On February 2023, Mayor London N. Breed presented the “Roadmap for Downtown San Francisco’s Future”. This plan encompasses 5 key areas, with 9 strategies and almost 50 specific initiatives, which together tackle San Francisco’s evolving economic landscape and promote a fresh perspective on the future role of Downtown, the foundation of San Francisco’s economy.
Read and get a simple yet effective approach to understanding the Roadmap:
⚡ Key Areas:
1. Provide an economically diverse and resilient job engine.
How? By attracting a wider range of industries and jobs; becoming the country's most productive and innovative business hub; and creating new possibilities for setting up businesses in San Francisco, a place for important face-to-face meetings and connections to a skilled workforce, and new forms of work and activities.
2. Provide a welcoming, clean, and safe environment.
How? By carefully crafting and impeccably maintaining the public spaces of Downtown San Francisco, encompassing streets, sidewalks, plazas, parks, and other open areas; and by making streets and sidewalks walkable, clean, and safe, providing pedestrians with a sense of comfort as they navigate the area.
3. Provide a dynamic destination that is active 24/7.
How? By becoming a must-visit destination for everyone, offering exclusive and authentic San Francisco experiences day and night; becoming an ideal location for civic, political expression, and diverse social events; and supplementing existing and new retail, culinary, and nightlife options, as well as arts, culture, and recreational activities.
4. Provide a world-class transportation experience.
How? By making it effortless and comfortable to get to and around Downtown San Francisco; providing a comprehensive selection of sustainable and efficient transportation options; giving pedestrians and cyclists access to a secure and easy-to-navigate environment; cleaning and maintaining transit stations, bike stations, sidewalks, plazas, and other entry points to downtown; and prioritizing public transportation by offering frequent, rapid, clean, and dependable transit options that are user-friendly.
5. Provide an equitable economy that supports full participation by all.
How? By honoring the city’s rich past as one of the most culturally vibrant cities in the nation; integrating inclusivity into every aspect of the economic recovery; providing a greater range of job opportunities; encouraging new communities and cultures to participate in Downtown activities; making Downtown more accessible with the expansion of transit options; broadening the ethnic and racial diversity of Downtown entrepreneurs and businesses by minimizing obstacles to starting and expanding a business; and providing training to San Francisco and Bay Area residents to access, succeed in, and advance in quality jobs.
⚡ Strategies and Initiatives:
1. Ensure Downtown is clean, safe, and inviting.
The initiatives: Support businesses, residents, and visitors with an enhanced public safety presence and continue and grow Healthy Streets coordinated response programs to improve street conditions.
2. Attract and retain a diverse range of industries and employers.
The initiatives: Support businesses' recovery with ongoing tax relief and incentives in key sectors and explore business tax reform to adapt to shifting work patterns.
3. Facilitate new uses and flexibility in buildings.
The initiatives: Amend the Planning Code for flexible zoning Downtown for the widest range of activities and uses, and prepare a housing conversion analysis to identify the feasibility of office-to-residential conversions.
4. Make it easier to start and grow a business.
The initiatives: Provide direct business recovery assistance including grants and loans, and expand the First-Year Free program to reduce permit costs for new business ventures.
5. Grow and prepare the workforce.
The initiatives: Implement the Mayor’s Housing for All strategy to deliver housing for the workforce, and provide industry-informed training programs that target resources to employers’ shifting needs.
6. Transform Downtown into a leading arts, culture, and nightlife destination.
The initiatives: Designate an Arts, Culture, and Entertainment (ACE) Zone with targeted programs and incentives, and continue supporting public space events and activations that showcase local talent and culture.
7. Enhance public spaces to showcase Downtown.
The initiatives: Complete the transition of Shared Spaces outdoor dining to a permanent program, and continue adding new design elements in public spaces to showcase the Downtown environment.
8. Invest in transportation connections.
The initiatives: Make it easy for workers, residents, and visitors to travel Downtown with improved Muni (public transit) connections and provide faster trips to Downtown with ongoing Muni Forward improvements on key lines.
9. Tell San Francisco’s story.
The initiatives: Promote a national visitor attraction campaign in targeted markets and launch the Heart of SF social media campaign to amplify a narrative around SF’s evolving identity.
It appears that San Francisco has a compelling, cohesive, and ambitious plan. Nevertheless, not everyone shares this perspective. Soon after Mayor Breed introduced the turnaround plan, criticism swiftly followed. Joe Eskenazi, Managing Editor & Columnist at Mission Local magazine, said “the Roadmap is a set of goals and a spiffy website, but the new plan is neither new nor a plan” pointing out that “three of Breed’s most-touted points in the Roadmap — simplifying and speeding up permitting; allowing developers to defer paying impact fees; and expediting the transformation of office buildings into residential — are decidedly not new and revelatory” as “these are some of the very first ideas the city proposed at the dawn of the pandemic” in the October 2020 Economic Recovery Task Force Report.
In his words, “San Francisco doesn’t have a coming-up-with-plans problem. We have a reading-the-plans problem. And we have an implementing-the-plans problem”. We at Glass firmly believe that execution is often the most challenging aspect of any plan. As per the report, San Francisco is just one of the thousands of cities grappling with turning ideas into reality. However, we also believe that the city has the necessary resources, skilled professionals, and advanced tools to achieve this goal.
Do you want to know more about it? Just head over to San Francisco’s government website and explore the whole roadmap!
This blog was written by Gisela Montes, GovTech Community Lead at Glass.