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Campaigns > Livable neighborhoods > Mid-Market

Reviving Mid Market

San Francisco's Mid-Market Neighborhood, defined roughly as the stretch of Market Street between 5th Street and Van Ness Avenue, together with the adjacent blocks, deserves to be a great San Francisco neighborhood – vital, livable, diverse, and sustainable.

A brief history

Market Street's role as the city's main transit and civic street began in the 1840's when surveyor Jasper O'Farrell laid out Market Street as the grand promenade for the Mexican town of Yerba Buena. Market Street was aligned at a diagonal to the north-of-Market street grid, visually connecting Twin Peaks to the waterfront. It is over 100' wide from the Embarcadero to Castro Street. The south-of-Market Street blocks are much larger than the north of Market blocks; the SoMa blocks between 1st and 8th streets are 825' by 550', four times larger than the north of Market blocks, and eleven times larger than the 200' square blocks that give downtown Portland and downtown Seattle such a walkable scale.

Market Street soon emerged as the city's primary ceremonial street, hosting parades and civic processions. It also became the city's primary transit street, first for cable car lines, and later for electric streetcar lines.

The 1906 Earthquake and Fire gutted or destroyed most of the buildings on Market Street between the waterfront and Octavia Street, although some fire-gutted buildings were repaired.

Mid-Market still has many fine buildings from the period before and after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. The Civic Center's ensemble of Beaux-Arts buildings is considered one of the finest of its type in the world. Market Street itself has many handsome buildings, including the former Hale Brothers Department Store (901 Market, at the corner of 5th), Warfield Theater (982 Market, at the corner of Taylor), Golden Gate Theater (42 Golden Gate Avenue, at the corner of Market and Taylor), Eastern Outfitting Co. Building (1019 Market, between 6th and 7th), Hibernia Bank Building (1 Jones Street, at the corner of Market and McAllister), Odd Fellows Building (corner of 7th and Market), 9th District Court of Appeals (corner of 7th and Mission), Orpheum Theater (1192 Market Street, corner of 8th), and the Merchandise Mart (south side of Market between 9th and 10th).

During the early 20th Century, Mid-Market emerged as an important theater district, first for Vaudeville and other live entertainment, and later for cinema. By the early 60's, the theaters were in decline. The 1962 report "What to do about Market Street?" noted that television was increasingly competing with cinema, and that many of the theaters were closing. Today, the Orpheum, Golden Gate, and Warfield theatres still offer live theater. The Market Street Cinema and Crazy Horse (formerly the Newsreel Theater) offer 'adult entertainment'. The Strand and St. Francis theaters still stand, but have been closed since the 1990s.

The report also noted the degeneration in the street's once-disinguished architectural character: "Story-and-a-half tall signs that obliterate buildings", "ground floor remodeling unrelated to the rest of the building", "roof-top billboards", "fine old buildings defaced with tinny signs", "unhappily remodeled buildings that try to look like new ones" were called out in the study as detriments to Market Street's character and vitality.

The mid-60s saw the beginning of BART construction, which ended with the opening of BART in 1973. Construction of the Muni Metro subway continued until the later 1970s. In 1968, San Francisco voters approved a $10+ million dollar bond to widen and improve Market's sidewalks, plant street trees, and build Hallidie and United Nations plazas. The Market Street design underwent three major changes. In the 1970s, the city decided to retain trolley buses and their overhead wires, and in the mid-1980's, the city decided to retain historic streetcars on Market Street. The impact of nearly two decades of construction on Market Street was severe, and many blame the construction for Market's decline.

Sign controls were introduced in 1970, which banned billboards but continued to permit theater marquees and other business signs, subject to certain restrictions, such as restricting signs from covering windows.

From the 60s to the 80s, Mid-Market saw the construction of many large new "back office" buildings. Mid-Market didn't enjoy the prestige of the Financial District, and companies generally located call centers and other service functions in Mid-Market buildings. The mid-century planning controls for height and bulk, together with large SoMa blocks and the desire to maximize building square footage for large-floorplate back-offices, created many blocky office buildings. As corporate back office functions moved to suburban areas in the 1980s, and later to rural areas or overseas, these buildings became white elephants, unattractive to most office tenants and difficult to convert to other uses.

The planning controls that prevailed until the 1980s also permitted huge slab-style high rises, like the Automobile Club (100 Van Ness Avenue) and Fox Plaza (corner of Market and Polk streets), which block sunlight and views, and create uncomfortable ground-level winds.

