The innovative and sustainable city: San Francisco
1. The universal issue: SDGs
You may hear the word “SDGs” many times, and it is one of universal concern. It stands for Sustainable Development Goals adopted by The United Nations and has 17 sustainable goals for future global prosperity (UN,2021). The 17 articles cover environmental issues like Climate Change and improving the quality of life. Currently,193 UN member countries follow SDGs. Historically, the former concept of SDGs was mainly for developing countries, but SDGs have urgent issues of urban areas in developed countries. Therefore, many people struggle with their situations to achieve their goals.
2.The reality of urban life: how do we maintain sustainability?
Purvis (2018) states three conceptual pillars in sustainability: social, economic, and environmental.
These three elements are indispensable for humans’ activities, especially urban life. In capitalist countries, people focus too much on maximizing economic values and ignore others like the effect of the environment. To achieve SDGs, we need better to balance our social, economic, and environmental activities.
3. Sustainable tourism
We should be aware of sustainability in our daily lives and leisure time. Travel accounts for 8% of the world's carbon footprint, and the impact of mass tourism, in particular, can have a long-term negative impact on the local environment and society, sometimes more than the economic benefits, such as over-tourism, depletion of resources, and promotion of disparity between rich and poor.
4. A Sustainable City: San Francisco
San Francisco (SF) ranked first in the 2019 US Cities Sustainable Development Report for the current performance of SDGs (SF Travel, n.d.). I want to introduce their best practices categorized by stakeholders and capture critical factors in this post.
4-1.Outline of San Francisco
SF is the financial, commercial, and cultural center of California state in the US. It is located in the SF Bay Area and faces the Pacific Ocean. Though the area is about 46.9 square miles (121 square kilometers), the population is about 873,000, the 17th among the cities in the US.
SF is well-known as a popular tourist destination (Forbes,2019), and visitors enjoy the city's atmosphere, scenic beauty, and food (SF Travel, n.d.). The Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, and the largest Chinatown in the US are the city’s landmarks. Historically, the counter and gay culture flourished, the town still has an "open” atmosphere. Since the city has 20 prestigious universities and global tech companies such as Apple and Facebook, there is substantial demand for visiting friends and relatives (VFR) and businesses to visit SF (SF Travel, n.d.).
4-2.SF Climate Action
The San Francisco Planning Department has led creating the general plan of the entire city and in neighborhood plans for the city's long-term sustainability (SF Planning, n.d.).
Figure1 shows the major climate action plan of the city (SF Planning, n.d.). The latest citywide program contains four goals to be achieved by 2030:
0(zero) waste,
80% sustainable trips (walking, biking, transit),
100% renewable energy,
and nature-based carbon sequestration
Among them, waste and energy issues are classified as the infrastructure, while transportation directly influences tourists. I will introduce them in detail later.
4-3.Smart City Challenge: the future transportation
Even though the city has well-developed public transportation, several challenges to transport, for example, decrease the number of car accidents, the shortage of parking lots, congestions, the limitation of accessibility. To solve these car-focused transportation problems, the local government promotes the following projects working with UC Barkley (Smart City Challenge, 2016):
*Promoting sharing system of vehicles (cars, motorcycles, and bikes)
*Creating Applications for mobile phones for booking and tracing shared vehicles
*Testing automated driving vehicles for safety
*Switching to zero or lower emission vehicles
4-4.Infrastructures: Zero Waste
The city tackles with reducing waste in an earlier time. For example, SF pledged to waste zero to landfill and launched “the Fantastic Three” project in 2003. The title stands for three different color waste bins: green for composting, black for disposing of trash, and blue for recycling (Smart City Press, 2017).
Recently more people have been keen on reducing plastic products, and SF was the first city in the nation to ban single-use plastic bags in 2007 (SF Travel, n.d.). The ban has expanded to use other items and industries now. Now the city’s achievement of waste diversion is 80% opposed to the national average is 35% (SF Travel, n.d.).
4-5.Infrastructures: 100% Renewable Energy
Clean Power SF delivers clean energy at reasonable rates from 2016, and most of the renewable energy comes from the Shiloh Wind Farm. The company now meets 80 % of the electricity demand in SF in total. They successfully reduced greenhouse emissions by 36 % below 1990 levels. (SF Travel, n.d.).
5.Engagements of the local tourism industry
5-1.Transportation: Sustainable Trips
As mentioned before, SF is attempting to transform its public transportation system through the Smart City Challenge project. In addition, 80% of sustainable trips are being encouraged to achieve by 2030. Travelers are no exception to this. The local government encourages travelers to use public transportation, shared bikes and cars, and participate in walking tours(SF Travel, n.d.).
