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How We’re Trying to Do It:
Structure of the Effort to Produce and Implement
a Plan for San Francisco’s Sustainability
Contents
This paper provides information on the structure of Sustainable
San Francisco, its mission and its strategy.
Definition of Sustainability
Sustainability is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising
the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The long-term goal for
urban sustainability is to develop a prosperous and healthful urban system which
can provide for the physical and other needs of local residents while reversing the
trends of increased pollution and environmental degradation now threatening the quality
of urban life and the health of the earth's other life-forms. |
Why Are We Doing This?
The environmental practices of people in the City of San Francisco are currently
such that the quality of human life and the ecological health and biodiversity of
the region cannot be sustained for future generations.
Air and water pollution cause health problems and damage crops and remaining natural
habitat. Solid waste is generated at rates that deplete the resource base and create
wasteful use of open space as landfill. Numbers of many of our native and migrating
animal species are in decline. Energy use greatly exceeds the amount that can be
generated through renewable resources, leading inexorably to the depletion of current
energy sources. Polluting automobile use still far exceeds other means of transportation.
These are only a few of the areas in which society must reassess its practices to
maintain a high quality of life for future human generations and the rest of the
ecosphere.
How Are We Tackling this Problem?
Residents of San Francisco have begun a collaborative process to plan for the City's
future. What quality of life will we leave for our children and grandchildren? An
effort has been organized by the Commission on San Francisco's Environment, the City
Planning Department, the nonprofit organization Sustainable City and many others,
working together under the name, Sustainable San Francisco, with the mission of drafting
and implementing a plan for San Francisco's sustainability.
What Are We Trying to Achieve?
The long-term goal for urban sustainability is to develop a prosperous and healthful
urban system which can provide for the physical and other needs of the population
while reversing the trends of increasing pollution and environmental degradation
now threatening the quality of urban life. In designing our plan, our goals are to:
- Involve greatest number of social sectors in not only in drafting a plan, but
in implementing it, measuring progress, and modifying it in the future.
- Establish objective measures so that progress can be truly assessed.
- Produce a plan that will actually be implemented.
- Publicize results of plan implementation as broadly as possible.
What is Sustainable San Francisco?
Sustainable San Francisco is a collaboration of individuals and organizations; it
has no formal existence as an organization, itself. Its efforts are based on work
done by the Commission on San Francisco's Environment (an advisory committee of the
San Francisco Board of Supervisors) and organizational work of the Sustainable City
(a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization working on San Francisco issues).
These two organizations are working closely with the City Planning Department and
other city agencies as well as other environmental advocacy organizations and individuals
to further environmental planning in San Francisco.
Producing a plan for San Francisco's sustainability is one of the tasks with which
the Environmental Commission was charged when it was formed, three years ago. While
the Commission and other city agencies are active participants, Sustainable San Francisco
is a community effort.
Are Contributions Tax-Deductible?
Sustainable City (a 501(c)(3) corporation) acts as fiscal agent for Sustainable San
Francisco, making contributions to the sustainability planning effort tax-deductible.
Who Makes the Decisions?
General direction of the effort is the responsibility of the executive director of
Sustainable City, Beryl Magilavy.
Strategy decisions are made by consensus of a steering committee, which meets
on first and third Tuesdays, at 6:00 p.m. Steering Committee membership is, and will
remain, open to all residents of San Francisco with an interest in forwarding the
work.
Responsibilities of the steering committee are
- To plan overall strategy and execute details,
- To raise funds, agree on a working budget and oversee expenditure of project
funds (constituent groups may also have their own funding for forwarding the sustainability
work), and
- To act as a liaison between the collaboration and any organizations steering
committee members may represent.
Who Endorses this Effort?
There is an expanding group of local leaders and organizations agreeing to act as
advisors to Sustainable San Francisco. Duties of advisors are
- To lend their names as endorsers of the effort.
- To help identify key stakeholders for participation in City Circles (defined
below),
- To help get the word out among their own constituencies,
- To contribute money and/or other resources to the effort, and
- To help with the public hearings in June and outreach over the summer.