The neighborhood's assets

The neighborhood has many assets. Market Street is the Bay Area's most important transit street, with buses and streetcars on the surface, Muni Metro and BART underneath. Market Street was rebuilt in the 1970s and 80s with wide sidewalks paved in custom bricks, rows of London Plane trees, historic light standards, and broad granite curbstones. Mission Street, one block south, carries the important 14-Mission Muni route as well as SamTrans and Golden Gate Transit buses.

The neighborhood has three subway stations — Powell Street Station (BART & Muni) at its eastern end, Civic Center/UN Plaza Station (BART & Muni) in the center, and Van Ness Station (Muni only) at its western end.

The neighborhood also has some important public spaces. Hallidie Plaza, lying north of the Powell Station at 5th and Market streets, is an important gateway to San Francisco, and connects the Mid-Market, Tenderloin, Union Square, and Yerba Buena neighborhoods. United Nations Plaza, at Market and 7th Streets, connects Market Street to the grand public buildings and public spaces of San Francisco's Civic Center.

The neighborhood has many fine buildings from the early 20th Century. Some have been meticulously restored, but many others have been incompetently renovated over the years, or are in complete disrepair.

The neighborhood's weaknesses

Despite its assets, Mid-Market struggles against a number of factors which harm its livability and vitality. Some are related to larger shifts in the economy, and have affected urban neighborhoods across the country – the decline of single-screen movie theaters, relocation of back-office and support jobs from city centers, and the problems associated with chronic homelessness. Other factors are specific to Mid-Market, in particular the nearly two decades of construction disruption on Market Street, and the decision to channel high-speed traffic through the neighborhood.. Other factors, some a consequence of the factors listed above, include:

Domination by single uses. Offices, and in particular government offices, are the dominant use in Mid-Market. This has become even more marked in recent years, with the completion of the Federal Building at 7th and Market, and San Francisco government's lease or purchase of some of the neighborhood's former back-office buildings. The problem with single-use neighborhoods is that they are lifeless during much of the day, which can make them dull, or even dangerous, at night. Market Street works best where uses are diverse – between 2nd and 5th streets, where hotels, offices, shops, convention centers, art museums, cinemas, theaters, and housing provide a 24-hour mix of activities, and Upper Market, where dense residential neighborhoods and housing above shops keep the street active and safe, and sustain neighborhood-serving businesses. Mid-Market would benefit from a greater diversity of uses, particularly housing. Local residents sustain the neighborhood-serving businesses – restaurants, shops, etc. – that bring life to the streets, which draws in visitors. Most of San Francisco's most vital and interesting neighborhoods for shopping, eating, and drinking are in the midst of dense residential neighborhoods. Conversely, it is difficult to sustain lively and diverse retail and entertainment districts without nearby residents.

Little housing diversity. Mid Market and the adjacent parts of the Tenderloin and SoMa do have lots of housing, but many areas, like 6th Street, are dominated by residential hotels, with few apartments, affordable or otherwise. Residential hotels are an important part of the city's housing mix, and the massive demolition of hotels in the 60s and 70s exacerbated the city's housing crisis and homelessness problem. Residential hotels with kitchenettes, public rooms, ground-floor lobbies, and on-site services can be convivial places to live, but many privately-owned residential hotels in the neighoborhood lack any services or amenities, and are dirty and dangerous. This lack of housing diversity is beginning to change, especially along 10th Street, where several apartment or condominium buildings, both affordable and market rate, are approved or under construction. A market rate project was recently approved in summer 2009 at the site of the Fox Plaza post office. However, many stretches of Mid-Market lack housing altogether, or are exclusively residential hotels.

Blocky buildings. Many of the buildings built during the neighborhood's back-office era have huge floorplates, sealed windows, and low ceilings, making them unattractive to commercial tenants, and awkward to subdivide or convert to other uses.

