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Tag Archives: San Francisco

Purple princess blooming on balcony

November 3, 2011
Residences
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ベランダにこの色がとてもきれいです。この花は英語で「purple princess 紫姫」という名前です。日本語で「シコンノボタン 紫紺野牡丹」と言います。もともとブラジルの雨林から来ました。けれども、東京でもサンフランシスコでも育ちます。

Known botanically as Tibouchina urvilleana, I’ve always heard this plant referred to as “purple princess.” Originally from Brazil, it’s been called tropical, subtropical and “neotropical.” Despite its origin in rain forests, it grows well not only in Tokyo but also in San Francisco.

It’s taken me a while to get my small potted shrub to bloom, but I am glad I kept trying. I love the color.

Fragrant Angel’s Trumpet flowers remind me of San Francisco

September 30, 2011
Global cities, Residences, small streets
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エンジェル・トランペットはサンフランシスコを思い出させます。特に夜、香りがいいです。この植物はもともと南アメリカのアンデズという山から来ました。

Angel’s Trumpet, or brugmansia, reminds me of San Francisco. Its big flowers are particularly fragrant at night. Originally from the Andes mountains of South America, in Tokyo this wonderful bush dies back in the winter and re-sprouts every April.

Simple materials make an inviting restaurant garden facing the sidewalk

June 18, 2011
Culture, public space, small business, Walking and transit
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簡単な材料でおしゃれな入り口が作られて、小さなレストランの庭は、通行人が交流できる場所になっています。

It’s lovely to see these flowers outside a small neighborhood restaurant. The set-up could not be simpler: easily re-blooming perennials. a liquor crate, recycled wood. A simple gesture communicates to the street and offers a chance for interaction with pedestrians.

Readers, I know the orange flower is clivia. What is the smaller salmon colored flower? I have grown both in San Francisco.

Update: Thanks to Jason Dewees, the salmon colored flower has been identified as Freesia (Lapeirousia) laxa.

Dahlia reminds me of San Francisco

May 16, 2011
Residences
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植物や花も記憶を呼び起こします。ダリアはサンフランシスコ市の花です。

Plants and especially flowers trigger memories. Recently lilacs were blooming in Tokyo, and it reminded me of childhood and my grandmother who was a garden hobbyist in Maryland. I tweeted about it, and heard from a friend about the memories she has of a lilac bush by a childhood bedroom. Seeing hostas in my in-laws’ garden reminds me of the suburban neighborhood of my childhood. Japanese maples, azaleas, rhododendrons, and anemone evoke a Tea Trade era of Anglophilic commerce and class in the United States’ Northeast and mid-Atlantic.

Dahlias remind me of San Francisco, where it is the city flower. I love the huge variety and outrageous colors. And its interesting history of being first discovered in Mexico and then bred in the Netherlands. This red and white specimen was exquisite when I bought it and for another week. The number of blooms and buds was astounding. Not surprisingly, two weeks after buying this dahlia, the remaining buds refuse to open and I wonder if the plant will live even one more month.

I bought this plant at Shimachu, a large home center. Their plants always seems pumped up for sale. Unfortunately because of the proximity to my apartment (very bike-able) and low prices, I often buy from there. It’s a guilty pleasure similar to eating fast food.

“Protect Your Personal Space with Mace”

March 4, 2011
Global cities, public space
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「 催涙ガススプレーで個人のスペースを守って」アメリカでは、危険じゃないときにでも、催涙ガスを使ってもいいのでしょうか？

Riding the BART, the San Francisco Bay Area transit line, I was surprised to see this ad for mace, with the offer to get a 30% discount by typing in BART during the online check-out.

The idea that you can use a powerful chemical irritant to create a four meter wide personal space in public seems laughable in a dense city like Tokyo. Here, you can wear a face mask and maybe get a few extra centimeters of personal space as people may be afraid of influenza. To get 4 meters of space, you would have to smell very bad.

Are there other ways to feel safe in public? In the US, is it really OK to use mace when you are not being attacked and just want some extra breathing room?

