Steinberg noted that his magazine’s infamous article “Is Tech Hurting SF?” generated more web traffic – and controversy – than any other write-up in the magazine’s history. SFHAC’s Executive Director Tim Colen said he convened the panel in order to address the most charged topic in our fair city these days: “Who gets to live in San Francisco?”  He dramatically called on San Francisco to “radically increase its anemic housing production.”

U.C. Berkeley Professor Enrico Moretti, author of “The New Geography of Jobs,” set forth the equation of the day: job growth + restricted housing = inflated rents.  But blaming techies for SF’s housing woes won’t cut it:  every tech job creates five local service jobs, which is a good thing; the real culprit is SF’s harsh regulatory climate for new housing permits, which the Wharton Residential Land Use Regulatory Index cites as the 2^nd most stringent out of 2,649 cities surveyed. Moretti pointed out that Seattle has experienced dramatic job growth too, but rents there climbed 31% less because more housing was readily available.

Peter Cohen of the San Francisco Council of Community Housing Organizations asked, “Who is housing production serving?” He doubts the market will serve the needs of the 61% of SF that is middle- and low-income.  Gabriel Metcalf of SPUR asserted “there is no real conflict between affordable housing and market rate housing” and charged that “people have rigged the system under the mantle of ‘protecting neighborhood character.’” Kate Kendall of theFetch.com said techies are looking for crash pads and that micro-apartments are perfectly suitable.

Steinberg asked if we shouldn’t take advantage of the tech boom to build housing while capital is available. Moretti noted our city’s asymmetrical building patterns: not building housing when the market is down, and also not building housing when the market is up.  After Cohen said that most growth planning was for the city’s eastern and southeastern sectors and wryly observed that zoning in the west was untouchable, Metcalf earned the biggest applause of the night when he declared “Every neighborhood should do its part to provide housing.”

Metcalf ended the evening on the positive note: “People are finally beginning to understand what it means to live in a city in terms of high density living, biking, transit, even excitement about new architecture. The new urbanism is a cause for optimism. “  SquareFoot can raise a glass to that!

Lara Kolodny of the Wall Street Journal moderated the festivities, with sharp questions that kept attention on the major issues of the day: access and equity amid gentrification. Sarah Leary of Nextdoor said that the site is “not a country club” – neighbors themselves define the boundaries of their neighborhood and that everyone within those boundaries can participate; it’s not like the analog days in which one person controlled a list of approved neighbors. Ann Montgomery of Airbnb said that local hosts and staff photographers provide content that allow people an honest view into communities that they wouldn’t see otherwise – including the Tenderloin and the Bay View (www.airbnb.com/locations).

Dan Parham of Neighborland emphasized they work directly with neighborhood groups and developers, and that partnering with the right community organization is key to introducing technology to a tough neighborhood. Krista Canellakis of the Mayor’s Office of Innovation says the Office is developing programs to include people who don’t have access to technology and touted its ImproveSF.com program for collecting stories from Bay View citizens about their neighborhood.  Chikai Ohazama of Google noted it works directly with local citizens to develop content for its new Field Trip city guide app.

Meaningful inclusivity is a necessary ingredient for neighborhood revitalization.  Come talk with SquareFoot about your neighborhood at our Open House this Thursday evening, March 28th, from 6 pm to 8 pm at A Temporary Offering, Market & 7th, as part of the MidRiff Microhood party sponsored by The Bold Italic and Yammer!

Feel free to follow us on Twitter at @yoursqft and like us on Facebook at facebook.com/yoursqft.

Anthony Williams and Dan Bouthot

Enter fellow artist Dan Bouthot. He and I teamed up at swap/meet SF, an interactive art pop-up at A Temporary Offering, to prototype “Text-A-Wish,” a cell phone-based art project to facilitate communication and connection between neighbors in MidMarket. Deeply interested in art as social practice, we wanted the project to generate action on a social issue, took note of the neighborhood’s homeless problem, and began talking with the director of a local homeless shelter about what we could do.

Text-A-City Logo by @aim2run

A month later – on December 7^th – “Text-A-City: Start Ups for Sustainable Communities” was born. A flash mob benefit for the San Francisco Council of Community Housing Organizations, the evening was designed to raise awareness about affordable housing solutions through outdoor text message art and indoor panel discussions on urban sustainability, mixed-income housing and collective entrepreneurship, along with live music, pop-up food and spirits. As a result of an intensive Twitter-driven marketing campaign, some 150 San Franciscans participated in the project.

