Good Government in a Time of Austerity

Defining Good Government in the New Reality

How can San Francisco deliver core city services in an era of finite resources?

Costs of City government are rising while revenues are stagnating. Meanwhile, our need for core services has not decreased. What began as a national recession may have triggered a rare moment of opportunity to deal with the causes of our structural deficit. So what is the way forward?

Urban Field Notes: Five Painterly Vistas From Kaiser Center Roof Garden

In the 1920s, European architects proposed a new city. The chaos of industrial civilization would be redeemed by a stupendous landscape of skyscrapers rising out of a park-like setting. Alas, in American cities, crisscrossed by grids and streets, this dream of architecture rising from nature was all but impossible. Then, in 1959, the new Kaiser Center complex in downtown Oakland came up with a solution.