By Jasmine Williams
San Francisco is expanding. Techies, college students, commuters, and families – the San Francisco Bay Area has them all.
According the city’s five-year financial plan release in May, the city has experienced a consecutive fifth year of economic and population growth .
In response to the influx of new and old comers to the city , city officials have begun to take some measures to accommodate the dense region that is San Francisco .
As noted in Mayor Ed Lee’s 2015 State of the City Address, the city has made policy changes to accommodate the City’s growth and to “confront the growing affordability crisis” facing the city.
With the city projecting more rapid expansion, Lee has shifted his focus primarily housing, jobs, and transportation.
According to Lee, decades of “underbuilding” and neglecting housing has contributed to an affordability crisis.
That being said, at the beginning of 2015 Lee placed priority on five affordability directives to keep San Francisco all inclusive, which included housing, education, transportation, women’s empowerment, and poverty.
Although these directives are all nods to the challenges in the City, the address does not specify programs that address the City’s infrastructure and how it will accommodate to the population growth.
Nonetheless, according to Lee, five new hospitals and the new central subway is under construction.
According to a project overview from the SFTMA of the central subway , the 1.7 mile extension of the Muni’s T-line is phase two of a project intended to connect people to jobs , education , and retail experiences in the city .
The new subway is expected to be open to the public by 2019, according to the project overview .
Further, the Moscone Center is expanding, according to a statement made by San Francisco Travel Association president and CEO, Joe D’Alessandro in 2014,
“As the city and the convention landscape continue to grow, Moscone Center must expand to meet future needs.”
The center’s expansion is slated to finish in 2018.
For sports fanatics, the Golden State Warriors is getting a new arena in San Francisco.
In November, the San Francisco planning commission approved the team’s proposal for the new arena in Mission Bay .
The City can also expect a new Southeast wastewater treatment plant and to employ thousands of construction workers according to Lee.
This expansion is an effort to make the muni system faster and more reliable.
By the end of the year the Mayor says the city will complete safety treatments along at least 13 miles of high injury street in San Francisco.
Vision Zero is an initiative dedicated to eliminating traffic fatalities and severe injuries for all transients.
With safer crosswalks , and more stop signs and roundabouts implemented throughout the city , the city is attempting to acknowledge the growing problem of traffic fatalities due to the concentration of people in the area.
Although these things amongst others are all necessary to accommodate fast population growth, it is unclear as to how it will fair with San Francisco’s expected population increase.