Interactive Text Message Art
by Paul Notzold

Dan and I also aligned project support from representatives of the following organizations: the San Francisco Arts Commission; the Art Institute of San Francisco; the Renoir Hotel; Episcopal Community Services; the Commonwealth Club; the San Francisco Council of Community Housing Organizations; Social Innovators and Investors Resource; Public Advocates; UrbanGreen DevCo LLC; Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation; the San Francisco Community Land Trust; Co-Housing California; People.Power.Media; Bay City News; and ABC 7 News.

Panel Discussion on Mixed-Income Housing
with Kevin O’Malley (Commonwealth Club),
Peter Cohen (SFCCHO), Hatty Lee (TNDC)
and Dan Murphy (UrbanGreen DevCo)

“Text-A-City” is a local prototype for the kind of arts-driven social entrepreneurship that has a central role to play in change-making in urban neighborhoods. By utilizing interactive art as a springboard for gathering entrepreneurs, advocates and organizers in the same room for a discussion of affordable housing solutions, Dan and I helped bust the silos that prevent change on a crucial social issue, and also set a non-contentious tone for community organizing on a political battlefield notorious for its acrimony.

Singer Ash Reiter

Here’s a few things we learned during our adventure in tactical urbanism:

(1) Don’t do it alone. Projects like these are emotional rollercoasters, and you need a partner to back you up during the lows and keep you grounded during the highs.

(2) Work quickly and quietly so that your social innovation doesn’t give time to vested interests to reassert business-as-usual.

(3) When the chips are down, show your mettle. If important participants threaten to drop out only days or even hours before the event, write them an email manifesto expressing your passion for your mission – or have VIPs intervene on your behalf. Don’t be afraid to pull out all the stops – because, as we like to say in the theater, “THE SHOW MUST GO ON!”

(4) Pay close attention to legal and logistical details – Need insurance for your event? What about internet access at the venue? Will your audience hear your speakers without a sound system?

(5) Document what you do. Get it on film or write a blog so you can share the lessons learned and inspire others!

Photos by Jessica Watson
(except where noted)

Dan and I are deeply grateful for the tremendous support we received for this project from the partners and fellows at SQFT, a classic example of a scrappy start-up that can compete with established organizations with far more resources by offering creative experience design, proactive relationship building, attentive client service – and a little sweat equity from a team of individuals committed to supporting each other’s success!

We hope to see you this Wednesday at Market Street for the Masses, where start-ups, nonprofits, artists, citizens and others in the Mid-Market community are coming together to discuss meaningful ways of creating a sense of place in San Francisco’s ever-changing landscape.

 –Anthony

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The excitement was palpable during the guided tour of the hottest waterfront redevelopment project in San Francisco, followed by a thorough presentation of the planning process to a packed room of enthusiastic urbanists in the Noonan Building.  Forest City has gone out of their way to listen to the local community’s desires for their neighborhood, incorporating them into the mixed-use development that will preserve historic shipyard buildings while providing ample open space and showcasing a stunning waterfront park.

“Our biggest a-ha moment, ” said Alex Michel of 5M Project, Forest City’s local place-making initiative, “was discovering that both the local urban community and the entrepreneurs in the emerging economy wanted to live and work in the same kind of creative environment.” That means a neighborhood that acknowledges its history and celebrates its diversity while feeling open and permeable, welcoming enough people to the area to make it feel vibrant. Particularly notable was the presentation’s spotlight on the creative economy, in which upper floor commercial enterprises help subsidize ground floor arts spaces, which in turn draw foot traffic that buttress entrepreneurs’ bottom lines.

 Realization of Forest City’s full plan will take fifteen years, but right now they’re looking for partners to help San Franciscans discover the Mission Bay waterfront. The 5M Project will activate the underutilized area with concerts, flea markets and other events. SQFT envisions a variety of pop-ups spicing up Pier 70′s retail mix with food, clothing, art and other novel experiences that will soon make the southeast waterfront the city’s next big destination for work and play.

What do you want see pop up at Pier 70? Let SQFT help show you how!

