Recent Streetsblog SF posts about Urban Design

Unlocking San Francisco’s Privately Owned Public Open Spaces

By Matthew Roth | Jan 20, 2009 | 11 Comments

The shortage of public spaces in San Francisco’s downtown has long been compounded by the fact that the urban geography of privately owned public open spaces (POPOS) makes them hard to find and even harder to enjoy. The San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR) last week released a report that details all of downtown’s POPOS, […]

299 Valencia Appeal Fails As Swing Vote Dufty Sides with Developer

By Matthew Roth | Jan 14, 2009 | 6 Comments

The future home of 299 Valencia will have more parking than the neighborhood plan allows of right The Board of Supervisors, in one the first tests of the new progressive bloc, failed to muster a supermajority vote to support an appeal that would have overturned the Planning Commission’s approval of a conditional use (CU) permit, […]

Depaving Uncovers Layers of History

By Chris Carlsson | Jan 13, 2009 | 4 Comments

Neighbors gather for tips and tricks to Mission Roots gardening project, 23rd and Florida We walk on layers of history. In our neighborhoods, in our cities, there were once natural phenomena, like creeks, sand dunes, hills, and forests. Over time they were covered in farms, factories, houses, and most of all, streets. At first those […]

Jane Martin is a Force of Nature

By Chris Carlsson | Jan 8, 2009 | 9 Comments

Jane Martin gardening at 23rd and Harrison, Jan. 3, 2009. Jane Martin is a longtime resident of San Francisco’s Mission District, a licensed architect, and an avid gardener. She is the founder of PlantSF, an informational website dedicated to reconfiguring the design and use of urban spaces, primarily sidewalks and to a lesser extent, residential […]

San Francisco Mayor to NYC: “Eat Your Heart Out.”

By Matthew Roth | Dec 11, 2008 | 25 Comments

A rendering of the Transbay Transit Center with a 5.4 acre park on its roof. At a groundbreaking ceremony for the long-awaited Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco yesterday, Mayor Gavin Newsom asserted the project will be "so much more extraordinary than Grand Central Station." Pointing to the renderings on a projection screen behind him, […]

Jan Gehl Reflects on San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf

By Matthew Roth | Oct 9, 2008 | 3 Comments

"When I was a visiting professor at Berkeley in the 1980s, I used to come to Fisherman’s Wharf and walk around," Danish urban designer Jan Gehl said Wednesday night, to more than 100 San Franciscans at the Pier 39 Theater near Fisherman’s Wharf. "Now it’s like deja vu; it’s exactly like I remember it 25 […]

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