Future Cityscapes: Visualizing the Family Zoning Plan

SF's proposed rezoning will not have an overnight impact: instead, development occurs slowly. This is an attempt to visualize the long-term impacts of the currently proposed Family Zoning Plan.

These views simulate a potential view of the city in 10 years, under the "Family Zoning" proposal, based on our best understanding of how much development is likely. These images are not meant to be exact, but rather to give a sense of how the city might look in the future.

Some neighborhoods will have almost no visible changes, adding density through low-rise infill development. Some intersections will see large developments.

We attempted to not cherry-pick results or camera placement, but to show a possible and realistic potential future.

Note for mobile users: This is best enjoyed in landscape mode. Refresh after rotating if you have issues!

We simulated the 10-year future of SF under the "Family Zoning" proposal.

1. Used the open-sourced economic model published by Salim Damerdji with the RezoneSF project
to create development probabilities for each parcel in SF, based on a regression model of historical development and covariates like transit, walkability, access to resources, and zoning.
2. Applied a correction factor to align development probabilities with SF Planning's forecast
3. For each site, for each year, simulate whether the site becomes redeveloped in that year
4. If the site is redeveloped, estimate its new height as a random number between 70-100% of its zoned height limit
5. Gather the list of "developed" sites over the simulation period
6. Compute their allowable lot coverage based on parcel geometry
7. Create a 3D rendering of a potential building in Blender/Rhino (note: this likely overestimates bulk, as not all objective design standards are integrated)
8. Import into Google Earth
9. Generate "before" and "after" images by toggling the visibility of the new 3-D objects

Cityscaper is an SF10x hackathon project by Joe Foster, Mike Hankin, Vivien Kong, Eric Munsing, and Calvin Rogers.