The Green Cultural Zone (GCZ) initiative aims to advance environmental justice, climate resiliency, and health equity in San Francisco’s northern Mission District. The GCZ will engage Native, Latino, and other disadvantaged residents to co-create strategies that transform urban spaces through green infrastructure, traffic calming, and public space activation.

The GCZ was developed from the Friendship House Association of American Indians of San Francisco’s Village SF Indigenous Resilience Hub and Climate Justice Initiative, a six-story building that will open in 2026 that includes community space, cultural programs, social services, healthcare, and supportive housing. The GCZ extends the project’s climate and environmental justice goals to the streets and surrounding neighborhood, starting with a pilot on Julian Avenue where the building will be constructed. This pilot will anchor the vision for cultural preservation, social cohesion and environmentally sustainable growth with a crucial anti-displacement plan.

Key street planning project components will include examples such as:

• Implementing Green Infrastructure: Establish permeable pavement, rain gardens, and street trees to improve environmental and climate resilience by creating a cleaner environment, reducing flood risks, mitigating heat islands, and supporting local ecosystems and pollinators.
• Promoting Safe Walking and Cycling: Prioritize greener pedestrian movement with traffic-calming measures, improved safety, and car-free days to cut noise and air pollution, enhancing air quality and quality of life.
• Creating Accessible Public Spaces: Develop safe, clean, accessible gathering areas such as sidewalks, parklets, and plazas, activating streets with arts and cultural events such as a regular “Red Market” that will support outdoor vendor spaces for Native and local artisans and emerging entrepreneurs.

In addition to delivering shovel-ready community-led street design plans, the GCZ aims to build community capacity and city agency infrastructure to implement future street projects. The GCZ will build capacity with disadvantaged communities and improve processes in city government to implement community-led planning in future, through the development of a city agency-vetted community toolkit. Through organizing regular interagency convenings, the GCZ will align San Francisco’s capital project process with environmental justice goals, city policies, and more robust community outreach practices.

Livable City holds a deep commitment to residents of the Mission District and has partnered with communities in the neighborhood for over 15 years on open streets activation and planning advocacy in the neighborhood.

Since 2008, LC has partnered with local nonprofits, community groups, small businesses, and public agencies to host the city’s premier open streets event program, Sunday Streets. This program includes an annual car-free open streets event in the Mission District that is over a mile in length, has over a hundred partners and exhibitors, and attracts over 25,000 participants annually. Because LC focuses on supporting everyday people to practice self-determination in public spaces, the core of each event is an extensive planning process involving dozens of grassroots stakeholders. Over the course of monthly planning meetings, participants have a direct voice in determining everything from the overall scope of the event to the block-by-block details such as local businesses to highlight on the event footprint. From these partnerships and relationships, LC has also worked closely on other placemaking and public space activation projects. Most recently in 2023-2024, LC partnered with the American Indian Cultural District and their sister organization the American Indian Cultural Center to empower community use of streets and empty lots in the Mission District, distributing mini grants and engaging neighborhood groups to bring free arts and cultural events to the public.

LC has also consistently supported environmental justice and urban climate resilience in local city planning for the Mission District. In 2007, LC advocated for the widening of sidewalks at 15th and 19th streets in the Better Valencia project, encouraging prioritization of pedestrian safety and reducing automobile-related air and noise pollution for local residents. In 2010, LC staff supported and organized participation in the Mission Streetscape Plan, a community-based planning process led by SF Planning to identify improvements to streets, sidewalks and public spaces in the city’s Mission District. As part of Sunday Streets Mission in 2019, LC hosted a public policy summit on transit, mobility, and public health to provide education and foster discussion in the community. LC is an active stakeholder in San Francisco’s Biking and Rolling plan, a 2-year planning process to develop a plan for future investments in the transportation network.

Livable City is currently applying for state and federal funding to support this project. If you’re interested to learn more or support, please reach out to us at [email protected] or donate at https://livablecity.org/donate/