Lifeless building fronts. Active, transparent storefronts and building entries make neighborhoods safe by attracting pedestrians and providing 'eyes on the street'. Many of Mid-Market's buildings have abandoned or boarded up storefronts, and many of the office and public buildings have no storefronts at all. Upper stories, too, are often blank and lifeless. In Great Streets, Allan Jacobs places much of the responsibility for Market Street's decline on its Post-WW2 buildings:

"Not only has time brought larger and fewer buildings, it has changed the way they address the street and are seen by people. Until at least the late 1940's, a pedestrian walking on Market Street saw stores. Regardless of what was going on above, the street level had stores, with windows and doors and signs. One could and did look into them. Access to upper-story offices might be through simple rather than elaborate entrances. For the walker, it was a procession of shops and each one was more different than the next. Above all it was busy, eye-catching. Contemporary office buildings are more likely to have entrance lobbies or banks or other large, nonpublic space along the sidewalk. There is less to catch the eye and less of interest.

"Above street level, the change is at least as striking, maybe more so. While once the view might have been of stone and stucco or tiled buildings with individual windows and individual blinds, and of individual people or their implied individual presence, today's views are largely of anonymous patterns, usually of vertical or horizontal bands that may make identification of individual floors difficult, to say nothing of the windows or of what or who might be behind them. In short, it seems that the most severe changes, the ones that have made the difference between a great street and a less great one, are those that have lessened community focus on Market Street while at the same time diminishing individuality and interest."

Excessively large blocks. The South-of-Market blocks between 1st and 8th streets are the largest in San Francisco, 825' x 550'. They are four times larger in area than the north of Market blocks, which are typically 412.5' x 275'. The longest dimension is parallel to Market, and with few perpendicular streets or alleyways to break them up. These huge blocks create a superhuman scale on the street, and allow overly-bulky buildings to fill the block interiors. Elsewhere along Market, parallel streets like Stevenson and Jessie break up the large SoMa blocks, but these streets are particularly discontinuous in Mid-Market.

Auto-dominated cross streets. Efforts were made to make Market Street a great pedestrian and transit street, with mixed results. Many of the cross-streets, especially the numbered streets South of Market and the north-south Tenderloin streets, are traffic sewers, with three or four lanes of high speed traffic and skinny sidewalks. These streets are dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists, and are inhospitable to neighborhood-serving businesses, which make them devoid of positive street life.

Poorly designed and managed public spaces. The public spaces in Mid-Market are poorly designed and maintained, despite their importance. Hallidie Plaza, at 5th and Market streets, is well-framed by handsome buildings on two sides, and the transit station, shops, and cable-car turnaround generate huge amounts of foot traffic, but the sunken plaza is mostly lifeless. United Nations Plaza at 7th and Market is expansive and attractively landscaped, but is similarly lifeless, with little to do. Both plazas were made less inviting by the Department of Public Works removing all seating in the plazas and on Market Street.

A plan of action

One often hears the lament "we have tried everything in Mid-Market, and nothing works". That's nonsense. While much has been talked about over the years, little has actually been done.

There isn't a silver bullet solution for Mid-Market. Its problems are various, and will require coordinated action of government, private, and civic actors across many different areas. Livable City's action plan involves much 'urban acupuncture' – small, direct interventions aimed at getting energy flowing, with the area's residents, businesses, and stakeholders as active and engaged participants, rather than passive patients being acted upon by government and/or capital.

A great example of what is working in Mid-Market is Mint Plaza. Located behind the Old Mint near 5th and Mission Streets, Mint Plaza, which converted a stretch of Jessie Street into a vibrant urban plaza, brings together the elements that will make Mid-Market as a whole thrive: pedestrian-oriented and well-designed public spaces; good maintenance and programming with concerts and events: lots of seating, both outdoor restaurant seating and public seating; active, people-oriented ground-floor uses; human-scaled buildings which frame the space, without overwhelming it; thoughtful and dignified restoration of historic buildings; and use of historic monuments as an asset and center (the Old Mint, which is scheduled to be renovated and transformed into a museum and visitors center). Mint Plaza is a public street, but was built and is maintained by the Martin Building Company, who used an innovative financing tool (Mello-Roos infrastructure bonding) to build the plaza.

Another great project in Mid-Market is the Art's Commission's Art in Storefronts Program, which opened in the Mid-Market and Tenderloin neighborhoods in October 2009. It gets to the heart of what makes a walkable neighborhood – the street level experience.

build on the neighborhood's sustainable transportation infrastructure. Previous, failed efforts at Mid-Market revitalization were overly reliant on automobile access. Such auto-centered strategies are doomed to fail. They are fundamentally unsustainable, at a time when cities need to shift towards a more sustainable patterns of living. Also, cities can never beat the suburbs at being auto-centered; they must build on walkabiity, which has made cities vital and resilient for centuries. Mid-Market's other strength is its superlative transit access; three subway stations, and numerous bus and streetcar lines.

