For more than a year, we’ve navigated an ever-evolving landscape of dining parklets and slow streets. Social distancing stickers dot sidewalks outside stores with plexiglass shields. Urban policy think-tanks predicted the pandemic would prompt wholesale conversion of office towers to housing, and apartments with extra rooms for working from home.
But as vaccination levels rise and the pandemic seems to recede, California is set to end almost all restrictions on June 15. Life seems headed back towards “normal,” whatever that freighted word now means. A few months from now, in fact, local cities could look a lot like they did in 2019.
“We jump to the conclusions that there’s going to be massive change because of something like this,” said Rich Hillis, San Francisco’s planning director. “There are shifts, sure. But the expectation of long-term change can be overblown.”
This is not to minimize the transformation of the past year. Any random outing still offers glimpses of the improvised visual markers of our quest to stay safe, from roped-off lanes outside vaccination centers to the strips of blue tape spaced six feet apart in store aisles. Signs in windows politely telling us to wear masks remain ubiquitous in the Bay Area.
The commercial parklets that were conceived as life rafts for restaurants trying to ride out the economic storm have proliferated to the point where they define the look of such commercial strips as Oakland’s Telegraph Avenue.
On a more fine-grain level, take a walk through your neighborhood. Don’t be surprised if you start to notice how the addresses on some homes have grown larger, a boost in point size that makes it easier for delivery vehicles to brake to a halt and hand over the goods.
But all these ad hoc accommodations fall short of the urban makeovers once talked about — a systematic re-examination of the form and function of urban buildings. The World Economic Forum, for instance, grandly predicted in a paper last August that we would see “radical new approaches to apartment design, accommodating comfortable and productive home work spaces that do not intrude into bedrooms and sitting rooms.”
Locally, architects Byron Kuth and Liz Ranieri proposed the radical remake of the Financial District block between Market, Mission, Beale and Main streets being vacated by PG&E. They did a conceptual design that turned it into a “microhood,” with apartments in the shell of the historic building along Market while a newer tower on Mission would hold everything from a 35-story wall of solar panels to a working farm. The parking lots would be replaced by a public green.
The concept was both audacious and holistic, exploring how old-school density can be brought up to date while addressing such needs as clean energy and fresh air. But real-world work the pair has done for clients in response to COVID-19 is at a more modest scale, such as elegantly altering science classrooms to allow for small classes and social distance if need be.
“We didn’t expect PG&E to call,” Ranieri said this week, not long after PG&E announced it will sell the block to a conventional developer for $800 million. What counts is offering a vision of what-if that people can grasp: “If you can stir the discussion, that can help chart a future path.”
They also wanted to drive home the idea that buildings and spaces should be malleable. The more ways that something can be used, the better off we will be.
“Everything got rearranged last year — socially, physically, urbanistically,” Rainieri said. “Creating solutions that are flexible becomes very important.”
That type of approach paid off in Bay Area cities — and across the nation — where select roadways were declared off-limits to through-traffic as a way to create accessible outdoor space for people close to home. The decade-old appropriation of parking spaces into “parklets,” nooks for people to sit and relax, was given new life as businesses were allowed to set up shop outside, with the asphalt rectangles reserved for paying customers rather than private automobiles.
Each initiative has resonated with the public. But turning emergency efforts into permanent fixtures isn’t easy; there’s no shortage of long-time residents or combative politicians eager to second-guess what’s being done.
Realistically, though, the clock can only be turned back so far.
“I don’t think we’re going back to where we were,” said Keith Krumwiede, dean of architecture at California College of the Arts. “Streets will continue to be transformed — not in a design way, necessarily, but in terms of how they are used.”
This is the case in Alameda, where 4.5 miles of pavement were reclassified as “Slow Streets” following last spring’s orders to shelter in place. Retail blocks along Park and Webster streets were restriped to allow space for what now are roughly 30 dining parklets.
The current rules are set to expire at the end of October. Instead, city officials intend to spend the summer meeting with neighborhoods and crafting a plan that would allow many of the changes to remain.
In San Francisco, planning director Hillis hasn’t seen much change in how buildings are being designed beyond a new emphasis on air circulation systems. Some office proposals have been revised so that they can hold lab space as well. The department is looking at tweaking the planning code to encourage more private outdoor spaces in new residential buildings, such as balconies.
And what will disappear without fanfare?
The circles meant to delineate safe gathering spaces in popular parks already are gone, worn down by winter rains and prolonged gatherings.
Social distancing lines and markers are likely to be the exception by Labor Day, not the rule. Plexiglass shields are beginning to come down.
What will endure is an idea — the realization that our surroundings can be as fluid as contemporary life.
“We should be designing spaces that are flexible,” said Sarah Kuehl of Einwiller Kuehl, the landscape architecture firm that designed Oakland’s popular new Township Commons near Jack London Square. “Humans are really creative when they need to be.”
John King is The San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic. Email: jking@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @johnkingsfchron
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The pandemic was supposed to reimagine cities in major ways. The lasting changes are more subtle - San Francisco Chronicle
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