Taking a cue from our sisters over at Eater, we're going to closeout the year by surveying local design, building, and real estate luminaries to get a read on the highlights and lowlights of the past year of real estate and development in San Francisco. Next up: trends you'd like to see crushed in 2014:
Allison Arieff, architecture and design writer: NIMBYism. We can't solve the housing affordability crisis unless we build more housing -- and the refrain "it's not right for my neighborhood" isn't really a good excuse.
Frank Nolan, Development Sales Director at Vanguard: Agents under listing properties well below market value.
Craig Scott, Founding Partner at IwamotoScott Architecture: Ballot measures by special interests gaining enough votes to stop otherwise reasonable projects.
Brock Keeling, Editor-in-Chief at SFist: Anything that looks like the beige-stucco flops in Mission Bay. San Francisco has/had a great chance to create bizarre and innovative design when it came to new growth. Instead we saw a lot of the same with little to no imagination crushed by too many voices and too much input.
Erin Feher, Editor-in-Chief at California Home + Design: Lazy modern. Lots of glass, boxy, neo-Bay windows, and a lack of anything creative or risky. I actually applaud NEMA for its angled, black cladding, and that's not saying much.
Kearstin Krehbiel, Executive Director at San Francisco Beautiful: Headlines about twerking.
Margie O'Driscoll, Executive Director at AIA San Francisco: Whining by people who have lived in SF for more than two years complaining about how rotten/rich/self-entitled all these "new" residents are!!!
This has always been a City of Change (ever heard of the Gold Rush???) that is what makes cities dynamic.
That said, those of us who have lived here for decades, need to show by example that we care for those who don't (yet) have homes, jobs and hope.
Second most popular trend I've heard enough of: "oh, we have an app for that…" in response to how to solve a sordid social problem like homelessness.
Technology is only one tool among many. At the end of the day, only people working together can solve the seemingly intractable problem of housing affordability, poverty and social inequity in San Francisco.
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