Where cranes flock, buildings sprout. It's not always pretty.
From today’s Chronicle and John King’s Urban Design column,
The California clapper rail is on the decline in the Bay Area, scientists say. But there is no shortage of another distinctive species: long-necked cranes.Construction cranes, to be exact. Often accompanied by backhoes and pile drivers, just as gulls trail a pelican at meal time.
The most obvious sighting is the flock hovering above the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge, but at least a dozen are nestled in San Francisco’s fast-changing districts south of Market Street. You even see a pair out in Golden Gate Park, perched where the California Academy of Sciences will reopen in 2008.
And here’s the scary thing: Until they are gone, we’ll have no way to tell whether they’re leaving us with a rich new urban habitat, or a fowled civic nest.
…steely cranes fill me with doubt as well as anticipation: This migratory flock leaves a permanent mark on the landscape. Each new building lives a dozen different lives. One might look good in the air but be dreadful on the ground; another might be ungainly to the eye but a delight to the residents.
And each is part of a much larger composition. Mission Bay, for instance — by the time the cranes north of Mission Creek disappear, there will be a new batch south of the creek, harbingers of yet more housing-filled blocks. What looks awkward now might soon seem reassuringly familiar.
