Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Real progs in Berkeley, phony progs in SF

BeyondChron publishes an article criticizing the attempt by the Berkeley political elite to discourage progressives from putting their aggressively pro-development downtown plan on the ballot so voters in that city will have the opportunity to understand it and, hopefully, reject it.

Funny how the so-called alternative to the SF Chronicle takes no interest in the same destructive planning policies being enacted in San Francisco by a "progressive" Board of Supervisors and a more or less progressive mayor---the Market/Octavia Plan and turning over a state and national landmark, the old extension property on lower Haight Street, to UC for a massive housing development to fatten that mega-institution's bottom line. Both of these awful projects involve the same sort of zoning changes that progressives in Berkeley are worried about---changing height and density rules to allow over-developing west Berkeley. Here in San Francisco, progressives like Chris Daly, Aaron Peskin, and Ross Mirkarimi are leading the charge for highrise, dense development based on the half-baked "transit corridors" theory.

Website for Berkeley progs against the developers' downtown plan.

In 2005 Chris Daly announces in BeyondChron the great progressive housing victory: luxury highrise condos on Rincon Hill!

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