Bay Area
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Bay Area’s urban planning must address public health, says study

01.16.2012
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For nearly four years, Cassandra Martin lived in West Oakland, a few blocks from two freeways and the city’s port. This has made her an accidental expert on air pollution. “I used to wonder what that black stuff was on the windowsill,” said Martin, who was diagnosed with asthma in 2009. “I would constantly wipe the walls and windowsills, but it would get so caked with soot. That’s a reason I was wondering about particulate matter.”

Bay Area
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Across San Francisco region, expulsion rates and attitudes toward punishment vary widely

12.11.2011
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While there are many aspects of culture and politics that unite the nine counties of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of more than 7 million people, attitudes toward school discipline do not seem to be among them. What happens to students when they disrupt the classroom or commit crimes depends largely on where they live. That is because approaches to expulsion and suspension vary widely across school districts and across the region. While reforms such as restorative justice appear to coincide with decreases in expulsion rates across the region in the last year or two, school administrators at the county and local level have a wide range of views on the best ways to preserve order in schools after a student has misbehaved.

Bay Area
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New roots for green businesses

10.24.2011
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As the world economy increasingly collides with the limits of linear, “cradle-to-grave” production, more eyes are turning towards resource synergies, upcycling, and improved efficiencies to relieve some economic pressure and get more value with less waste. Take coffee. For every pound of coffee beans harvested (of which there were 17 billion in 2010, according to the International Coffee Organization), four pounds of pulp must be collected, and it is generally considered a waste product that is left in heaps to rot. But some companies, such as Equator Coffees & Teas and Thanksgiving Coffee, are supporting efforts to train farmers in Zimbabwe and Tanzania how to use coffee pulp as a substrate for growing oyster mushrooms.

Bay Area
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Safe Harbor

08.23.2011
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Welcoming porpoises back to San Francisco Bay
Cavallo Point at Fort Baker is not just a place to watch sailboats go by as the morning sun illuminates the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s also a great place to watch the water surge in and out with the tides. And with a little patience, you might see a black dorsal fin cut the swirling water, followed by another, smaller fin. 

Bay Area
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Story of a survivor: coastal paper maintains civic coverage despite cuts

06.02.2011
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This article appeared in the spring print edition as part of the Public Press’ media package of stories.  
When the Santa Cruz Sentinel was sold by Ottaway Newspapers to the ever-expanding MediaNews Group, editor Tom Honig didn’t like what he was seeing. The printing plant was shuttered, layoffs were orders and the newspaper moved out of Santa Cruz itself to nearby Scotts Valley. He made himself one of the layoff victims. But looking back, he now sees that civic journalism has survived thanks to the hard work of the smaller staff.

Bay Area
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Don’t build neighborhood on SF Bay salt flats, Redwood City voters say in new poll

05.18.2011
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A new poll by a regional environmental group, Save the Bay, puts a new spin on the controversy in Redwood City over plans to build a massive development on unused salt ponds on the edge of San Francisco Bay. Fifty-seven percent of voters polled said they opposed Arizona developer DMB Associates’ proposal to build a mini-city by partially paving over 1,436 acres of low-lying salt ponds on the eastern edge of Redwood City. Only 28 percent of those polled supported the plan while the remaining 15 percent were neutral. Save the Bay says the poll should be a warning sign to politicians inclined to approve the plan. But developers called the poll itself flawed.

Bay Area
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Growing pot should be treated the same as growing grapes: Q&A with lawyer David Owen

04.19.2011
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David Owen was a freshly minted lawyer when he decided to open up a marijuana-focused land-use law firm in San Francisco. The former legislative aide to then-Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin had been involved in the early days of the city’s cannabis regulation development. Since opening his firm, Owen has represented SPARC, a high-end medical pot dispensary, and helps local pot cultivators navigate conflicted legal waters. In light of regulation problems in Southern California and San Jose, Owen talked about the challenges of being a medical marijuana attorney as San Francisco’s once forward-thinking regulations have become “stagnated” over the past six years.

Bay Area
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Story in progress: Veteran smart growth group wary of rushing to judgment

09.27.2010
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The other day we had a chance to chat over the phone with Jeremy Madsen, executive director of Greenbelt Alliance. This much-respected nonprofit has been advocating smart growth and open spaces in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1958. In 2008 the outfit published Smart Infill, a 80-page report that recommends infill development — building on vacant lots and redeveloping blighted urban areas — as a way of accommodating the Bay Area’s growing population without paving the region’s farms and natural areas.

Bay Area
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Story in progress: ‘Smart growth’ or bay fill in Redwood City? ABAG has the numbers

09.20.2010
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The Bay Area needs more homes for its growing population, but does it make sense to house 30,000 people on unstable land, in earthquake country, that’s also at high risk of inundation by rising sea waters? A massive development proposal on the fringes of the San Francisco Bay, in one of the last potentially developable areas in the region, is raising questions about the definition of smart growth. [The Public Press is developing an in-depth report for the fall print edition and the website. We are raising funds on the journalism micro-funding site Spot.us to pay for the reporting and photography on the story.]