SINCE 1998, residents and businesses on the northern side of Potrero Hill have been working in good faith with the city Planning Department to devise new zoning rules for a neighborhood that's facing rampant developer speculation and a full-scale land rush. The Potrero Hill Association of Merchants and Businesses, the Potrero Boosters Neighborhood Association, the Dogpatch Neighborhood Association, and a range of community activists and leaders have participated, and city planning staffers have worked with them – if a bit slowly and imperfectly – to come up with rules that would allow additional, badly needed housing in the area without sacrificing blue-collar industry and a diverse small-business base.

But in a move that demonstrates everything that was wrong with the Planning Department under outgoing director Gerald Green – and everything wrong with the way city hall treats the southeast part of town in general – Green in the final days of his tenure yanked the rug out from under the six-year planning process and left the future of the neighborhood in limbo. And if the planning process remains mired in Green's muck, it would allow the developers to destroy one of the few remaining centers of blue-collar industry in the city.

As Rachel Brahinsky reports on page 18, several weeks ago Green abruptly replaced the neighborhood planning team with his own handpicked staffers. Now that Green is gone, the Planning Commission needs to tell interim director Dean Macris – who in the past has always been a staunch ally of developers – to reverse that move and restart the community process.

In the meantime, Sup. Sophie Maxwell has come up with interim zoning rules for the area that would fend off speculation for a year, and the commission needs to adopt them.

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People who live and work on the north side of Potrero, which the Planning Department calls Showplace Square, have come to describe it as the "Wild West of zoning," a place where development rules are unclear and there's no long-term planning strategy – and where traditional uses like light industry are under assault by developers who want to turn the land over to more-lucrative housing.

The Potrero activists aren't against housing – in fact, the merchants' association and Potrero Boosters are hardly a radical antigrowth bunch. They argue – correctly – that the city needs housing, that there's land available for it in the southeast, and that some mix of new housing is going to be part of the neighborhood's future.

But they also want to avoid the problems that plagued South of Market during the dot-com boom, when developers out to make a fast buck put new high-end lofts right next to industrial sites and entertainment venues – and the affluent residents immediately began complaining about noise.

This isn't an insolvable problem. San Francisco is a dense city, and mixed-use neighborhoods can function fine – in both the short and long term – if they're properly zoned and development is carefully managed. That would most likely mean limiting housing next to existing industrial facilities, siting a mix of low- and moderate-income and limited market-rate housing in areas where it's appropriate – and strictly protecting the blue-collar jobs that are a threatened species in San Francisco.

Maxwell's interim zoning controls will hold off the forces for a year, and the Board of Supervisors should approve them quickly. But for the long term, the community planning process needs to be resurrected. Remember: delay is the developers' friend. Without coherent and comprehensive new zoning for the area, the current loose rules will let building continue unabated. If Macris doesn't take the lead on this, the commission should order him to do so.

This situation is somewhat unusual – the neighborhood is generally united and wants to work with the city planning department, and the frontline city planners seem to want to work with the neighborhood. It's Green – former mayor Willie Brown's handpicked pro-development director – who has made a mess of the situation, and if Macris and the commission can't change that, it will be a sorry statement about the future of planning policy in this city.

P.S. Another sign of how the southeast is treated: the earnest, happy-sounding press conference at which Mayor Gavin Newsom, City Attorney Dennis Herrera, and Sup. Sophie Maxwell announced a plan to close down the Hunters Point and Potrero power plants featured none of the legitimate neighborhood activists – and gave no binding assurance that the dirty old power plants will be shut down before the proposed peaker plants are ever turned on. What's needed isn't anything radical – just a written, legally binding document that says the old pollution sources will cease before new fossil fuel-burning plants are fired up. Why can't the city do this?