San Francisco (USA, California)
The Bay Bridge (San Francisco – Oakland) was opened in 1936, and in 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge was opened for the public. During the Second World War, San Francisco was the main supply base of the armed forces.
The Opera Theater “War Memorial” which was opened in 1932 was one of the important sites in the history of World War II. In 1945, a conference of the United Nations was held here, in which the Charter of UN was signed. Besides, six years afterwards, the peace treaty with Japan was also signed here.
After the World War II, many American soldiers who fell in love with the city came to dwell here contributing to the formation of the Sunset District and Visitacion Valley. During this period, California’s Department of Transport Caltrans began to intensely implement a program of speedways in the Bay area. However, Caltrans encountered serious problems in San Francisco where a very big density if population meant that the construction of a highway would leave many citizens without shelter. Caltrans tried to minimize the area of highway construction by introducing two-level roads, but the current state of technology at that time made the building of such complicated constructions impossible, and the project was dismissed, since it was unsafe. In 1959, the City Council voted for the prohibition of construction of any freeways in the city; this became known as the Freeway Revolt. Still, a small modification of the freeways was allowed. Since that time, the anti-freeway policy has been securing the keeping of the prohibition. In 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake destroyed the Embarcadero Highway and portions of the Central Freeway. After several referendums, the inhabitants of the city decided not to restore any of those structures. The zones once covered by these roads were rebuilt; restoration of the Embarcadero, San Francisco historic bay waterfront, was especially successful.
In 1950, the Agency of Reconstruction of the city of San Francisco was headed by a graduate of Harvard, Justin Herman. He immediately began aggressive policy of renewing the natural protected zones of the city. He also proposed a plan of splitting San Francisco into big sections and building them up with modern buildings. The critics accused Herman of racism, considering his changes in architecture to be the attempts of isolation and future deportation of Afro Americans. According to his plans the Embarcadero Center, Japantown, Geary Street, and Yerba Buena Gardens were built.
In the late 1960s, San Francisco became an epicenter of the Hippie revolution, the boiling pot of music, psychoactive drugs, sexual freedom, creative expression, and politics. The climax of the epoch came with the Summer of 1967 when hippies from the whole world came together in the vicinity of Haight Ashbury to celebrate love and freedom, and, thus, creating a unique phenomenon of cultural, social, and political rebellion.
Under the administration of Mayor Dianne Feinstein (1978-1988), San Francisco experienced a real reconstructure boom that was called “Manhattennization”. In the city many sky-scrapers were built; the boom also included condominiums of several districts of the city. In the city there was an oppositional movement consisting of people who thought that scy-scrapers destroy unique features of the city. Like the freeway revolt ten years before that, a “skyscraper revolt” began in the city which caused San Francisco to impose height limitations. These limitations were kept for many years, but nowadays, when the housing problem is extremely difficult, different plans are being considered to change the level of height which will allow building new constructions such as Rincon Hill in the South of Market District. This second wave of skyscraper building just like the first one was unpopular among the locals.
During the 1980s, homeless people began to emerge in many cities of the USA; soon this problem became vital for San Francisco as well. Mayor Art Agnos, the first and far from being the last, tried to solve the problem. Agnos issued a decree allowing the homeless to build up a camp in civic center park; the camp was named “the Agnos Camp”. The next Mayor, Jordan, one year later launched the “Matrix” program; its aim was to move all the homeless out of the city by force. The program was fully worth it – he was able to move out almost all the homeless. His successor, Willie Brown, fully ignored the problem; that completely annulled the merits of his predecessor. The homeless again filled the streets of the city. At the present time, Mayor Gavin Newson is fighting the homeless by a prospective program “Care, not Cash”, which provides different rehabilitation and employment programs for the homeless.
On October 17, 1989, an earthquake of 7.1 magnitude points on Richter scale occurred. The epicenter was in the Santa Cruise Mountains, approximately 70 miles from San Francisco. The earthquake damaged a lot of roads including the Embarcadero freeway and the central freeway. The damage done to these roads was so gross that it was decided to fully destroy them. Besides the roads, the quake led to extensive damage in the Marina District. In the US this earthquake is known as the World Series Earthquake.