Challenge: How might we utilize development fees to create greenspace and contribute to positive outcomes within a neighborhood?
Summary: Funds allocated to neighborhood development of the Design District were most often used for transportation infrastructure to connect residents to further away city destinations. The impact of the actual Design District living conditions were left mostly unchanged. This plays out in lower property values while increasing the property values of other neighborhoods. What would an example of a block-by-block allocation of fees look like that increases property values and day-to-day living conditions? Our work answers this question through the planting of trees.
The Design District is a neighborhood which falls within the Eastern Neighborhoods boundaries. The Eastern Neighborhoods Citizens Advisory Committee (ENCAC) was established for the purposes of providing input on the prioritization of Public Benefits and providing input to plan area monitoring efforts as appropriate. We worked with the ENCAC and the city planning department to provide analysis and recommendations. Our feedback was communicated through a series of maps describing different populations coexisting in the same areas and their context to the city of San Francisco.
The collection of development fees by district has an opportunity to make a significant long-term impact in the neighborhoods where development is happening. Because of the increasing pace of development, it is becoming increasingly important to make strategic decisions which will benefit all residents living within the community where the impacts are felt.
We ultimately recommended that a mandatory minimum percentage of funds be allocated in ways that not only positively contribute to the property values of the residents and business owners but also impacts the day-to-day experience of being on the streets and sidewalks of the neighborhood. We discovered that a significant amount of the funds generated were allocated to transportation and street improvements that were operating on a city wide scale. Residents benefitted from the infrastructure, but we questioned if this allocation comprehensively reflected the goals the ENCAC set out to establish. As a way to describe what an equitable allocation of fees could look like to stakeholders living in the Design District we focused on one of the goals set out by the committee: greenspace.
We used existing information from the city planning department which detailed a tree census within San Francisco. Could each block be allocated trees based on a percentage of funds that were generated from the development happening on this block? And how could this be connected to both a block by block basis and a city wide scale? We proposed an urban hiking and biking trail throughout the city which would connect neighborhoods to larger parks within the city. We further promoted: Could the urban hiking trail could be planned through high crime neighborhoods? An influx of hikers would provide an additional layer of safety through vulnerable neighborhoods. Our research also concluded that trees directly relate to the safety and an increase in the property value of homes.