Intoxicating night scent of Angel’s Trumpet

October 30, 2010
Culture, public space, small streets, trees, Walking and transit
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Leaving an inspiring talk in Nishi Azabu-Juban yesterday evening, the intoxicating scent of Angel’s Trumpet made me pause. And take a photo.

Brugmansia is also very common in San Francisco (and many continents including New Zealand), although it comes originally from South America. It produces an incredible scent, but only at night. In Tokyo, the summer heat seems to overwhelm the plant. By fall, this hardy large shrub/small tree grows to three or four meters in height, and flowers continuously until winter frost makes them die back. By May they begin to shoot up from the ground.

Angel’s Trumpet, sometimes also called Devil’s Trumpet, is a strangely familiar plant: hardy and decorative, with a shamanistic function in its native Amazon habitat.

San Francisco’s new urban ecology projects

October 16, 2010
biodiversity, Culture, Global cities, public space, trees, Urban food, Visionary
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Via Twitter, I’ve come across some fantastic new urban ecology projects in San Francisco:

Nature in the City, an NPO focused on conservation, restoration and stewardship. Currently creating habitat corridors for the the Green Hairstreak (Callophrys dumetorum), a small butterfly present in only three places in the city.

Urban Gleaning Program, a project of San Francisco’s Department of Public Works that encourages city residents to collect fruit from city trees and community gardens and distribute them to the homeless and hungry.

Urban Hedgerow, a new global cities project that creates space and allow more of our wild world into the city. The project joins urban naturalists and artists to increase insect, animal, and plant life, with projects starting in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, the UK.

Goats tending a bus yard in San Francisco

September 10, 2010
Global cities, Visionary
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This image of goats controlling the weeds at a San Francisco bus yard is whimsical and inspiring. Why doesn’t Tokyo (and other big cities) use these natural weed-eaters? The company behind this is called City Grazing, and their slogan: “Our herd of goats are organically fed, will eat your weeds and entertain your children!”

Azby Brown reads from Edo book in San Francisco

June 25, 2010
Culture, Governments, public space
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My friend Azby Brown will be reading from his new book at four events in San Francisco next week. I highly recommend attending his book talk if you can. Azby is a great speaker, and an accomplished architect, writer, and designer based in Japan.

The book is Just Enough: Lessons in Living Green from Traditional Japan, and it portrays how Japan overcame environmental crises with sustainable farms and cities 200 years ago. The book is very informative about what we can learn today from the past, illustrated with hundreds of hand-drawn illustrations, and very engaging. I reviewed the book in the Huffington Post a few months ago.

Here’s the schedule for the book talks:

Monday, June 28, 7 p.m.
The Green Arcade
1680 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94102-5949
(415) 431-6800
http://www.thegreenarcade.com

Tuesday, June 29, 5:30 reception/6 p.m. talk
The Commonwealth Club
The Commonwealth Club (The Gold Room)
595 Market Street
San Francisco
Telephone: (415) 597-6700
http://tickets.commonwealthclub.org

Wednesday, June 30, 6:30 p.m.
University of California, Berkeley
Rm 112, Wurster Hall (southeast corner of the Berkeley campus)
Title: “The Edo Approach to Sustainable Design”
Tel:(415) 317-0533

Thursday July 1, 12:00 noon
SF AIA
130 Sutter Street, Suite 600
San Francisco
(415) 362-7397
http://www.aiasf.org

Beautiful “walklet” replaces parkings spaces in San Francisco

May 20, 2010
Community, Global cities, public space, small streets, Visionary, Walking and transit
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Rebar, an art and urban planning project in San Francisco, has just unveiled their first prototype of a street-side “walklet.” Rebar became famous for converting parking spots one day every year into inventive urban parks. The event grew, and drew more and more people around the world who changed the streetscape for one day. Now, Rebar is putting in semi-permanent “walklets” with benches, tables, bike parking, and planters on top of parking spaces. The project has been OK’d for six months, and can be continued if well received.

