SF Chronicle previews our upcoming book CITY BUILDING · Feb 3, 09:04 AM
From the Tuesday, January 26th edition of the SF Chronicle:
“Since we’re surveying the literary landscape, keep an eye out for an understated manifesto by one of San Francisco’s leading planners. The book is City Building: Nine Planning Principles for the Twenty-First Century by John Kriken, who spent 20 years as partner in charge of urban design at the San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. He also has served on the San Francisco Arts Commission and other civic groups.”
“Written with assistance from local journalist Richard Rapaport and Philip Enquist of SOM, City Building is Kriken’s detailed plea for an approach to planning that pays close attention to the environment and historic neighborhood patterns, but doesn’t flinch from large-scale transformation in a new century where “it is simply unacceptable now to use up dwindling natural resources and irreplaceable agricultural lands and open spaces.”
“The principles are straightforward: Growing cities need to be accessible and diverse, with increased density but ample parkland. There’s an abundance of real-world case studies, many of them drawn from SOM files. Among the local examples is the plan for a ferry-centered neighborhood on Treasure Island – and the failed 1980s effort to make downtown San Jose into a thriving destination, a plan that Kriken said was thwarted in part by the fact that the nearby airport kept height limits low and prevented the daytime population that vibrant downtowns need.”
“Cities need to be able to reinvent themselves,” Kriken writes. “They thus need the ability to define alternative futures, even radically different futures, without necessarily being disrespectful of the past.” It’s a quiet call to arms – and one that doesn’t always play so well in the author’s hometown.”
City Building will be published in March; however, it can be preordered from William Stout Books in San Francisco or Builders Booksource in Berkeley or from your favorite bookseller.
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