Undoing UN Plaza
During his first term in office, Our Mayor crowned
himself with the gilded dome atop a grandly refurbished City
Hall. During his second term, he is attempting to wrap a
redesigned UN Plaza around him, like an ermine cloak of
empire.
Not content with remaking the city in his own image,
Willie Brown is taking on the whole world, in the form of
the United Nations. And if we’re not careful, it will be
his face, and not the great round seal of the UN, that will
define the space leading from mid-Market to the Civic
Center.
In response to a request by Supervisor Chris Daly, the
Department of Public Works recently compiled an
eight-inch-high stack of documents pertaining to the site.
From these, Brown’s pivotal role in DPW’s renovation
plans becomes clear. It is a role that goes far beyond the
removal of a few benches.
UN Plaza came into being in the mid-1970s as part of a
mid-Market redevelopment project extending all the way from
the Embarcadero to the Civic Center. To create a public
conduit into the official center of San Francisco politics
and culture, architects Lawrence Halprin, Mario Ciampi, and
Carl Warnecke laid out a brick-paved space covering 2.6
acres and lined with rows of plane trees. But the space also
reminds visitors of San Francisco’s position as host to
the conference that gave birth to the United Nations. It’s
rich in international symbolism, with the UN seal engraved
in granite and placed at the center of the plaza.
Most impressive, once upon a time, was the fountain,
composed of more than a hundred granite blocks, arranged in
five clusters to suggest the five major continents. Every
two minutes, jets of water shot into the air, alerting
passersby that the fountain was about to fill — and then
drain — in a re-creation of the ocean’s tidal movement.
More mundanely and more practically, the city pumped off the
water to wash down the plaza and nearby streets. But the
years took their toll, and the fountain fell into disuse.
Nevertheless, a Site Assessment Report prepared by a DPW
landscape architect in September 1999 found that the plaza
was generally doing the jobs it was intended for: it
established a visual identity for the area; offered “a
lively, entertaining destination place” for residents and
visitors; expanded the city’s opportunities for open
space; provided a clean, safe, and reassuring environment;
and made use of an existing transportation system.
If there was a problem, the report suggested, it was that
the United Nations elements had lost some of their earlier
significance. That was a problem easily remedied: fix the
fountain, and connect it visually to the north entrance at
Leavenworth with welcoming signs and banners. Oh yes, and if
you’re feeling really ambitious, move the out-of-scale
statue of Simon Bolivar to another location.
Now take a look at a memorandum from City Engineer Harlan
L. Kelly to project manager Judith Mosqueda, written on
April 20, 2001, outlining steps to be taken in accord with
the mayor’s UN Plaza proposals: remove the benches and
replace them with armless, backless brick structures; work
with the San Francisco Arts Council to have the fountain
removed, perhaps with a statue by Beniamino Bufano
substituted in its place; install a children’s playground
near the Leavenworth entrance. A letter written by Mosqueda
to Michael Lim of Caltrans at about the same time lays out a
rationale for the city’s proposed “improvements”: “United
Nations Plaza resides within a high-crime district of San
Francisco, and its physical condition and uses are
reflective of the neighborhood.”
What’s going on?
The obvious explanation is that somebody doesn’t want
seedy street people cluttering up the area. The media made
much of the removal of the benches on April 28. The proposed
replacements will certainly discourage loitering by
undesirables, although the city disability access
coordinator points out that they will also discourage people
in wheelchairs. But maybe they’re undesirable, too.
The removal of the fountain will discourage loiterers as
well. It will also remove what is now the meeting point for
three streams of foot traffic, or rather, it will reduce
three to two. Today, the fountain forms a nexus for the
official, the commercial, and the residential city.
Tomorrow, a direct line will lead from Market to the Civic
Center, without the scruffy entrance from the Tenderloin.
Today the lawn near the north entrance is used as a place
for conversation and repose. That’s where the playground
will go, removing the one remaining spot for leisurely
congregation and turning attention away from the open
passage into Leavenworth.
The image created by the mayor’s proposals turns upside
down everything the United Nations stands for, making a
mockery of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
inscribed on the plaza floor. If the plaza loses this
underlying theme of idealism and becomes simply a site of
farmers’ markets and antique fairs, carefully supervised
festivals, and transit stops, it will graphically mark the
victory of corporatism in San Francisco.
The interesting thing about the plan is that — aside
from Our Mayor — nobody likes it.
Nancy Peterson, president of the United Nations
Association of San Francisco, has stated several times that
the association is “unalterably opposed” to the idea of
a playground there. City landscape architect John Thomas
concurs: “The need for a playground has not been
established…. A meeting should be held with
representatives of the Tenderloin community, ‘Heart of the
City’ Farmers Market, the Federal Building, 10 UN Plaza,
and any other interested parties to determine if a
playground is desired in that location.”
There are also misgivings about the plan’s
effectiveness. When approached by project manager Mosqueda
about the possibility of redesigning the plaza, Dee Mullen
responded from Lawrence Halprin’s office, pleading a busy
schedule and adding, “Our feeling is that the problem is a
social one and cannot be resolved through design.” Even
the Market Street Association, long the designated bad guy
in attempts to “clean up” the plaza, says it won’t
work: “Simply moving around homeless people is not
acceptable.” The city must find real solutions: “If
housing, employment, substance abuse treatment, mental
health services, storage locations, or medical services are
needed, they will be provided at once.”
So who’s left? A man seeking a monument to his reign.
Betsey Culp
cybervoices
Spring was a little different in
Cambridge, Massachusetts this year, as Harvard students
occupied the president’s office, seeking a living wage for
university janitors and dining hall workers. The three-week
presence of these young Davids in Massachusetts Hall
received active support from organized labor and national
media attention, as well as their Goliath’s acquiescence
to their demands. Mark Engler places the event in national
and international perspective.
Harvard sit-in victory
A movement continues
After twenty-one days inside the president’s
office at Harvard University, living wage activists have
emerged victorious. Here’s why their sit-in not only shook
the campus, but signaled an important win for progressives
across the country who are fighting globalization battles on
the home front.
Just a month ago Harvard administrators
considered the case of living wages permanently closed. A
report they commissioned last year recommended, conveniently