As of this writing, advisors are
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American Institute of Architects
Audubon Society, Inc.
Bank of America
Charlotte Berk (League of Women Voters)
Babette Drefke (Potrero Boosters)
Scott Edmonson (EIP & Associates)
Esprit
Friends of the Urban Forest
Lead Poisoning Prevention Project
Piero Patri
San Francisco Tomorrow
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Sierra Club
Sustainable City
Urban Ecology
Urban Resource Systems
Jacqueline Young
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi
Senator Milton Marks
CAO William L. Lee
President of the Board of Supervisors Kevin Shelley
Supervisor Angela Alioto
Supervisor Sue Bierman
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Supervisor Terence Hallinan
Supervisor Carole Migden
Supervisor Mabel Teng
City of San Francisco City Planning Department
City of San Francisco Commission on San Francisco's Environment
City of San Francisco Bureau of Energy Conservation
City of San Francisco Solid Waste Management Program
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How Will the Plan be Drafted?
It is important to reiterate that the sustainability plan should be a means, not
an end. However, to proceed in a sensible way to change long-standing environmental
practices, it's necessary to come up with some goals, actions, and objectives to
be achieved.
"Sustainability" is
a Big Topic (What's Been Left Out).
Some decisions had to be made about how to address an overarching issue such as environmental
sustainability. It was necessary to set some boundaries for what we are attempting
to address, and then to break the subject up into manageable pieces.
It is our aim to keep this document focused on environmental issues. For that
reason, we've chosen to omit such important social aspects as homelessness, crime,
and spirituality. We have tried to focus on the physical systems of the planet that
normally get short shrift from planners, and the social systems that have a direct
impact on these.
The topic of land-use has been omitted. This will astonish sustainability planners
from other cities. We have chosen not to address land use in this sustainability
plan because:
- The City of San Francisco is surrounded on three sides by water. Except for individual
parcel development, it has long been essentially built out in a form that includes
vibrant pedestrian neighborhoods and is quite transit-friendly. Transit-related land-use
issues are dealt with in that section.
- Issues such as parks and restoration of remaining natural habitat are contained
in those sections.
- There is already an extensive public participation process in place around land
use decisions.
We have divided topic of sustainability into the following sections:
- Agriculture
- Air Quality
- Economy and Economic Development
- Energy, Climate Change and Ozone Depletion
- Environmental Justice
- Hazardous Materials
- Human Health
- Municipal Expenditures
- Open Space: Inland Lakes and Streams, Natural Habitat and Biodiversity
- Open Space: Parks, Public Spaces and the Streetscape
- Public Information and Education
- Risk Management (activities of high environmental risk)
- Solid Waste
- Transportation
- Water and Wastewater
Several areas, such as economy and public education, have effects on all the other
sections. The importance of these in achieving sustainability in the other areas
made it essential that they be addressed specifically; not just as one aspect of
discussion on each section.
What's the Baseline?
In 1994, the Commission on San Francisco's Environment published a baseline study
of San Francisco's current situation, the Environmental State of the City Report.
It is available to the general public for $5 from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors,
401 Van Ness Avenue, Room 308.
Some of the topics listed above were not covered in the State of the City report.
This sustainability planning effort has been evolving over time, and the topic list
has expanded since the report was done.
How Will the Plan be Structured?
Volunteer San Franciscans spent the early part of 1995 researching sustainability
plans from around the world. Building on models found to be successful elsewhere,
a format was chosen to maximize the possibility that the plan will be implemented.
The plan is intended to be written for a general audience, who have never heard
of the concept of sustainability and its associated ideas, and will address activities
of the private as well as the public sector.
Building primarily on the European Community's Agenda 21 Implementation Plan (for
the UK) and work done by Sustainable Seattle, the plan has been structured so that
each topic has an introductory section, then is addressed via a matrix that sets
out:
(Sample Matrix: Agriculture)
- Broad, long-term social goals
Goals are supposed to be very general, and speak to the basic human/ ecosystem
needs that are to be addressed. (For instance, this is where one would address people's
need to travel and move goods, rather than the need to have an efficient bus system
[that's a strategy for getting the travel done].)
