750K Quicktime
(24 sec)

The Greening of Downtown San Francisco:
Eco City Metamorphosis on Post Street
A photo-realistic computer animation showing downtown Post Street “greened” and retrofitted for ecological sustainability.

• Venue #1: In the lobby of the Castro Theater, 429 Castro St, June 1-5, 2005
• Venue #2: The World Environment Day Festival Pavillion at Fort Mason 10am-5pm, June 1-5, 2005 (the central venue for World Environment Day)

Description

This computer animation project shows a virtual fly-over of a downtown San Francisco street undergoing a "green" transformation. It addresses two key issues confronting not just San Francisco, but city downtowns throughout America: aesthetics and sustainability.

Since the attractiveness of our city sidewalks greatly affects the quality of the pedestrian experience, which in turn has a major affect on the overall vitality and commercial success of a downtown district, the animation starts by showing the implementation of some uniquely affordable and quick ways to beautify a street. This includes use of sidewalk "bulb-outs" at all intersections and, inspired from the fine example set by Chicago, extensive sidewalk flower-bed gardens . The later is especially relevant for San Francisco, which, compared to many other cities, has been criticized for lack of downtown greenery.

With regard to sustainability, the animation focuses on the huge and largely untapped potential in American cities of rooftop real estate. Whether to produce food, electric power, thermal insulation, oxygen, or simply beauty, this is a resource we will turn to more and more as fuel costs continue to rise. The final scene relates to the idea that if city streets can be made suitable for children and butterflies, they will work well for the rest of us too.

More details:

What might a fully "greened" San Francisco downtown look like?
This photo-realistic computer animation sequence shows an imagined transformation of a 3-block section of Post Street, from Market St. leading up to Union Square, in three phases:

Phase #1 "New urbanism"
Modest, affordable, quickly doable streetscape upgrades with immediate benefits to the existing retail environment are shown. This includes: traffic-calming, widened sidewalks, benches, bulb-outs at all corners to aid pedestrian traffic, widespread sidewalk garden-strips (recently made famous in downtown Chicago) and accompanying trees.

Phase #2 "Eco-city lite"
Greening and energizing of rooftops is portrayed. This includes rooftop gardens for both horticultural and urban-agricultural uses plus extensive use of photo-voltaics. The focus here is on the retrofitting of existing buildings (including skyscrapers) to facilitate solar energy and "mixed use" development.

Phase #3 "Eco-city Intensive" (not yet implemented)
New buildings optimized for solar energy and are shown. This combined with unique new public spaces that mix culture, nature, and recreation results in a fully self-contained 24/7 urban eco-city village with all the advantages of the inner-city living plus abundant access to greenery and a natural world.