Car-Free Streets and the Poetry of the City
Poets Plaza, a proposed piazza in North Beach, has been delayed again. Supporters have started an online petition to get the project moving. There will be a public meeting about the piazza on Thursday, March 3 from 6 to 7:30 pm at the Tel-Hi Center, 660 Lombard Street near Mason. The plaza, also called Piazza Saint Francis, would…
Annie Alley – Creating Open Space in a Neglected Alley
We are working hard to reclaim our public spaces and ensure privately-owned places are still welcoming to everyone. Public rights-of-way – streets and alleyways – make up about a quarter of San Francisco’s land area. Projects that reclaim alleyways as neighborhood-serving public places with greening, traffic-calming, and pedestrianization are moving forward in 2015. Living Alleys, also known as woonerfs,…
2014 in Review: Complete Streets and Greenways
2014 saw progress towards complete streets and a greenway network for San Francisco – and also showed that the city’s projects and practices are still falling far short of its standards, policies, and goals. Vision Zero Vision Zero – the goal of eliminating traffic deaths within a decade – made progress in 2014. Various city agencies adopted…
The Future of Downtown’s Public Spaces
As San Francisco’s Downtown gets denser, and increasingly mixed-use – housing, retail, hotels, entertainment, and cultural institutions along with offices – it needs better public amenities – better streets, greenery, and usable and appealing public open spaces. The Downtown Plan, adopted in 1985, emerged from the ‘Planning Wars’ of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Downtown Plan’s intent…