- Specific objectives to be achieved within the next five years.
Objectives for the year 2001 should be quantifiable and feasible within a five-year
time-frame. They should include objectives for the private sector, including individual
residents, as well as objectives for City programs.
- Objectives that must be reached to achieve a sustainable society,
These objectives should represent what it would really take to make the city sustainable.
They will probably not look "reasonable," but are included to give perspective
to the discussion.
- Specific actions that will be implemented to move toward sustainability,
Actions are steps city government, private companies, and individuals can take
to achieve the goals and objectives in the preceding columns. (For instance, this
is where to put expanding the bus system.)
- Some objective indicators, or measures of success in each area.
Indicators are meant to be numerical measurements that:
- Are obvious in what is being measured (for instance, something like "improvement
of water quality in the Bay" is too general and one might argue what it could
mean),
- Can be found at low cost given the current information-gathering machinery,
- Clearly indicate a trend toward or away from sustainability,
- Are understandable to the general public and easily presented in the media.
With the assistance of the City Planning Department, two background documents
have been prepared:
An Invitation to Public Discussion: What Kind
of Future Do We Want?
and
Possible Goals, Objectives, Actions and Indicators
Suggested for Consideration by City Circles
They represent the efforts of local sustainability activists, including many people
from city agencies, to produce a forward-looking draft that is realistic enough to
be implemented. This draft is meant to be a starting point for the deliberations
of a broad cross-section of the community to reach agreement on a final plan. The
reason for producing such a detailed draft was to "jump-start" the public
participation process, making it focused enough that people who have neither the
time nor taste for a lengthy series of meetings would be more likely to participate.
Who Will Be Involved?
People involved in drafting the plan are being called "participants." The
drafting groups are called "City Circles." It is our primary goal for the
drafting process to have secure the participation of
- Representatives of the business community who have an economic interest in each
topic area,
- The appropriate city departments, and
- Environmental activists who have a thorough knowledge of the issues being discussed.
People from these sectors will be identified and recruited by Sustainable San
Francisco. Any interested member of the general public may also participate in the
drafting groups.
Once the drafting meetings have started, we will pretty much close participation
to those who are able to participate from the beginning. It would be too disruptive
of the process to have newcomers who would need to be brought up to speed and who
might wish to revisit issues on which the City Circle participants had already reached
a consensus. For those who can't participate through all four meetings, there will
be an opportunity to comment at the meetings' conclusion.
Once the plan has been completed by the City Circles, comments from the general
public will be solicited at hearings to be co-sponsored by the Stegner Environmental
Center of the new Main Library planned for June, 1996. We will also do outreach to
the general public with a booth that will be taken to street fairs and other venues
throughout the summer.
How Will the City Circles
Work?
After opening ceremonies scheduled for January, 1996, to which all participants
will be invited, Circles will meet four or five times over the ensuing four months.
Meetings will have specific agendas, professional facilitators, and a recorder to
take notes and prepare drafts for review between meetings. Participants will have
been invited by Circle coordinators. The first Circle meetings have been scheduled
over three days in the beginning of February.
Agendas of the meetings follow. For a detailed description
of each meeting, and other technical instructions for those running the meetings,
please see the paper, City Circle Meeting Guidelines: Detailed Information for Facilitators,
Recorders and Coordinators.
Opening Ceremonies
January 25
| Program 6:30 - 7:00 p.m. |
7:00-8:30 Wine and Cheese |
| Speakers |
Topic |
| Beryl Magilavy, Sustainable San Francisco, Sustainable City, Commission on San Francisco's
Environment |
Welcome. Definition of Sustainability |
| Bill Lee, Chief Administrative Officer, City of San Francisco |
Current city environmental programs. Need for private participation. Need for involvement
of all social sectors. |
| Kevin Shelley, President of the Board of Supervisors |
The global context. History of the Environmental Commission and the new Environmental
Department |
| Beryl Magilavy |
Background, mission, goals, expected products, timeline of Sustainable San Francisco.