5-2.Food: Sustainable Food and Food Diversity
Food is one of the most significant tourist attractions.
Of course, SF is a great place to enjoy dining. In addition, it has unique restaurants in aspects of sustainability and its variety. They purchase fresh food from local farmers' markets. The largest one has more than 100 vendors. Even some restaurants drive the "From Farm to Table” movement. All contribute to eliminating the food footprint.
The city was chosen as the most vegan-friendly city in the US by the animal-rights organization PETA in 2019 (Plant Based News, 2020). Amazingly, there are many vegan eateries, from casual Mexican to high-end Japanese sushi. The demand for vegan or vegetarian is more robust, and such variety and quality restaurants are critical reasons for travel.
When we think about the famous seafood in Bay Area, some restaurants serve fish with MFC blue fish label as sustainable seafood certified by Marine Stewardship Council (Marine Stewardship Council, n.d.).
5-3.Accommodations: LEED certification
The recycling rate in SF hotels is 90%, and there are many environmentally friendly practices. The non-profit trade association, of which two-thirds of all SF hotels are members, has 87 members, 19 on the sustainable committee. In addition, many hotels have received LEED certification, a certification for environmentally friendly construction (SF Travel, n.d.).
6.Further development of the best practices in SF
The initiatives introduced so far have helped San Francisco be recognized as an open-minded, sustainable city and create a more precise and more favorable impression of its brand as a destination.
As some of the initiatives collaborate with local IT companies and universities, it is also promising to use these examples as content for business visitors, incentive tours, and educational trips for businesses and government officials who come to visit the city in the future.
7.The lessons of SF for other cities of the world
What can we learn from the best practices in SF that I have presented so far?
The first success factor is solid local governance. The provincial government has taken the initiative in promoting sustainability, which is not necessarily a profit-generating activity. In such cases, the public sector should lead the project and encourage private industries and non-profit organizations (Morrison,2018). The instances of SF Environment and SF Planning are excellent examples of the public-private partnership (PPP), which is a popular way to structure DMO and conduct specific projects within the destination (Morrison,2018).
For the background, SF is a liberal-majority city and was the center of the anti-war movement against the Vietnam War in the 1960s. Still, the local people have a healthy critical spirit and can implement policies. Therefore, residents and industry groups are willing to get involved in promising approaches, good examples are born, and a good cycle continues.
Second, the local DMO leads the stakeholders involved in tourism and builds a strong community. As Morrison (2018) states, a successful destination brand is required for the team effort by DMO, tourism sector stakeholders, local community residents, and tourists. Thus, the best practices in SF are the result of their team effort.
In SF, there is San Francisco Travel (SF Travel), the oldest DMO in the US, with more than 1,300 local businesses registered as members. There is no other "group of local tourism businesses" like it in this broader sense. This connection has been very useful in attracting tourists and business travelers and MICE(Meeting, Incentive tour, Convention, Event).
8.My role in the tourism industry: as a practitioner/ an educator
I have worked as an English-speaking tour guide in Japan for seven years, guiding about 700 groups of 4,000 international travelers. In addition, I teach at a private university in Tokyo for students who wish to work in the tourism industry and have local tour guide training in Japan.
I focus on human resource development in the tourism industry because I would like to improve the service level of the tourism industry in Japan. Through the guests’ word of mouth, acquire more fans of Japan worldwide. As Morrison (2018) also points out, a single trip is the culmination of the involvement of many stakeholders. It can never be just a hotel or just a flight. In other words, travel is an integrated industry, as a team game of all the stakeholders involved. Even if a customer is dissatisfied with one part of the trip, it can make up for it in another region.
I believe that travelers' satisfaction in Japan can be increased by spreading the number of people and businesses that provide higher services to various industries and expand to other areas.
After the pandemic of COVID-19, small-scale tours to appreciate local culture and nature will become famous instead of "mass tourism," traveling by a large bus or a cruise ship package tour that has been the mainstream. We will have more opportunities to introduce local, sustainable initiatives in private tours. At the same time, the probability that "sustainability" will emerge as a travel destination or travel theme will also increase.
San Francisco is one of the most innovative and sustainable cities globally. The best practices come from strong governance and enrollment of many sectors by local DMO. The DMO plays a crucial role in managing the tourist destination.
A DMO, like SF Travel, should have a clear vision, utilize the strengths of its various businesses, and work together to develop tourism sustainably.
I am convinced that we can learn a lot from the case study of SF and want to contribute to creating such an excellent example in Japan.
All pictures from Pixabay.