San Francisco Chronicle (Sunday)
Longtime Chronicle design critic to retire
When John King was appointed by the Chronicle to cover San Francisco’s changing skyline, he had a stipulation: Don’t call him the architecture critic.
This was in 2001, almost a decade after the Chronicle’s Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Allan Temko had retired from analyzing the city’s various buildings and structures. King didn’t want to be Temko’s sequel. He had his own ideals to apply to the position, starting with his official title.
“I chose ‘urban design critic’ rather than ‘architecture critic’ because my interest was in how things fit together with the natural landscape, rather than focusing on bespoke details,” King said.
For the past 23 years, King has done just that, providing elegant and enlightening prose about the myriad ways that San Francisco’s urban landscape has evolved amid such an enviable natural environment. But, those well read missives will soon end.
King will retire from his respected post in early October after nearly 32 years at the Chronicle. First, though, the Chronicle will send him off with a retirement celebration and conversation at Manny’s at 6 p.m. Sept. 25.
In his time as urban design critic King has twice been a Pulitzer Prize finalist, offered first impressions of city icons such as Salesforce Tower and provided crucial insight on the region’s efforts to prepare itself for sea level rise. Through it all King has, notably, stayed true to the vision that earned him his job. He doesn’t just critique towers. He helps readers understand the city through its constructed terrain.
“When John looks around the city, where so many of us see anonymous skyscrapers or pretty buildings, he sees the rich back stories, how the built environment impacts people’s lives and how the downtown landscape all works together,” said Sarah Feldberg, the Chronicle’s editor for emerging products. “Through his work at the Chronicle, we’ve had a chance to see the
city through his eyes. And that’s been such a privilege.”
King said he has enjoyed the beat over the past two decades largely because of how it has evolved along with the city. “The hot-button issues change. The stakes involved change. The politics change. The culture changes. And the way that news is presented, by an organization like ours, changes,” he said.
As with so many in his profession, King didn’t set out to be a leading voice on urban design. A Walnut Creek native who grew up reading Herb Caen and Temko, King started his career at the Boston Globe, returning to the Bay Area in 1989, one week before the Loma Prieta earthquake left
nd its deadly mark on the civic landscape he eventually would write about.
He worked at the Contra Costa Times, covering the county where he grew up, before being hired by the Chronicle in 1992 to cover Alameda County. That never happened. King was immediately shifted to the Chronicle’s City Hall team, reporting on elections and city politics and even tagging along when former mayor Willie Brown flew an entourage to Paris.
In 1997, King’s focus returned to his childhood home as he became a Contra Costa County columnist for the Chronicle. He wrote three columns a week and spent a lot of time swimming in a local neighborhood pool after filing his next column.
But his early influences never faded from his mind. Caen was the focus of King’s master’s thesis at Indiana University. And the void left by Temko’s retirement eventually prompted King to ponder how to extend his legacy.
“Temko retired in ’93. The feeling was, nothing is being built. We don’t need to replace him,” King said.
But, in the late ’90s, as the dot.com boom pushed new money into the city, King made the case to bring back the beat, despite having no formal architecture background. “The great thing about journalism is that it allows you to learn on the job,” King said.
It also helped that King had studied Temko’s work, and understood that he had to consider what stakes were involved in how the city looks and functions. His first front-page story as the urban design critic was a review of the new Giants ballpark.
“The team draped a polite brick cloak around a striking modern structure, giving no hint of the drama inside,” King wrote in that review. “Not only that, much of the ballpark feels cramped — partly because of the site, but also because of marketing decisions made in behalf of the team’s bottom line. The result is still seductive. But with something this good, you’re left wanting more.”
It was the review that launched a thousand more dispatches on the constantly changing state of the city.
“More and more I’ve appreciated how complex things are in a region like ours, and how difficult it is trying to measure absolute good and bad,” King said. “Strictly viewed, as a critic, I’ve erred in grading on the curve too often. But, that’s real life. And a sad trait of our current world is how dogmatic and absolutist people are. The reality is that we live in a varied and complex world.”
The natural question that follows news or retirement is, of course, what’s next? While he has written books, including the well-reviewed “Portal,” his 2023 history of San Francisco’s Ferry Building, King isn’t planning his next project. Yet.
“I’ve always told people who were leaving this place that you shouldn’t make any decisions for several months. You should step away and enjoy life and gradually let ideas for your own personal landscape emerge,” King said. “I don’t plan to become a tour guide, though it would be a fun afterlife.”