Add more, and more diverse, housing to Mid-Market. Mid-Market's housing stock is predominantly residential hotels. Residential hotels, if well-designed and managed, are a important piece of the City's housing puzzle. When provided with kitchenettes, social spaces, and street-level lobbies, they can be convivial places to live, and current efforts to upgrade residential hotels, provide services on-site that make them effective assisted living or transitional housing, and move them into nonprofit ownership and management should be expanded. In addition, new housing for familes and larger households should be added to the mix, especially on larger sites where courtyards and gardens can be provided, or where existing streets and alleyways can be converted into people-friendly spaces. Student housing is another good fit in Mid-Market; several colleges, universities, and professional schools are located nearby, and students will appreciate the rich transit access. Students can support support the nightlife, bookstores, shops, restaurants, and cafes that activate neighborhood streets, and attracting students to downtown neighborhoods has proved a successful revitalization strategy from Berkeley and Portland to New York and Copenhagen.

Improve and activate Hallidie Plaza. Hallidie Plaza, the sunken plaza at 5th and Market streets next to Powell Station, ought to be San Francisco's front door – it is where Mid-Market, SoMa, Union Square, the Tenderloin, and Yerba Buena meet. The plaza is well framed, but not overwhelmed, buy the surounding buildings, and the importance of the station and nearby shopping, museums, hotels, housing and offices provide ample foot traffic, but the plaza isn't living up to its potential. Much of the problem is that the plaza is sunken well below street level. Plazas that are more than a few steps above or below street level are difficult to draw people into. The plaza has also been indifferently managed and maintained. The coffee cart below is an improvement, but the kludgy elevator added a decade ago, and DPW's removal of trees and seating from the plaza have hurt it. The city has done several design studies of Hallidie Plaza, which have come to the same conclusion – bring the plaza up to street level, and provide folks with something to do there. Livable City has been advocating that DPW design and seek funding for raising Hallidie Plaza to street level, starting with the moribund portion west of Cyril Magnin Street. Cyril Magnin itself needs to be calmed and made safer for pedestrians, and the important corner of Eddy and Cyril Magnin ought to become an attractive gateway to the Tenderloin.

Improve and activate United Nations Plaza and the Civic Center public spaces. United Nations Plaza is part of a succession of grandly concieved public spaces extending from Market Street to City Hall. They are not realizing their potential because of poor design and lack of anything to do. DPW's removal of all seating has contributed to their lifelessness. The weekly markets are a positive step towards activating the plaza. More programming of activities and encouragement of cafes and restaurants would help, too. The plazas also need to be renovated. The fountain, for example, brings life to the plaza, but has a distinct front and back, and blocks views and access to and from Leavenworth – could the tall blocks be removed from the back of the fountain, visually connecting Leavenworth Street to Market? The block of Fulton Street between the Library and Asian Art Museum is wasted space, a large parking lot with a monument in the center, and ought to become an active public space. The blocks of Grove, McAllister, Larkin, and Polk streets surrounding Civic Center Plaza and City Hall are much wider than they need to be, and cut the Plaza off from the surrounding neighborhood. Grove Street in particular could become a pedestrian promenade with wide sidewalks, attractive landscaping and excellent lighting, connecting Civic Center Station to the Civic Auditorium, Opera, Symphony, Ballet, and Herbst Theater.

Expand residential accessory use to encourage artists and artisans. Many of Mid-Market's historic office buildings and former industrial loft buildings make great spaces for artists and artisans who wish to live and work in the same space. The Planning Code permits residential use as an accessory to office or light industrial uses, provided that the residential portion of the space is built to the city's housing code, and doesn't exceed 25% of the total space. Increasing the allowable residential space from 25% up to 50% could encourage artists and artisans to move into disused Mid-Market buildings.

Improve and activate building fronts. Active, pedestrian-oriented street frontages are a key to Mid-Market revitalization. The Arts Commission's Art in Storefronts program is a good start, funding artists to install artworks in storefronts, or to paint murals on boarded-up storefronts. The program should be retained and expanded. Property owners should be encouraged to keep storefronts rented out, even if they plan to rebuild the buildings; many properties in Mid-Market, like the southern side of Market between 5th and 6th, evicted tenants to clear the way for development, but those developments are now on hold, and these buildings could remain empty for years. Planning Controls should be improved to require that storefronts be mostly open to view, and that security gates be made of open grillwork rather than solid metal, with the mechanisms hidden from view. Long blank walls should be prohibited, and parking should be located underground, with above-ground floors dedicated to active and pedestrian-oriented commercial and residential uses. In recent years controls like these have been adopted for various parts of the city, but currently don't apply in the Downtown. Legislation championed by Livable City and authored by Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi will extend these active use requirements to the city's Commercial (C) districts, including Mid-Market.

