- (415) 344-0489
- info@livablecity.org
- M-F 9:30am-6:30pm
Livable City works to create a San Francisco of great streets and complete neighborhoods, where walking, bicycling, and transit are the best choices for most trips, where public spaces are beautiful, well-designed, and well-maintained, and where housing is more plentiful and more affordable.
Our campaigns and our programs are informed by our values.
Sustainability and Resiliency. A livable city respects the living planet, and is in harmony with the natural systems that sustain all life. It uses earth’s resources wisely, and meets current needs without compromising the well-being of future generations. It fosters biodiversity – the local communities of animals and plants unique to its place. It embraces a ‘cradle to cradle’ ethos, minimizing pollution and waste.
Health and Happiness. A livable city promotes the health and happiness of its residents, providing opportunities for quality health care, active living, healthy eating, human connection, and the experience of beauty. A livable city promotes health in all its policies.
Equity. A livable city provides equitable access to the necessities of life, including housing, mobility, food, services, education, and meaningful work. It gives all residents an opportunity particpate in the civic, economic, and cultural life of the city. It doesn’t impose undue environmental or health burdens on individuals or communities.
Democracy and Community. A livable city provides all residents the right to participate in decisions which affect them. It allows decision-making and planning for community needs at various scales – the individual, the household. the block, the neighborhood, the city, and the region. It’s policies, laws, standards, and practices are clear, transparent, and user-friendly.
Livable City engages San Francisco in three ways – as the City’s livability advocate, as the City’s Open Streets provider, and as a people’s planner.
Livability Advocate. We advocate for policy changes, programs, and projects which make San Francisco more sustainable, livable, and equitable. Over the past decade, Livable City has become one of the City’s most effective advocates. We champion complete streets, a citywide greenway network, parking reform, improved transit, more affordable housing (including legalizing accessory dwelling units), keeping arts and artists in San Francisco, and keeping neighborhood commercial districts vital, diverse, and walkable.
Open Streets Provider. Livable City organizes and manages Sunday Streets, San Francisco’s open streets program, providing 15 yearly miles of car-free open space on City streets across seven neighborhoods. Sunday Streets serves over 100,000 people yearly with free activities, resources and recreation and is produced in partnership with City agencies and neighborhood and nonprofit partners.
People’s Planner. We work directly with residents and small businesses to make San Francisco neighborhoods more livable, including helping enact planning and zoning changes responsive to neighborhood needs, helping plan and secure funding for street and open space improvements, preserving housing and local landmarks, and helping neighborhood-serving small businesses and community services thrive.
Members of the Board of Directors of Livable City and Sunday Streets serve the entire City and County of San Francisco. This Board strives to enhance the quality of life and well-being of all members of every San Francisco community. This Board recognizes that structural inequities, including racism, ageism, ableism, and anti-LGBTQIA, in the United States, in California, and in San Francisco result in unacceptable injustices.
These injustices have divided racial and ethnic groups, and neighborhoods, between those that have good access and those that have poor access to wealth, education, employment, entrepreneurial opportunities, adequate safe and affordable housing, child care, health, healthcare, healthy food, clean air, public safety, open space, greenery, transportation, community amenities, cultural spaces and programming, low-stress environments, social cohesion and quality of life. This Board’s mission is to improve access to all of these things throughout the entire city to create a truly livable city.
Livable City’s Board of Directors and staff commit to prioritizing its efforts in neighborhoods of San Francisco with poor access to these things to help address racial and ethnic injustices and socioeconomic inequities. This Board is proud of the work the staff has done so far towards this priority, and it supports increasing staff’s resources devoted to working with groups and programs in Black-, Indigenous-, and Persons of Color- (BIPOC) communities and neighborhoods that have historically lacked investment, care, and service.
This prioritization of resources should be measurable in the organization’s budget and reportable as a higher proportion of the organization’s work efforts. As a result of this newly stated prioritization of Livable City’s work efforts, this Board invites BIPOC community members to join us on staff and on the Board of Directors.
Livable City and its programs respectfully acknowledge that we are in the traditional territory of the Yelamu, a local tribe of the Ramaytush Ohlone people, who are still residing and stewarding the land colonially known as the San Francisco Peninsula today. As guests, we recognize that we benefit from living and working in their traditional homeland. We wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Ramaytush Community and by affirming their sovereign rights as First Peoples.
In alignment with Livable City’s values and mission to promote land sustainability, justice, and people-led advocacy, we encourage the broader community to learn more about Native communities and actively take part in the rematriation, revitalization, and restoration efforts in solidarity.
Visit American Indian Cultural Center and American Indian Cultural District to learn more.
As part of our commitment to Open Access, the Livable City Board of Directors invites interested members of the public to join the July or October meetings of the Livable City Board of Directors via zoom. Meetings are held the first Wednesday of each month from 6 to 7:30 pm. To receive a zoom invite to either of these meetings, please email your request to info@livablecity.org or call 415 344 0489 at least one week in advance. Members of the public are also welcome to request financial information about LC as required by San Francisco’s Administrative Code Section 12L.5 Public Access to Information by using the same contact information.
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Staff Directory
Darin Ow-Wing, Executive Director
darin@livablecity.org
Jessica Tovar, Program Director
jessica@livablecity.org
Sally Chen, Deputy Director
sally@livablecity.org
Tom Radulovich, Senior Policy Fellow
tom@livablecity.org
Isaac Santiago, Sunday Streets Program Manager isaac@livablecity.org
Reina Terry, Program & Development Associate, reina@livablecity.org
