THE NEW MAP MUST REMEMBER THE OLD ONE

THE NEW MAP MUST REMEMBER THE OLD ONE

San Francisco’s Family Zoning Plan and the Lesson of the Fillmore

San Francisco is drawing a new map.

The Family Zoning Plan, signed into law on December 12, 2025, and effective January 12, 2026, represents an ambitious attempt to confront one of the city's defining crises: the scarcity and extraordinary cost of housing. By permitting substantially more homes in areas that historically accommodated comparatively little growth, the city is acknowledging that yesterday's development patterns cannot adequately house tomorrow's San Francisco.

That recognition is important.

But whenever San Francisco takes up the pencil to redraw its future, it must place another map beside the new one:

the map of what happened before.

The Fillmore must be on that table.

The City Has Redrawn Its Map Before

San Francisco has previously used the language of necessity, modernization, improvement, and renewal to justify enormous physical transformations.

In the Fillmore and Western Addition, redevelopment promised progress.

Buildings would be cleared.

Streets would be modernized.

Land would become more valuable.

New development would rise.

Yet behind the language of urban renewal stood a human reality that cannot be measured merely in buildings demolished or dollars invested.

The city's own historical reckoning estimates that approximately 20,000 to 30,000 people were displaced through redevelopment in the Fillmore and Western Addition.

Homes disappeared.

Businesses disappeared.

Churches and institutions lost their surrounding communities.

Families were scattered.

Social networks painstakingly built over decades were broken.

And one of the most important centers of Black cultural and economic life on the West Coast was profoundly disrupted.

The city changed.

But change itself was not justice.

That distinction must become part of San Francisco's planning conscience:

Changing the city is not the same as improving the lives of the people who live within it.
The Skyline Cannot Be the Only Measure

The images of San Francisco's emerging skyline contain a powerful symbol of possibility.

Towers rise.

Density increases.

More homes can occupy the same amount of land.

A city constrained geographically can grow vertically.

That can be part of the solution.

But a skyline tells us how high a city has built.

It does not tell us how widely belonging has been distributed.

A hundred new floors cannot tell us whether a teacher can remain in San Francisco.

A thousand new apartments cannot, by themselves, tell us whether working families can afford them.

Rising property values cannot tell us whether an elderly tenant feels secure.

A beautiful tower cannot tell us whether the people who endured decades of neighborhood neglect will still be present when prosperity arrives.

Therefore, housing production matters enormously—but production must ultimately serve dwelling.

The objective cannot simply be to build San Francisco upward.

It must be to make San Francisco more inhabitable across economic lines.

The Lesson of the Fillmore Is Not “Do Not Build”

This point is essential.

Remembering the Fillmore should not become an argument for freezing San Francisco in place.

History does not command the city:

Do not change.

History commands:

Change more wisely.

San Francisco needs housing.

It needs neighborhoods capable of welcoming newcomers.

It needs greater housing diversity.

It needs opportunities for families who have been excluded by extraordinary costs.

And areas that benefited historically from restrictive development patterns should participate meaningfully in solving the citywide housing shortage.

But growth must carry safeguards against repeating another pattern:

improvement of place accompanied by removal of people.

The new zoning map should therefore be accompanied by an equally serious map of anti-displacement, affordability, tenant stability, community ownership, small-business preservation, and pathways into homeownership.

The city should measure not merely what gets built, but who benefits from what gets built.

From Urban Renewal to Community Renewal

The Fillmore teaches that a neighborhood is not merely an arrangement of structures.

A neighborhood is relationships.

The barber shop knows its customers.

The church knows its families.

The grocery store knows its elders.

Children know the route to school.

Neighbors know who needs help.

Businesses support organizations.

Families accumulate memories.

These relationships form an invisible infrastructure.

When buildings are demolished, physical structures can eventually be replaced.

When a community is scattered, its invisible infrastructure may never return.

Therefore the new San Francisco must learn to distinguish between real-estate value and community value.

Both matter.

But they are not the same.

A neighborhood whose property values rise while its community disappears cannot automatically be called a successful renewal.

The New Question: Who Will Be Able to Remain?

The old geography of exclusion frequently asked:

Who may enter this neighborhood?

The modern affordability crisis adds another question:

Who can remain?

That is where the new zoning plan encounters the historical lesson of the Fillmore.

The city must open neighborhoods that have historically resisted housing growth while simultaneously protecting vulnerable communities from displacement.

These are not contradictory goals.

They are two sides of the same principle:

belonging.

Open the door to those kept out.

Protect the place of those who remained.

Welcome the newcomer.

Do not sacrifice the neighbor.

Build more housing.

Do not make displacement the price of construction.

Increase economic value.

Return part of that value to the communities whose lives give neighborhoods their meaning.

Let the Old Map Become the Builder's Compass

The old map should not become a prison for the future.

It should become a compass.

Every historical wound can teach the city something about how to build differently.

Where exclusion prevented housing—

open opportunity.

Where disinvestment weakened neighborhoods—

invest without displacing.

Where redevelopment destroyed community ownership—

expand community ownership.

Where residents were excluded from decision-making—

bring them to the planning table.

Where public action increases private land value—

capture part of that value for public and community benefit.

Where prosperity arrives—

make room for those who endured the years before prosperity came.

This is how historical memory becomes public wisdom.

A New Definition of Success

Years from now, the Family Zoning Plan should not be judged solely by photographs of a larger skyline.

Its deeper success should be measured by human questions.

Did San Francisco become more affordable?

Did more families find homes?

Did historically exclusionary neighborhoods become genuinely more accessible?

Did working people gain greater opportunity to remain near their jobs?

Did vulnerable residents share in neighborhood improvement?

Did communities gain rather than lose stability?

Did the city create housing without repeating large-scale displacement?

And perhaps most importantly:

Who is still here?

That question should accompany every map, every rezoning decision, every redevelopment proposal, and every crane rising above the skyline.

Because the Fillmore left San Francisco with more than a historical tragedy.

It left the city with a responsibility.

The responsibility is not to stop building.

It is to build without forgetting.

Not to fear transformation,

but to transform without treating communities as disposable.

Not merely to create property value,

but to create the conditions in which human beings can belong.

The new towers may rise higher than the buildings of yesterday.

Let our conscience rise higher with them.

Let every new floor represent not merely additional value, but additional possibility.

Let every neighborhood participate in carrying the city's housing responsibility.

Let development become an instrument of inclusion rather than another mechanism of removal.

And whenever San Francisco unfolds its new zoning map, let the memory of the Fillmore remain beside it—not as an obstacle to progress, but as a builder's compass.

For the old map tells us where people were displaced.

The new map must tell us where people can belong.

The old map recorded exclusion.

The new map must enlarge inclusion.

The old map scattered communities in the name of renewal.

The new map must prove that a city can grow without forgetting the neighbor.

And that may become the highest measure of the Family Zoning Plan:

not simply that San Francisco built more,

not simply that San Francisco built higher,

but that after learning from the Fillmore,

San Francisco finally learned to build wider—
wide enough in opportunity,
wide enough in memory,
wide enough in justice,
and wide enough in belonging
for the people themselves to remain within the future they helped create.

Pastor Steven G. Lee
St. GMC Corps
August 15, 2026