Preserve and restore Mid-Market's fine historic buildings. Preservation and restoration of the neighborhood's outstanding historic buildings should be a cornerstone of the neigborhood's revitalization. Many, like the Grant Building and Odd Fellows Building at 7th and Market, the Eastern Outfitting Co. Building on Market between 6th and 7th, and the Warfield Building at Market and Taylor, have intact upper floors, but have relatively disastrous mid-20th Century ground floor renovations. The neighborhood's historic theater marquees should be retained and restored. The St. Francis Theater has had its interior and marquee compromised by careless renovation, but still retains its elegant terracotta facade designed by John Galen Howard, hidden behind mid-century clutter, which should be preserved and integrated into a new building. Tax credits, transferred development rights (TDR), and other financing tools should be actively expanded to Mid-Market, and new funding sources, like infrastructure finance districts and redevelopment financing, should be examined.

Encourage arts and theater uses. The district's arts history is another strength to build upon. Mid-Market's is still home to three live theaters, as well as galleries and dance spaces. Draft legislation for the Mid-Market Special Use District offered density bonuses for developments that housed arts spaces, which is still a fine idea. An arts impact fee, like that proposed by the Western SoMa Citizens Planning Task Force, could be extended into the downtown, generating funding for arts activities and arts spaces.

reclaim cross streets by prioritizing walking, cycling, transit, and public life. Market Street is blessed with wide sidewalks, and Livable City has championed some recent measures to make the street work better for pedestrians, cyclists, and transit. Many other streets in the neighborhood, however, are dominated by high-speed, high-volume through traffic. All streets should have improved lighting, wide sidewalks, and pedestrian safety features like corner bulbouts and ladder-style crosswalks. Mid-block crossings should be made safer, especially on 6th Street. 7th and 8th streets should be converted to two-way, neighborhood-serving streets, with bicycle lanes on 7th, as recommended by the Western SoMa Citizens Planning Task Force. Two-way traffic should be restored to Mason, Jones, Leavenworth, Ellis, and Eddy Streets, as recommended in the Tenderloin Transportation Plan (see our Tenderloin Neighborhood page for more details). Of these projects, only the restoration of two-way traffic to McAllister (from Hyde to Market) has been funded and approved.

reclaim alleyways as living streets, and break up large SoMa blocks by building new mid-block alleyways. Mid-block streets and alleyways create some of the most livable neighborhoods in the enormous South of Market blocks. The Lafayette-Minna-Natoma neighborhood, near 11th and Howard streets, and Mint Plaza near 5th and Mission streets demonstrate the potential of interconnected mid-block alleyways to transform the huge SoMa blocks into livable places. Existing small streets and alleyways should be preserved, greened, and protected from cut-through traffic. The alleyway pattern should be extended through large development sites, especially Stevenson Street, which runs parallel to Market immediately south, and provides an alternate frontage for vehicle loading and deliveries, and new streets perpendicular to Market which break up the excessively long blocks (825').

improve lighting, landscaping, and street furnishings on Market and adjacent streets. The Mid-Market area needs a lighting plan, with the goals of delivering clear, bright, but glare-free light to sidewalks, avoiding light tresspass into upper-story windows, addressing energy conservation, and designed as attractive street furniture.

improve building controls to maintain human scale, visual interest, and sidewalk sunlight and comfort. New buildings in Mid-Market should emulate the most successful Market Street buidings; in addition to providing interest to pedestrians at ground level, they should provide interest at upper levels, frame Market Street and the adjacent public spaces without overwhelming them, and reduce ground-level wind and shadow. This doesn't mean that tall buildings should be avoided, but rather that care be taken in siting them so that they don't compromise the public spaces in the district.

Billboard district?

Property Owner David Addington has been promoting the idea of a Mid-Market Sign District, which he paid to get on the November 2009 ballot as Proposition D. Proposition D was solidy rejected by the voters.

