Alvarado Elementary School in Noe Valley is a white-walled, two-story building that stretches for a city block just east of Twin Peaks. Nothing on the exterior of the building, constructed in the early 1900s, would lead passers-by to realize that what sits atop it is a first for San Francisco. Read More

Forty-three years ago, California adopted one of the nation’s most foresighted environmental protection laws, the California Environmental Quality Act, which is known as CEQA. The law encourages our elected officials to “look before they leap” and make decisions based on an objective analysis of a proposed project’s impacts on the environment. Read More

The California Environmental Quality Act is a good law too often used in bad ways. At its root, the law, typically known as CEQA, requires that state and local governments study the impacts of projects to mitigate, when possible, their negative effects. But while CEQA-type laws around the nation typically only come into play in the case of genuine environmental objections to a project, the law in California is far too often co-opted by anyone with a “not in my backyard” objection. Read More

San Francisco’s planning approval process is notoriously difficult, often taking months — and sometimes a decade or more — to approve a project. The City’s lengthy process can add significantly to a developer’s costs. These costs are impacting the pace of development and the type of projects that get built in The City. Read More