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289 12 High-Rises and the Antihigh-Rise Movement The transformation of San Francisco over the past four decades finds its concrete expression in the height and bulk of the new buildings that have replaced the old. One sometimes forgets how recent this change has been: From 1930 to 1958, only one major office building was constructed in San Francisco, and the city’s first modern high-rise, the Crown Zellerbach building on Market Street, was built in 1959. But as a California Magazine article puts it, “This city, once mythologized as Baghdad by the Bay, might now be better christened Houston by the Pacific.”1 Arguments and data regarding the impact of high-rise development— on the city’s tax base; on job generation and who benefits from these jobs; on job displacement; on the direct and indirect costs of municipal services to serve high-rises; on the various environmental impacts; on housing availability and cost; on traffic, transit, and congestion—have flown thick and fast over the years.The San Francisco Bay Guardian in 1971 published The Ultimate Highrise: San Francisco’s Mad Rush toward the Sky, a piece of advocacy journalism/scholarship that did much to increase public consciousness of the issue, provide some facts, and raise the questions that have been asked for three decades since.2 A series of “definitive” studies of the fiscal effects of downtown development was produced in the 1970s and early 1980s, each reaching somewhat different conclusions and coming under criticism for its methodology or sponsorship.3 The San Francisco Planning and Urban Renewal Association in 1974–75 received funds from HUD and two private foundations to study the issue, but the consultants it chose were not regarded as impartial, and the fact that the corporate community’s BlythZellerbach Committee (see chapter 1) was reconsidering its subsidy to SPUR 290 / Chapter 12 during the study period didn’t help to create the desired impression of distance and objectivity.4 The Sedway-Cooke planning firm in 1979 was commissioned to analyze the fiscal effects of downtown development, in response to the threat posed by an antihigh-rise initiative, and concluded that after passage of anti–property tax Proposition 13 in 1978,“Costs may exceed revenues in the downtown by as much as 25 percent” and that “New downtown development will not solve the city’s growing fiscal problems; without new revenue sources, development will make it worse in the long run.”5 The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce in 1980 commissioned Arthur Andersen and Company to calculate revenues and costs of the downtown high-rise district.The conclusions were that in 1976–77 revenues exceeded costs by 61 percent (a $56 million gain) and that in 1978–79, with the impact of Proposition 13, the benefit dropped to 48 percent (a $53 million gain). But the firm’s methodology was roundly criticized for excluding costs not directly in the City budget (such as BART, whose deficits are covered by a half percent sales tax) and for treating the downtown essentially as a Vatican-like separate city, with no maintenance responsibility for facilities and services not used or used only minimally in and by the financial district (health care, parks, libraries, schools, jails and courts, social services, general government, etc.).6 Employing the Andersen data but applying different assumptions regarding externalities, San Franciscans for Reasonable Growth (SFRG) concluded that the post-Proposition 13 downtown area actually incurred a more than $50 million deficit. Not surprisingly, these various studies have done little to convince San Franciscans one way or another about the issue.The assumptions and “models ” used, what data were considered relevant, and how to interpret the data, all have reflected the values and positions of those who undertook and sponsored the studies.The more narrowly one defines the issue,the better the case to be made for the economic advantages of high-rise development; the more one takes into account citywide economics and other dimensions of the growth issue, the more frightening appear the impacts of “Manhattanization.” Economic impacts aside, unrestrained high-rise development has disturbing environmental effects. Box-shaped, poorly angled skyscrapers create powerful street-level winds that can become gales—up to sixty-five miles per hour—overturning newspaper racks, potted trees, and other objects , and even breaking store windows.7 Less extreme wind currents can make walking or merely being downtown highly uncomfortable. Relatedly, tall, bulky buildings can reduce...

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