Now he tells us!

John King, the SF Chronicle's architectural critic, evidently takes a jaundiced view of what's being built in the city:

Again and again, what's built here follows the path of least resistance. You sense no higher aspiration than getting a green light from a planning commission. After that, let the public beware (SF Chronicle, Feb. 10, 2005).

This wasn't what he told readers a few years ago, when he wrote a series of articles praising the shocking Rincon Towers and the Vancouverization of San Francisco. And his sappy piece last October 20 on the at best mediocre and at worst disastrous Octavia Blvd. project allowed the city's progressive community to slumber on in ignorance of what the Planning Dept. has in store for city neighborhoods. 

And his reference to "a planning commission" is disingenuous. Any particular planning commission in mind here? How about the San Francisco Planning Commission, a collection of dim bulb political appointees who rubber-stamp whatever the Planning Department's staff puts in front of them? Sounds like King is beginning to have second thoughts, but the damage is done: the four neighborhood-destroying Rincon Towers are a done deal, as is the freeway bisecting the Hayes Valley neighborhood Planning calls Octavia Blvd.