This and future sidewalk plazas are part of an overall vision that Public Architecture has proposed to the city for transforming Folsom, Howard and other streets in the South of Market neighbourhood to provide traffic calming, robust public transportation and much-needed open space. Their vision has many more obstacles to overcome before it’s fully implemented, but it has already gained traction with the city’s Planning Department to the extent that it directly influenced their inclusion of similar ideas in the adjacent Rincon Hill neighbourhood plan. 16 Public Architecture’s collaboration with REBAR clearly illustrates how an interim use of space can directly inform the planning process to influence its eventual permanent use. Thus, through the implementation of tactical means architecture itself can act on its immediate context as well as at the urban scale to bring about strategic ends. These guerilla actions are currently taking place at the margins of architecture and urban planning, but we must co-opt them into common practice if we are to counteract the erosion of civic space in our streets. Alan Jacobs has said that ‘the best streets encourage participation’. 17 In the context of the current assault on the public realm, it may be better said that the best streets demand participation. p
1 Jacobs, Alan. Great Streets . ‘In the U.S., from 25 to 35 % of a city’s developed land is likely to be in public rights-of-way, mostly in streets’. p6 2 Ibid. p4 3 Le Corbusier, for one, perceived an ever-stricter segregation of traffic as an essential affirmation of social order — a desirable and ultimately inevita- ble expression of modernity. To this end, propos- als were advanced to build vertical streets where road vehicles, pedestrians and trains would each occupy their own levels. Such an arrangement, it was said, would allow for even denser develop- ment in the future. These plans were never im- plemented comprehensively, a fact which today’s urban theorists regard as fortunate for vitality and diversity. Rather, vertical segregation is applied on a piecemeal basis, as in sewers, utility poles, depressed highways, elevated railways, common utility ducts, the extensive complex of under- ground malls surrounding Tokyo Station and the O-temachi subway station, the elevated pedestri- an skyway networks of Minneapolis and Calgary, the underground cities of Atlanta and Montreal, and the multilevel streets in Chicago. Wikipedia <Street>. 4 For example, San Francisco’s Proposition H of 2007, which was largley funded by downtown de- velopers and backed by the Gap’s Don Fischer. 5 Some of San Francisco’s most popular outdoor events such as the Haight-Ashbury and How Weird street fairs, Gay Pride, Halloween and the North Beach Festival have recently been threatened by or- ganised neighbour complaints and exorbitant fees from city departments. See Witherell, Amanda. ‘The Death of Fun’ San Francisco Bay Guardian , May 23, 2006
6 For the past two years, Larry Ellison’s Oracle Open World conference has erected a tent over Howard Street from 3rd to 4th Street for an entire week, complete with massive LED screens at each end. On November 22, 2004, the band U2 took over the streets of New York to shoot a video for ‘All Because of You’, the second single off their new How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. 7 Section 138 of the City of San Francisco Zoning Ordinance. 8 The term POPOS was coined by REBAR 9 Hofbauer, Ursula. ‘Horror Vacui’ 10 Arlt, Peter. ‘Urban Planning and Interim Use” in Temporary Urban Spaces by Haydn, Florian, Robert Temel, eds. Birkhäuser, 2006. See also de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life , trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. 11 Hofbauer, Ursula, & Friedmann Derschmidt ‘Horror Vacui’ in Temporary Urban Spaces by Hay- dn, Florian, Robert Temel, eds. Birkhäuser, 2006 12 REBAR estimated they provided an additional ‘24,000 square-foot-minutes’ of public open space. 13 All information taken from REBAR and their website www.rebargroup.org 14 Ibid. REBAR 15 Arlt, Peter. ‘Urban Planning and Interim Use’ p 39 16 Meanwhile, REBAR has also aadopted more strategic methods, handing PARK(ing) Day off to the Trust for Public Land, and advising the San Francisco mayor’s office on the city’s Better Streets program. 17 Jacobs, Alan. Great Streets. p9
below: Critical Mass, a ‘guerilla’ action flyer particularly interesting for the explication of how much thought has to go into even strategic acts. opposite, top: PARK(ing) bottom: Plausibly deniable behaviour: REBAR and collaborators Snap Out of It , and explore the conditions of the planter box POPOS located near 200 California Street.
onsite 19: street, streets and lanes, the straight and narrow, wide and busy
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