Subject
11 entries
Urbanism
Bookmarks
Just Put It on a Map: land value visualization tools
The Center for Land Economics released five free GIS tools for visualizing land values, including a 3D mapper showing how Manhattan's assessed values tower above the rest of NYC combined. The case: geographic visualization makes land economics arguments visceral in ways that text and tables can't.
Every Parking Lot Should Look Like This
Tweet by @illumynous of a parking lot that looks like it should — presumably a green, tree-covered, or unusually well-designed parking structure. Saved as a urbanism / design inspiration.
The San Francisco Rent Explosion
Priceonomics analysis of San Francisco's rent surge in 2013, showing SOMA as the most expensive neighborhood for a 1BR. Documents the housing cost inflection that accompanied the tech industry's concentration in the city.
Excellent Street Views: SF Planning Design Principles
SF Planning Department's 'Excellent Street Views' document — a guide to the design principles that make streets walkable and visually engaging. Covers building setbacks, facade continuity, street-level activation, and the visual corridor principles that distinguish human-scale streets from car-oriented ones.
Inequality & Mass Transit in the Bay Area
Dan Grover's interactive data visualization showing how transit access in the Bay Area correlates with income and geography — a 2013 example of civic data journalism that made structural inequality legible through maps and charts.
In 1897, a Bicycle Superhighway Was the Future of California Transit
The 1897 California Cycleway — a proposed elevated wooden bike highway from Pasadena to Los Angeles — as a historical case of cycling infrastructure preceding car dominance. A reminder that the current city form isn't inevitable; cycling was once treated as serious urban transit.
History of San Francisco Place Names
Noah Veltman's interactive map of San Francisco street and place name origins — each name linked to its historical source (a Spanish land grant, a Gold Rush merchant, a city founder). A civic history layer overlaid on the present-day street grid.
San Francisco Zoning: Needs More Density and Tall Buildings
Slate Moneybox arguing San Francisco should build more density and tall buildings — that zoning restrictions are the root cause of the city's affordability crisis. A 2013 piece that anticipated the YIMBY movement's core argument before it had that name.
Class-Divided Cities: San Francisco Edition
Atlantic Cities (now CityLab) analysis of San Francisco's class divide in 2013 — Richard Florida's data showing SF as one of the most economically bifurcated cities in America, with a shrinking middle class squeezed between a booming tech elite and a large low-wage service sector.
Rebecca Solnit: Google Invades San Francisco
Rebecca Solnit's LRB diary on Google's presence in San Francisco — arguing that tech wealth and private commuter buses were displacing long-term residents and erasing the city's identity as a refuge for artists and dissidents. The essay that crystallized the tech-gentrification debate.
San Francisco Tech Boom Brings Jobs and Worries
NYT on the 2012 San Francisco tech boom — the influx of tech workers driving up rents, transforming neighborhoods, and creating visible inequality between tech workers and longer-term residents. An early document of tensions that would define the city's politics for a decade.