrible news, it's...
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July 30, 2010Weekly Snapshot BY ANIKA JESI The Castro parklet [Photo Credit: Colleen McHugh]Fleeing Phoenix out of fear of Arizona's immigration law: Thousands of immigrants are fleeing Phoenix, AZ before the state's harsh new immigration law goes into place, leaving neighborhoods vacant, and forcing local stores out of business.Seedbombing for the modern guerilla gardening movement: Guerilla gardeners are arming themselves with "seedbombs," their new weapon of choice in the quest to make the world a greener place....
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