Proposition D would have permitted large new general advertising signs (aka billboards) along Market Street between 5th and 7th streets. Signs could have been up to 500 square feet in size, with no limit on the number of signs per building. Signs may project up to 10 feet over the sidewalk, as much as 25 feet above rooftops, and be 50' or more in height. Signs can be illuminated, flash, and rotate, and can be brightly visible from outside of the district.

Whether or not you think a billboard district has merit, Proposition D had some evident flaws. It is ballot-box planning, written in such a way that it can't be amended without another ballot measure. The Planning Department's analysis calls out the 'unprecedented' transfer of approval and regulatory to a private entity, which creates legal liability for the city. The approval authority for signs would have been transferred to the Community Benefit District, a private entity representing property owners. Proposition D created an unreconcilable conflict of interest for the CBD; it represents the property owners, whom it also would regulate; the CBD is also a financial beneficiary of the signs it approves. The CBD was supposed to disburse public benefits, in the form of grants to arts from a small percentage of billboard profits, but Prop D didn't guaranteed a minimum percentage be obligated to go towards arts programs.

Despite the voters' rejection, the billboard district proposal may come back. A more public process of review and hearings would probably clear up some of the worst planning loopholes, conflicts of interest, and provide more transparency and accountabilty.

That would leave the question of question is whether enormous illuminated billboards will make Mid-Market a great and livable San Francisco neighborhood, and an attractive place to live, work, eat, walk, drink, shop, or go to school. While the billboard district may allow some property owners to make existing properties profitable as sites for huge billboards, it will not renovate those buildings, enliven the street at ground level, or attract new residents or businesses. Billboards would compete with the architecture, historic marquees, artworks, historic light standards, and other character-defining elements of Mid-Market. In an era where sustianability is perhaps our greatest challenge, enormous billboards, which foster heedless overconsumption of energy and resources, are not an expression of San Francisco's current values or civic aspirations, nor do they help the city transition into the era of sustainability.

Redevelopment?

The City's Planning Department and Redevelopment Agency spent several years discussing a Redevelopment Plan and some zoning changes for the Mid-Market neighborhood (the area bounded by Market, Mission, 5th & 10th Streets). Livable City was involved in the development of this plan for over the past several years, and some of our suggested improvements to the Draft Plan were included. The plan ultimately foundered because of its lack of political support, and individual property owners cutting individual development deals (or trying to).

Many folks say that redevelopment is the 'answer' for Mid-Market. Whether redevelopment is the answer or not depends on the question – the question being, "What kind of neighborhood do we want to create"? Redevelopment can be a powerful tool for revitalization, but is not a revitalization strategy. Redevelopment has an unsavory history in San Francisco. In the 60s, redevelopment was used to displace low-income residents from many neighborhoods, and rebuild them in accordance with the often-flawed planning notions of mid-20th Century modernism. The redevelopment agency will argue that they have moved on since then, but many current redevelopment projects, like Mission Bay South, are being built out as unsustainable, auto-oriented, suburban-style developments.

Mid-Market Redevelopment was conceived chiefly as a financing tool for affordable housing, delegating the zoning and planning controls to the Planning Department and the Planning Code. This was a superior strategy to that typical of San Francisco's redevelopment areas, which typically bypass the Planning Code and Planning Department in favor of inflexible Design for Development (D4D) controls, which are seldom updated, and generally grow increasingly stale and obsolete as the decades roll on.

Livable City was critical of Mid-Market Redevelopment's approach to transportation, which heavily favored the automobile; its domination by property interests and lack of community stakeholders; and the weak commitment to building and rebuilding parks, plazas, and public spaces, restoring historic buildings and improving facades, and reclaiming streets for pedestrians, cyclists, and transit. We remain concerned about the pace of change; Mid-Market needs love, and needs change, but too much change all at once can be cataclysmic to a neighborhood. The wholesale disruption that redevelopment can bring to neighborhoods can often take decades to remedy, because the social and commercial networks which make neighborhoods livable and convivial take time to grow, or to heal.

Redevelopment has been a powerful financing tool for affordable housing, rehabilitation and renovation of buildings, and public infrastructure. In 2011, decisions by the California Legislature and Supreme Court ended redevelopment in California. Livable City is working on strategies to retain some of the benefits of redevelopment through other tax-increment financing tools (Infrastructure Finance Districts and the Transit Village Planning Act) and through incentives and requirements of the City's Planning Code.