Indicator PI.3.d Public art works and population density per square mile
Data Source
List of Public Art Works from San Francisco Art Commission, March 2008. http://www.sfartscommission.org/pubartcollection/
Population data from Applied Geographic Solutions, Inc. Spring 2007 Update: Current Year Estimates. Methodology available at: http://www.appliedgeographic.com/library.html.
Map and table created by San Francisco Department of Public Health, Environmental Health Section using ArcGIS software.
Map data is presented at the level of the census tract, which was calculated by assigning census block data to census tracts based on spatial location. The map also includes planning neighborhood names, in the vicinity of their corresponding census tracts.
Table data is presented by planning neighborhood. While planning neighborhoods are larger geographic areas than census tracts, census tracts do not always lie completely within a planning neighborhood. SFDPH used ArcGIS software and a 'centroids within' methodology to convert census blocks to geographic mean center points. We then assigned census blocks to planning neighborhoods based on the spatial location of those geographic mean center points and calculated the planning neighborhood totals for the table.
http://www.thehdmt.org/etc/Geographic_Units_of_Analysis.pdf
Explanation and Limitations
According to the San Francisco Arts Commission:
"San Francisco's Public Art Program, one of the first in the country, was established by City ordinance in 1969. The public art ordinance provides for two percent of the construction cost of civic buildings, transportation improvement projects, new parks, and other above-ground structures such as bridges, to be allocated for public art. It also provides an allowance for artwork conservation funds and allows for the pooling of art enrichment funds for interdepartmental projects. Circumstances that would allow construction projects to be exempt from public art allocations are also defined.
The Public Art Program provides curatorial expertise and project management for the implementation of the City ordinance. It is administered by the San Francisco Arts Commission, and is overseen by the Visual Arts Committee of the Commission.
The Public Art Program seeks to promote a diverse and stimulating cultural environment to enrich the lives of the city's residents, visitors and employees. The Program encourages the creative interaction of artists, designers, city staff, officials and community members during the design of City projects, in order to develop public art that is specific and meaningful to the site and to the community. Public art is developed and implemented in conjunction with the overall design and construction of each project. Each project's life span from the design phase through completion of construction is approximately three to seven years."
For more information about the Public Art Program, please visit: http://www.sfartscommission.org/pubartcollection/
As illustrated on the map above, the majority of public art works in San Francisco tend to be located in densely populated neighborhoods with a few notable exceptions. The downtown neighborhoods of Civic Center, the Financial District, and South of Market have some of the largest numbers of public art. These neighborhoods have a larger proportion of civic buildings which receive funding for public art through the mechanisms described above. These neighborhoods also include the C-3 Downtown Commercial District, which according to SF Planning Code, Section 149 requires hotel and office spaces larger than 50,000 square feet to contribute 1% of total construction costs to the installation and maintenance of public art.
This map does not account for non-San Francisco residents, for example tourists and people who work but do not live in San Francisco, that may also appreciate the presence of public art. There are a higher proportion of tourists and commuters in the downtown areas of Civic Center, the FInancial District and the South of Market than most other areas of the city.