While many in San Francisco’s Asian community opposed closing the Great Highway in favor of a park and are alarmed by upzoning the Westside and adding housing, a group of Asian urbanists are organizing to prove that they exist, too.
“There are definitely a lot of us who do want more apartment buildings, who do want better public infrastructure and biking as well,” said James Wen, 28, at the inaugural meetup for “Asian Urbanists” in San Francisco on Irving Street on Tuesday night.
“I do feel like there is a pervasive narrative where Chinese Americans on the Westside are generally anti-urbanist, generally don’t want to see growth,” said Wen, an AI scientist and a volunteer lead at SF YIMBY who’s lived on the city’s Westside his entire life. “I’m here to change that.”…