Skylines v. Skyscrapers

Most U.S. cities welcome new skyscrapers as soaring proof that a town is on the go. San Francisco is different. Tall towers, local boosters insist, tend to destroy the city's special charm. They can block long views over pastel-colored houses and the sparkling bay, disrupt the roller-coaster sequence of hills and valleys. Still, as a peninsula city, San Francisco has nowhere to expand but up. It now bristles with skyscrapers, 21 of them built in the past five years. Gloomy citizens fear that the city will soon be "Manhattanized," that it will become a senseless jumble of bleak, man-made canyons.

San Francisco's conflict between development and urban amenity was recently concentrated in a major battle over a 40-story office building. Proposed by the U.S. Steel Corp., it would be built on public land out into the bay as part of a twelve-acre, $140 million project including a hotel and passenger-ship terminal. The tower did not lack enthusiastic backers. Construction workers saw it in terms of new jobs. To longshoremen and San Francisco Port Commission President Cyril Magnin, it would help to revitalize the now declining port. Mayor Joseph Alioto favored the building because it would also swell municipal tax rolls. Yet last week the city's board of supervisors voted the tower down, and Mayor Alioto is unlikely to use his veto.

Armed Joys. Why? The main reason is that San Franciscans are tired of being visually bullied. An anti-tower coalition of citizens and conservationists argued that the 550-ft.-high structure would obliterate vistas and harm the city's still intimate scale. Dress Manufacturer Alvin Duskin took an ad to warn that San Francisco would soon be "like New York and Chicago, where life has all the joys of the bottom of an elevator shaft--a crowded elevator shaft where everybody has guns."

Then there was the question of whether the tower could legally be built on landfill. California's outgoing State Attorney General Thomas Lynch implied in a ruling that an office building--but not a hotel--would violate a law that limits such projects to "water-oriented uses." Cyril Magnin raised an eyebrow: "What's so much more water-oriented about a hotel than an office, except maybe you can take a bath there?"

Indirect Costs. Another argument met the developers head on. Do skyscrapers really benefit a city? No one denies that big buildings provide big tax revenues. Even so, recent studies show that as a city grows denser, the per capita costs of all municipal services, including administration, soar. In addition, Manufacturer Duskin contends, towers built in San Francisco since 1965 have had another city-blighting effect. They create new office jobs--but for the wrong people. He quotes a report revealing that jobs held by commuters have gone up by 23%, while jobs for city dwellers have increased by only 1%. The net effect of skyscrapers might thus be to enhance the outflow of needed middle-class residents to the suburbs.

Whether these economic arguments are right or wrong, they seem to be raised effectively only when a particular tower offends the aesthetic sensibilities of a large number of citizens. New skyscrapers will continue to sprout in San Francisco; right now, the city has 23 more projected towers on the drawing boards. But the lesson for developers is clear: make sure that a skyscraper is designed to appeal to almost everyone.

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