Ridge Lane, SF’s Newest Street Park
On Saturday June 18, neighbors and city officials dedicated the first block of a new street park on Ridge Lane in the City’s Ocean View neighborhood. The project transformed a dirt path on a narrow public right-of-way into a linear park, with an accessible path, new lighting, benches, and landscaping. It was designed by Nahal Sohbati…
Livable City Recommendations for the June 7 Election
For the June 7, 2016 election, Livable City recommends: Yes on A: Public Health and Safety Bond Measure A is a $350,000 general obligation bond that funds earthquake safety and fire safety retrofits at San Francisco General Hospital and the City’s neighborhood health centers, safety and resliiency upgrades to the city’s ambulance facilities and firehouses,…
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…
New Greenway Connections to Link San Francisco’s Peaks
The vision of an interconnected Greenway Network of trails and parks across San Francisco’s San Miguel Hills continues to take shape, with three projects poised to move ahead in the next few months. These open spaces extend from Golden Gate Park to Glen Park. Encompassing peaks, canyons, forests, grasslands, streams, and lakes, the greenway network supports recreation, habitat and watershed restoration, and…
2015 in Review: The Year in Livability
San Francisco faced big challenges with equity and affordability in 2015. Still, the city made major progress by building and preserving affordable housing, planning better neighborhoods, reclaiming streets for people, making room for nature, lessening automobile dependence, and fostering a shift towards sustainable transportation. Let’s take a look at the year in livability: San Francisco’s Voice for…
Streets as Public Spaces: A Resource Guide
Our December 10 Forum on Streets as Public Spaces features the foremost leaders in reclaiming streets as public spaces. Here’s Livable City’s resource guide to reshaping our urban landscape. San Francisco Resources Sunday Streets, a program of Livable City, is San Francisco’s pre-eminent program reclaiming streets as community public spaces. The Stormwater Design Guidelines, published by the San…
Our Greenway Network Action Plan for 2015
Livable City’s Greenway Network campaign is creating a linked-up open space system for San Francisco of landscaped boulevards, green streets, and linear parks which link the city’s neighborhoods to one another, and to our major parks, wildlife corridors, waterfront, and public transit hubs. The Network will serve as sustainable transportation infrastructure (walking, bicycling, and public transit), and provide stormwater infiltration and…
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,…
Livable City’s Greenway Initiative
The goal of the Greenway Network Initiative is to create a citywide network of landscaped boulevards, green streets, and linear parks which link the city’s neighborhoods to one another and to the major parks, wildlife corridors, waterfront, and public transit hubs. The Network will serve as sustainable transportation infrastructure (walking, bicycling, and public transit), and provide…
S.F. Expands Priority Conservation Areas
On April 21, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved the designation of five Priority Conservation Areas (PCAs) in San Francisco. Priority Conservation Areas are Bay Area open spaces that “provide regionally significant agricultural, natural resource, scenic, recreational, and/or ecological values and ecosystem functions; are in urgent need of protection due to pressure from urban development or…
