2012 Highlights

Energizing the Public Realm

Energizing the Public Realm is critical to fulfilling the promise of city living. Get a taste of what’s happening in San Francisco while talking with the following exhibitors including the City, neighborhoods, design professions and those working to bring us local foods and restore natural habitats.

Planning for Better Streets & Green Connections

The Planning Department’s Streetscape & Public Realm Designs and Plans including their Better Streets Plan, are making our streets more useable, attractive, safer and welcoming to all, improving their ecological functioning and returning streets to their rightful place as the center of civic life. Green Connections now underway will increase access to parks, open space and the waterfront by re-envisioning City streets and paths as ‘green connectors,’ and building on current efforts to create sustainable corridors that enhance mobility, green neighborhood streets, and improve pedestrian and bicycle access to community amenities and recreational opportunities.

Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association & Proxy Project

The Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association is an all volunteer based neighborhood organization that promotes friendly association and community involvement; preserves and reinforces neighborhood cultural and economic diversity, historic character, beauty and architecture; and constructively participates in governmental processes. They’ve taken on many worthy projects including the demolition of the Central Freeway and design of Octavia Boulevard, the Market/Octavia Neighborhood Plan, interim projects on Octavia Blvd parcels such as the Hayes Valley Farm, and Proxy by Architecture+Design, including Biergarden by Suppenkuche.

Parklets & Rebar–Art, Design & Ecology

Parklets are popping up and converting parking spaces into sidewalk meccas where friends and neighbors gather in the sun and enjoy the streetside ambiance. Rebar has created Parklets, PARK(ing) Days, Parkcycles, Bubbleways and a variety of other public realm innovations, working at the intersection of art, design and ecology. Rebar creates projects that inspire people to reimagine the environment and our place in it. Bring your creativity and imagination with you when you visit their exhibit.

Sunday Streets on the Move

The City sponsors Sunday Streets to encourage health, community and fun, inspired by similar events in cities throughout the world. Closing streets to automobile traffic frees space for strolling, skating, cycling, people-watching and free group events such as tai chi, yoga, and aerobics, usually once a month on Sunday mornings. Find out whether and when Sunday Streets may come to your neighborhood.

Restoring Nature Where We Live

Rallying neighborhood support, volunteers for Restoring Nature Where We Live are working together out on the street connecting butterfly habitat on Hawk Hill and Rocky Outcrop overlooking the Sunset District for the Green Hairstreak, a small butterfly isolated in remnant habitats within the city. This “gossamer-winged&rdquo butterfly historically flew throughout the peninsula before human development. Street level plantings of host and nectar sources should enable the two populations to interbreed with more secure genetic viability and diversity, and connect the community to the habitat of a unique and beautiful species.

Farmers’ Markets–>Abundance & Vitality

Farmers’ Markets are vibrant community centers springing up around the City. The Pacific Coast Farmer’s Market Association establishes and operates community-supported certified farmers’ markets providing economic opportunities for farmers and food producers, local access to farm fresh products, support for local businesses and community organizations, and education concerning food, nutrition and the sustainability of California agriculture. Find out how they run and help create new farmers’ markets, serving the city, the farmers and us all.