The Mission's an interesting place to screen a movie about gentrification, filmed from the eyes of the gentrifier -- so there was certainly no shortage of things to think about at last night's showing of New Urban Cowboy for DocFest at the Roxie. New Urban Cowboy is a documentary about Michael Arth, a kind of hippie-dippie former resident of Santa Barbara who moves to the small town of Deland, Florida, near Orlando, and more......

A hearing at City Hall on Monday, 7/9/07 regarding Octavia Blvd....

Imagine a wonderful, delicious future in which the 38-Geary runs as smoothly and quickly as a train; speeding along in its own lanes without squidging in and out of traffic. Oh what a dream! And it's not so far-off: planning is well underway on a Bus Rapid Transit system that'll feature "fancy new buses, dedicated lanes, timed signals, more parking, and a safer and more beautiful walking environment, with pre-paid boarding and new stations!"......

Whether you love Critical Mass or hate it, the folks on the other side of the debate must seem totally baffling, if not downright evil. Its detractors wonder, "how can anyone support an event with no organizers, no pre-determined route, no agenda, and in which everyone has a different reason for participating?" Its advocates wonder, "in a transit first city, how can anyone oppose a method of transportation that's cleaner, safer, less wasteful, and......

Money Magazine has published its annual list of "Best places to live" in these here United States, with the highest ranking Bay Area city coming at number 31. While we've never visited the winning city of Fort Collins, Colorado, we have read that Thomas Frank book, and we're highly skeptical that Overland Park, Kansas (#6) is somewhere we'd like to call home. And weather wimps that we are, Boise, Idaho (#8) and Eden Prairie, Minnesota......

We love architecture, we love politics and we love San Francisco. Hence, one of our favorite blogs is San Francisco Cityscape, written and maintained by Steve Boland. What started in 2001 as a site that digested news reports about urban planning, now his posts offer more analysis and deeplinks to other relevant information about specific topics. A dedicated urbanist, he advertises tees from Cafepress with slogans like "Stop Sprawl, Grow Up." Of course, if......