According to Plan

Not everyone agrees that the current situation is problematic. Tim Tosta, an attorney with Steefel, Levitt, and Weiss who represents developers of Rincon Hill buildings, recently visited Green in Cambridge, where they dined together. "It's a stunning experience for the community of which our common interest binds us together," Tosta recently told the Planning Commission, according to meeting minutes. "It's a wonderful environment where Mr. Green is right now."

It's a wonderful environment, indeed, for developer-lobbyists who can afford to fly to Cambridge and visit the city planning director.

During the coming years, as city planners attempt to flesh out the Vancouver-style neighborhood envisioned for the Transbay Terminal and Rincon Hill, the city's planning director, the Planning Commission, and the mayor will face a gauntlet of interest-group pressure as lobbyists and NIMBY neighborhood associations battle for control of this old industrial land in the morning shadow of the Bay Bridge. They'll face high-rise-ophobes, left over from the 1970s anti-Manhattanization movement. They'll face developers, who once again will hire every lobbyist in town.

Amid the clamor, I advise the new mayor to close his eyes and imagine strolling past Coal Harbor, on the north side of downtown Vancouver, along the split-level pedestrian-bike trail that encircles the Vancouver peninsula. He should imagine walking past trees, lampposts, a four-level cascading pool, and then looking up to see the twin, 22-story condominium buildings of turquoise-colored glass that flank the trail. He should think of a sweeping grassy knoll that envelops a children's water park, all paid for by developers anxious to buy into a detailed and relatively unpoliticized vision of the city. It's a vision San Francisco's professionally trained planners will be happy to share with the new mayor – if, that is, he really meant his campaign promises to depoliticize the Planning Department.