Short Takes: Taken for Granite – A Curbside Tale
by Mark English, AIA | Short Takes
For the past week, the San Francisco DPW has been tearing up the sidewalk outside of our office, with an ear-splitting racket – and wasting some of the greatest material around. Whatever happened to San Francisco’s “green” values? Aren’t reclaiming and reuse the bedrock, as it were, of sustainable principles?
For the past week, the San Francisco DPW has been tearing up the sidewalk outside of our office, with an ear-splitting racket – and wasting some of the greatest material around. Whatever happened to San Francisco’s “green” values? Aren’t reclaiming and reuse the bedrock, as it were, of sustainable principles?
As I wrote to Supervisor David Chiu this morning, why exactly are we ripping up perfectly good 100 year old granite blocks, chiseling them into little pieces, and throwing them away? I know there is probably a detail in the DPW “standards” book, but maybe there shouldn’t be. How green is it to waste beautiful material like that? Additionally, should we really spend, or compel property owners to spend, big bucks on a non-critical issue?
Subsequent to this writing, we received communications from both Supervisor Chiu and from SF-DPW Director Ed Reiskin. Ed took our comments in good humor, explained how costly it was to reset granite after sidewalk repairs, and told us about DPW’s efforts elsewhere in the City to repurpose old granite.
