California Official Visitor's Guide 2009 - (Page 38) enjoy » ecotourism » san francisco san francisco Indulge and explore in one of California’s meccas of eco-living green M CLOCKWISE FROM TOP Stroll the Embarcadero; tour the Academy of Sciences; shop organic at the Ferry Building. building’s meticulously restored light courts or reflecting off the gold leaf on the 306-foot-tall dome is to understand that a relationship with nature is deeply embedded in the values of this city. 38 visitcalifornia.com FROM TOP: SARA REMINGTON; TIM GRIFFITH; TAI POWER SEEFF y own tour of the city that is often described as one of America’s greenest begins at City Hall, where San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom has just announced a ban on the purchase of single-serving bottles of water by any city department or agency using city funds. “I personally think it’s the next big symbolic but substantive environmental push,” the mayor says. He regales me with a laundry list of changes, all intended to whittle the city’s carbon footprint down to an exemplary size: alternative fuels, planted median strips, lots of recycling. He predicts “a platform off the coast of California the size of a football field that will harness the energy created by the waves” and “self-contained energy districts” starting right here in the Civic Center. “We’re going to do solar on the roofs of all our municipal buildings,” he adds. While a visit to San Francisco does not customarily include an audience with the mayor, a tourist interested in how environmentalism plays out on the urban landscape might do well to start at City Hall, a 1915 Beaux-Arts masterpiece largely accessible to the public. To see the sunlight streaming into the http://www.visitcalifornia.com
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