Tomorrow: Help Envision Better Streets Connecting to Heron’s Head Park

Tomorrow the SF Planning Department is putting on the first in a series of walks as part of its new Green Connections project, an effort to improve access to parks making better use of city streets.

The intent of the program, according to the department’s website, is to create “a citywide network of green streets that can be built over time, improving pedestrian and bicycle access to parks, open space and the waterfront.”

At a kick-off meeting last month, planning department staff began collecting feedback and showing how traffic calming and greening techniques could be included in the plans. On tomorrow’s walk, you can tell planners what you like and don’t like about the pedestrian environment en route to Heron’s Head Park near Hunter’s Point.

Planners will use the walks and other public events to engage communities in shaping the Green Connections project, and by late 2013 they hope to finish conceptual designs in six neighborhoods: Chinatown, the Tenderloin, the Western Addition, Potrero Hill, Visitacion Valley, and Bayview-Hunter’s Point.

Tomorrow’s two-hour walk meets at 1 p.m. the EcoCenter at Heron’s Head Park at 32 Jennings Street (coincidentally at the east end of Cargo Way, where crews are currently constructing a two-way protected bikeway).

Check out all the project materials from the kick-off meeting on the Green Connections website, and see highlights after the break.