San Francisco real estate wouldn’t be San Francisco real estate without the fun that is the planning, zoning, and building departments. And while their regulations and byzantine procedures sometimes (okay, often) frustrate and confuse me, I ran across an article in Architect Magazine about new SF building regulations regarding… wait for it… birds!
In their article Building for the Birds, the article highlights how San Francisco is the first city in the nation to actually regulate building development with birds and bird habitat in mind. Before you scoff and think this is all ridiculous, consider this:
… But the city’s dense urban core can act as a death trap. For example, buildings with glass façades are hazardous for birds: not recognizing transparent glass as a barrier, birds often try to fly through it, or, seeing vegetation reflected in glass, fly into it. During nighttime flights, they can become disoriented by brightly lit skyscrapers that obscure navigational stars and circle the buildings, confused, until they drop dead of exhaustion.
The article sums up the new regulations better than I can, so instead of trying to paraphrase, here they are:
The new standards provide specific guidelines for façade treatment, lighting design, and small wind generation features installed on buildings. The most significant change concerns the “bird collision zone� of buildings—the lower 60 feet where glass most often reflects vegetation—which must feature no more than 10 percent glazed windows, going forward. Solutions to the glass hazard include fritting the windows or screening them, which is the least expensive option. Lighting must be minimal and shielded; uplighting and event searchlights are prohibited. And buildings cannot feature horizontal-access windmills or vertical-access wind generators that do not appear solid.
The biggest controversy around this seems to be around the changes to windows required in the bird collision zone. As you might expect, some feel that the regulations are cumbersome and will add significant costs to the projects. Others argue that the costs are minimal, and if developers plan for this up-front they will face fewer costly last-minute changes required to get environmental approval.
What are your thoughts?
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