If you want to see what’s wrong with planning in San Francisco – and how the city suffers as a result – take a stroll down Octavia Boulevard.A year ago, four empty lots along the way were awarded to architects and developers who won a civic competition.

Neighborhood leaders helped draw up the rules. They praised the winning designs.But today the land’s still empty, and there’s no telling when that might change.

Those fenced-off lots are in limbo – victims of a larger process in which everyone has his own utopian demands, and nobody’s shy about gumming up the works if he doesn’t get what he wants.

Liberal only goes so far before it all goes down hill.

–Larger agendas stall city’s best-laid plans [sfgate]