The Transamerica Earthseed Dome is an organic, earth-form structure covered in plants and moss — part art installation, part botanical experiment. It's visually striking, and credit where it's due: it's genuinely different from the usual parade of abstract metal blobs that pass for public art in this city.

As one SF resident put it after walking past it: "It's actually pretty cool. I'll be interested to see how it ages, as it seems like it's an organic earth form type sculpture with plants and moss growing all over it."

That's the right question — how it ages. Because San Francisco has a long and inglorious history of installing eye-catching public features and then completely neglecting their maintenance. We can't keep our sidewalks clean or our escalators running at BART stations, so you'll forgive some skepticism about whether a living moss dome is going to get the TLC it needs in year three.

There's also the broader question that nobody in City Hall ever seems to ask: what does this cost, and who's paying for it? If it's privately funded by the Transamerica property owners — great, go wild, it's your money. If public dollars are involved, taxpayers deserve to know the price tag and the ongoing maintenance commitment before we add another line item to a city budget that already bleeds red ink.

Look, San Francisco should have interesting, beautiful things. Nobody's arguing for a city of blank concrete walls. But beauty without accountability is just decoration on a crumbling house. The dome is cool today. The test is whether anyone cares about it in two years — or whether it becomes another fading monument to good intentions and zero follow-through.

We'll be watching. Hopefully the moss will too.