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Download Forest City’s Community Research PDF at http://Pier70sf.com

It’s Black Friday – and  if it’s a Friday, that means it’s time again for swap/meet SF, a collective of interactive artists hell-bent on getting San Franciscans to meet their neighbors. But curators Jessica Watson and Chris Treggiari are having no part of the usual consumerist madness associated with the day after Thanksgiving. Instead, they’re putting on “Block Friday,” a community potluck centered on sharing a Thanksgiving dinner with your neighbors right on the sidewalk outside A Temporary Offering, a cool new pop-up space in the MidMarket neighborhood.

The gods must like the concept, because it’s a brilliantly sunny day in Fog City – not a cloud in the sky, and warm enough to shed a layer or two, too! By the time I have arrived, Jessica and her troupe of a dozen volunteers have already lined the sidewalk with folding tables covered with white table cloths, butcher paper, and lots of crayolas, along with white folding chairs to facilitate both creativity and conversation. The only thing left to do is to label and arrange all the food that has been donated to the event – some thirty dishes! – and strategize when and how to serve it to the masses.

2:00 pm rolls around, and I find myself serving dessert. No sooner have I cut the first piece of apple blackberry crisp – “slice” being a relative term with this gooey crumbly delicious confection! – than a hundred people have materialized out of nowhere to form a line for this beautiful meal. We’re talking turkey, duck, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, potato salad, roasted carrots, faro salad, brussel sprouts, macaroni & cheese, chips & salsa, pumpkin bread, and – of course – pumpkin pie with whipped cream!

As I dish out slice after slice of crisp, pie and sweet bread – at least 150 individuals served – I see the full diversity of San Francisco file before me. But the diversity is more ethnic than economic, because most of these people are homeless. As our guests gather to spend time with each other around a good meal, something more than turkey hits me in the stomach: even in a city as wealthy as San Francisco, there is still so much need. Serving the dessert allows me the privilege of adding a little sweetness to the lives of my neighbors, but still my conscience nags: “I wish San Francisco had a place for everyone.”

After my dessert duties wrap up – every morsel of food gone by 3:00 pm – I survey the tables to witness the art left behind and spend a few minutes chatting with the guests. It turns out they have all kinds of concerns: Jenna is creating a digital platform that shows people how to shop for healthcare – something most of us will be doing more of when Obamacare rolls out; Shaka wants his name known, so he’s tagging the table in a way that leaves it emblazoned in your mind forever; Ray is shy about admitting that he has a talent for drawing, though the delicate plants he’s sketched around the words “Love Peace Respect” provide abundant proof. Other souls have likewise crayoned their guts on our dinner tables: “Femininity is beautiful” and “I am citizen not of Athens of Greece but of the world – Socrates” and “Phatt Chance Sober Living call 555-123-4567.”

Then I see what looks like a black Jesus crayoned in bold strokes on the table. I look up and see that it’s actually a self-portrait of its creator: Isaac. He’s got long salt-and-pepper dreads tucked inside a crocheted floppy hat, and a nose ring, and the kind of wise eyes that can only be described as soulful. He tells me a long tale about his days as an entrepreneur of holiday cards, how he stopped making art when his supplies got stolen, how programs for this-that-and-the-other come and go at the homeless shelters. Then Tay Rolla catches my eye: he’s a rapper hawking his wares – a CD called  “Transformation” – atop the stage of undulating-wood-slats-and-bright-lightbulbs crafted by the good folks at StreetStageSF.com. Tay assures me, “My stuff is all positive, all a good time, no negativity, feel me?”

Both Isaac’s and Tay’s entrepreneurship inspire me. They make me think that ingenuity given access to resources results in transformation. What if we could apply that formula to affordable housing in San Francisco? Maybe providing a place for everyone could actually be a possibility… Dan Bouthot – the artist I had met in the first swap/meet some weeks ago – and I have been working on exactly that. Check out the next blog posts to see the results!

Photos by Jessica Watson

“Urban farming is a white, liberal, hippie movement that found itself in the black community,” says Johnson. But, he adds, “the black community is seeing the opportunity.”

“Farming will lead the future of the South Side … and we’re calling everyone to the table to help plan,” Williams adds. “Architects, urban planners, soil scientists — everyone working together rebuilding the neighborhoods from scratch.”

via Grist.