Balancing Growth and Livability Using Performance Metrics: A Solution to Housing Crisis in San Francisco

Cities all over the world are experiencing exponential growth in population. To address these growing needs which are as basic as an affordable home, public spaces, work environments near their homes, mix of daily amenities within walking distances, all of this is becoming more and more challenging to achieve, particularly in major cities. Traditional zoning of segregating uses along complemented by encouraging automobile centric infrastructure are the current drivers of American urban development. Traditional zoning and design planned around promoting vehicular connections and single-family residential growth. It can be argued in most of the cases that outdated and traditional zoning regulations, coupled with a lack of technological advancements in planning context-specific and adaptable urban scenarios, are the primary reasons why cities are failing to meet the growing needs of their populations. Rising densities with low supplies of housing specifically affordable, lack of jobs opportunities and amenities within walkable distance has resulted in skyrocketing land and household prices within city cores. This has seen displacement of the middle and lower-income groups raising concerns of gentrification in cities. People looking for single-family homes, so called deemed as the ideal American living standard are bound to travel farther from the downtowns in search of them thus contributing to one of the biggest problem of cities, urban sprawl. San Francisco is one of the many cities in the United States facing a housing crisis. The research aims to offer innovative strategies that can potentially address housing crisis in San Francisco. The research started with evaluating the existing urban framework and zoning policies and identifying the limitations that have resulted in shortage in affordable housing supplies, segregation, urban sprawl and in turn failing to accommodate the growing population in cities, followed by implementing performance-based zoning typologies as an alternative to bringing in more affordable housing and diverse communities. The research integrated the inputs of building height & parcel coverage with specific performance objectives, including the number of dwelling units, number of household members, accessible open space, and economic viability of the planned development.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.112.107

Volume Editors
Germane Barnes & Blair Satterfield

ISBN
978-1-944214-45-6