Present information on City Circles, their process, how to become involved, describe
the spring public event and welcome participation of individuals, organizations,
and businesses in the city. |
City Circle Meetings
Meeting 1
Early February
9:30 am - 12:30 pm
Work product:
- Draft goals
- Set dates of meetings 2, 3 and 4 (tailored to schedules of participants) Set
location of remaining meetings
Meeting 2
Second week of March
Work product:
- Draft objectives (both sustainability and 5-year)
Interum Meeting
Of Steering Committee with
Coordinators, Facilitators and Recorders
Third week of March
Meeting 3
Second week of April
Work Product
- Draft actions and start work on indicators
- Establish subcommittee to research indicators
- Establish subcommittee to draft introductory text
Meeting 4
Second week of May
Work Product
- Draft indicators
- Approve introduction text.
- Approve document completed to date.
- Appoint subcommittee to plan presentation for the June public event.
Meeting 5
Early September
Work Product
- Finalize plan.
- Commit to implementing it.
- Identify Circle participants who wish to continue participation into the implementation
phase.
Answers to Frequently Asked Question
What do you mean by sustainability?
"Sustainability" has been defined in different ways by various users. The
definition we're using is "development that provides for the needs of the present
without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
Why isn't land use (or housing)
part of the plan?
This is a first effort to draft a plan for San Francisco's sustainability. Here in
the city, we have an extensive public-participation process around land-use issues.
It seemed to us, at this point, that it would not be useful to construct a parallel
process. Once the sustainability planning process starts being successfully implemented,
perhaps in the future it will be useful to fold in land use issues.
Why isn't homelessness (or
any other topic) part of the plan?
Given the interconnected nature of life on earth, environmental issues can be defined
to be everything on the planet. However, in order to focus this effort, which is
already very broad, on a small enough number of areas so that real environmental
change can be implemented, we have chosen to define "environmental" as
being more or less the physical systems of the planet, and the physical health of
the people living here.
Why is environmental justice
a separate topic?
Although this issue should be considered as an integral part of all the City Circles,
with the tight time-frame of these meetings, it was feared that it would be left
by the wayside. We therefore gave it its own topic area.
What about conflict and overlap
between Circles?
It may occur, but we'll leave it to the implementation stage to work out. Implementation
will likely be a slow process, there will be time for further negotiations.
What happens next?
After the plan is finalized, it will be presented to the Environmental Commission
and the Board of Supervisors for enactment as policy of the city. At the same time,
actions proposed for implementation by many government agencies participating in
the planning process are already well within their areas of responsibility. They
will presumably begin immediately (or continue) to work toward the five-year objectives.
Implementation of the private-sector actions should also begin immediately, and will
be the responsibility of participants to push along.
It's a bit difficult to be specific at this point about the logistics of the implementation
phase, since the new environmental department, which has been formed to ensure the
plan's implementation (among other things) won't come into existence until July,
1996 and has not yet been structured.
General Timeline
| Event |
Time Frame |
General Format |
| Sustainability Planning Process Opening Ceremonies |
January 25, 1996 |
Early evening event with speakers primarily local elected officials. Socializing
afterward. |
| City Circle Meetings |
| 1 |
February 5, 6, 7 |
See above |
| 2 |
2nd week of March |
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| Circle Leaders Meeting |
3rd week of March |
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| 3 |
2nd week of April |
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| 4 |
2nd week of May |
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| 5 |
4th week of May |
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| Public Event |
June 22 (summer solstice) |
Presentations in morning; festival-like event in afternoon |
| 6 (see note below) |
Second week of September |
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| Document produced |
November |
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| Implementation City Circles |
Semi-annually, January/June |
(same or different participants) |
(or 5th if 2nd May meeting is not required)
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