As I have been sorting through my photos from the San Francisco trip and reliving the lovely experience, I thought I might do a post about five things I particularly liked about the city in terms of urban design. If you want to see some more of the photographs, you can look at my Photobucket site.
1. Fast, easy, cheap, reliable transit: I've already commented favourably on their excellent integrated transport systems, the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit ) and the Muni (Municipal Transit Authority) networks, so I'm including a picture of one of the Muni trams here. They call them "trains" in San Francisco but they are really light rail trams (I'll concede though that the BART trains are trains). Unfortunately when we were there it looked as though Muni services were going to have to be scaled back substantially as a result of substantial budget cuts. I really hope they don't stuff it up. The networks integrate and function as well as any I've seen in European systems (think U and S bahn services in German cities, for example), and pretty much cover the whole city and Bay Area. The Muni electric buses were also very convenient and reliable. I think they have a really great system. And with all those hills, the trams and buses come in very handy for the tourists.
2. Charming urban parks: I did a post about South Park, one of my favourite little places in San Francisco. Another stand out in the Mission District, which was an area that was colourful and full of life (also in places full of homeless people, as I noted all of the "flat" districts were, and this was one aspect of the city I found somewhat confronting) and its beloved Dolores Park, a beautiful and heavily used green space in one of the most densely populated areas of this very densely populated city (the second highest population density in the US behind Manhattan, and hardly any skyscrapers, which strongly demonstrates one of my main gripes as an aspiring urban planner: yes, we need to encourage higher densities in our cities, but high density does not have to mean high rise. San Francisco proves that, as do many European cities. I really that our approach to increasing densities in Australian cities is going to leave us with too many over-sized, ugly developments with not enough green spaces - but I am digressing here!) The point is, Dolores Park is a perfect example of a multi-function open space in a high density area that gets used from morning till night by sunbathers, families, students and idlers; on weekends there are fairs and shows, and at night it provides shelter for a lot of homeless people by the looks of it, so the park is getting a lot of use. At the other end of the scale, San Francisco's version of New York's Central Park, Golden Gate Park, is a huge green lung, surprisingly desolate and even a bit scary at the far end towards the ocean but full of life, people and cultural institutions and gardens at the end closest to the city. What a wonderful park to have in such a densely populated city.
Of course the city is dotted with plazas and parks, some more successful than others. I loved the residential squares in the posher parts of town, like Alamo Square and Alta Plaza.
3. Vibrant street life: Like Melbourne, San Francisco is a city of active, vibrant streets of vastly differing personalities. Some that I loved were Valencia Street in the Mission District, which reminded me a lot of Melbourne's Brunswick Street with its great bookstores and alternative shops on Valencia Street; the relaxed middle class vibe of 24th Street in the Noe Valley; the vibrant commercial buzz of Post and Geary Streets around Union Square; the multicultural Clement Street in the Richmond district with its mix of Asian and Russian shops and eateries; the upmarket sections of Polk and Fillmore Streets, the streets around the Hayes Valley and Duboce Park, the lively and colourful alleyways of Chinatown. Speaking of colour, I also loved the murals all over the city. The streets of San Francisco are a big part of its appeal.
4. Interesting traditional architecture: I'm not the first nor will I be the last to comment on the beauty and function of San Francisco's lovely Victorian houses with their narrow, pretty frontages, their bay windows, turrets and curves. It's an intoxicating, lovely style and updated variations of it are evident in most of the city's more recent housing architecture, some of which are not so lovely but almost all of which seem to include the bay window elements. In terms of commercial and civic buildings, the city again achieves with the classical beauty of City Hall, the grand emporium facades of Market Street and Union Square, and the elegant grand hotels and apartment houses of Nob Hill and Russian Hill.
5. Interesting contemporary architecture: When I stop to take a photo of a Safeway store, then you can rest assured it's not any bland old supermarket design. In Australia, we still subscribe to the windowless box idea for supermarket design, but I fell in love with this airy Safeway store in the Marina district. Admittedly, it was surrounded by a car park (a no-no in any urban design manual), but the building itself demonstrates that you can have a simple, quite beautiful design for something as everyday as a supermarket. The glazed frontage bathed the store in natural light, creating a much pleasanter and more energy efficient shopping environment. Of course, there are many other interesting examples of exciting contemporary architecture in this exciting and beautiful city, but for me, this interesting Safeway store, determined to be beautiful and to breath life into its purpose and to make it not just a shopping barn but a pleasant experience, encapsulates something of the city's humanistic, artistic spirit as expressed through its architecture. Which is not a bad accomplishment for a supermarket, really.