This is genius!

To quote from Rebar’s site:

Inspired by Rebar’s PARK(ing) Day and other efforts to convert parking spaces into people places, cities around the United States are transforming excess roadway into public plazas, pocket parks and experimental sites for new forms of urban infrastructure.

To help support this growing trend, Rebar has created “Walklet”—a modular, flexible sidewalk extension system designed to create new public spaces for people by extending the pedestrian realm into the parking lane.

The installation at 22nd and Bartlett in San Francisco is part of a pilot project supported by the City. The collection of benches, planters, bike parking, and tables, sheathed in stained bamboo and red wood, will be in place for six months, and if it’s well-received, could remain in place indefinitely.

The prototype has been arranged to suit the needs of that neighborhood’s site, but Walklet are incredibly adaptable. Each three-foot wide Walklet module provides a single, specific program that can be mixed and matched with other Walklet modules to create the right design combination for each unique site. Walklet extends the sidewalk surface into the street but provides much more than just a place to walk—it creates an adjustable, flexible, full-scale laboratory for developing and refining the perfect combination of user programs.

Like Flora Grubb Gardens, I, too, wonder what will they plant?!

Update: Here are photos of the planting.

Squeezing mini-creek into San Francisco sidewalk

May 13, 2010
biodiversity, Global cities, Governments, public space, Visionary
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I am amazed by this illustration of how to squeeze a mini-creek into a San Francisco sidewalk (from the wonderful Streetsblog). Faced with an aging sewage infrastructure at risk of failure, San Francisco’s water utility is experimenting with bold, low-impact designs, including green roofs, daylighted creeks, rain barrels, and permeable pavement.

The obstacles to this change are enormous. For decades, urban water management has meant removing green space and channeling water into treatment plants. But if successful, mini-creeks and urban watersheds can significantly reduce sewage discharge to the city’s bay and rivers, with estimates ranging from 28% reduction to 91% reduction in water pollution.

In addition to the functional benefits of reduced pollution, mini-creeks will add beauty to what are now life-less streets, and attract wildlife and nature. Restoring creeks will provide a greater connection to the natural environment and urban history.

Camouflaged iPad for public transit

April 7, 2010
Global cities, public space, Walking and transit
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Using an old school notebook as an iPad cover is both crafty and funny. What’s sad is that San Francisco bloggers are speaking seriously about the need for camouflage to use the newest tech toy in public transit. Given how common iPhone thefts are in San Francisco public buses, this is already a concern and the subject of a betting pool over when the first case will be reported.

The case is certainly crafty, but I guess the user isn’t planning on using it in public. Isn’t the solution for residents to demand greater safety in public spaces? How can public transit be an attractive, let alone an efficient, alternative to private vehicles if people feel unsafe?

Elementary school has new off-the grid, vertical garden

April 4, 2010
Global cities, Urban food, Visionary
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San Francisco’s Sanchez Elementary School has created a vertical garden that is edible and off the grid. Solar panels and windmills provide electricity for the irrigation system, and power a weather station so that kids can monitor the climate and how it relates to plants. The kids learn about plants, science, and food by growing things like mustard greens. Apparently the total cost was $10,000, and the project benefited from volunteers from the Slow Food movement. Great use of a limited space, and great to see kids learning about where their food comes from. Very inspiring!

Opposition to public benches demonstrates urban challenges

March 12, 2010
Community, Global cities, Governments, parks, public space, small business, Walking and transit
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A sad story from San Francisco about a merchant group opposing the redesign of a historic public space leading to a central transit station because it will include benches. Equally disheartening is that some of the plans call for reducing the amount of plants and planter boxes. The fear of homelessness and vandalism is a great challenge to creating livable and enjoyable public spaces in the US and Europe, and affects both civic and grassroots urban improvements. Sad.

(Image of Martin Nicolausson seesaw bench, designed to require cooperation between strangers and to generate conversation, via The Fire Wire blog).

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