Regional coordination will be essential if Bay Area cities and counties are to minimize flooding as the sea rises. A few initiatives have launched, but none yet has the legal authority or resources to align all 41 governments that border San Francisco Bay.
Category: Series
Posted inClimate Change, Environment, Housing, Land use, Neighborhoods, News, Sea Level Rise: 1st in a Series, Technology
Experts Weigh In on Sea Level Rise
Experts weigh in on the local effects of sea level rise. Hear from an oceanographer, an academic, a climate scientist, a policy professional and an environmental planner.
Posted inClimate Change, Environment, Housing, Land use, Neighborhoods, News, Sea Level Rise: 1st in a Series, Technology
Interactive Map: A Baywide Building Boom Threatened by Rising Waters
We found 27 proposals for major construction projects that could be flooded in decades due to climate change. View our interactive map.
Posted inClimate Change, Environment, Housing, Land use, Neighborhoods, News, Sea Level Rise: 1st in a Series, Technology
As Science Gets Better, Dramatic Sea Rise Seems More Certain
Sea level rise of 8 feet is an unlikely but worrisome possibility. Many objections to preparing aggressively for sea level rise center on the uncertainty in projections about how quickly global warming will cause the oceans to expand. But the science is increasingly clear.
Posted inBack Issues, News
Issue 17: Summer 2015
The Bay Area’s waterfront building frenzy includes at least $21B in housing and commercial construction in low-lying areas that climate scientists say could flood by the end of the century.
Posted inBay Area, Bay Area Smart Growth, Census, Land use
Census Estimates Show Bay Area Growing Faster than Expected
New residents are flocking to the Bay Area faster than regional planners previously expected.
Posted inChoice Is Resegregating Public Schools, Education, News, Social Justice
As Courts Flip-Flopped on School Integration, Diversity Has Remained Elusive
By 2005, when a federal judge lifted the most recent desegregation orders, San Francisco Unified School District had been trying for more than three decades to make its schools more racially and socioeconomically diverse, starting in 1971 with forced busing. San Francisco schools no longer exhibit the level of racial isolation they once did, but they are now resegregating, as are many others across the country. In 2013–2014, in more than one-quarter of city schools, 60 percent of the students were of one race. That is a far cry from 1966, when more than one-third of the schools had student populations with 80 percent or more belonging to a single racial group. (In 2014, just three schools were segregated to that degree.)
Posted inChoice Is Resegregating Public Schools, Education, News, Social Justice
San Francisco Schools’ Changing Demographics
Over five decades, San Francisco saw a demographic transformation in its public school system. In 1969, white and black students together were the majority, as in most of the rest of the United States. Since then, San Francisco public school enrollment has fallen by 39 percent, and almost all the missing faces are white or black. But the two groups have not disappeared in the same way.
Posted inChoice Is Resegregating Public Schools, Education, News, Social Justice
Isolated Schools Clustered by Test Scores, Family Income
If one looks at the San Francisco Unified School District as a whole, a clear pattern emerges: Schools with the highest level of achievement tend to have the lowest levels of family poverty. And schools that are identified as “racially isolated” are visibly clustered by both income and achievement. This plot shows the base Academic Performance Index for each school in the district for which data are available, as well as the percentage of students poor enough to qualify for free and reduced-price lunches, which are used as a proxy for measuring poverty.
Posted inChoice Is Resegregating Public Schools, Education, News, Social Justice
As Parents Get More Choice, S.F. Schools Resegregate
Each January, parents across San Francisco rank their preferences for public schools. By June, most get their children into their first choices, and almost three-quarters get one of their choices. A majority of families may be satisfied with the outcome, but the student assignment system is failing to meet its No. 1 goal, which the San Francisco Unified School District has struggled to achieve since the 1960s: classroom diversity. Since 2010, the year before the current policy went into effect, the number of San Francisco’s 115 public schools dominated by one race has climbed significantly.