Rebar

People all over San Francisco reclaimed metered parking spaces normally reserved for private automobiles today, and transformed them into living spaces for people to mark PARK(ing) Day, one of the most celebrated livable streets events that began here six years ago, and sparked a worldwide movement.

Within a span of just a few hours, a new parklet has transformed a part of Columbus Avenue in North Beach. Fronting Caffe Roma, it's the second project to bring some breathing room to choked sidewalks on a section where cafe and restaurant life fill one of the city's densest and most historic neighborhoods.

Among several initiatives San Francisco has developed to put an aesthetically pleasing face on the economic downturn, such as Art in Storefronts, which brightens shuttered retail spaces with murals, a new effort to utilize empty lots for green space, called Green Development Agreements (Green DAs), would transform the way the city's development approval process works, a move some open-space advocates question.

When the 17th Street and Castro Street trial Pavement to Parks plaza was implemented in San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom said at the press conference that he would expedite two more plazas immediately, and if the public used them and clamored for more, he would instruct his agencies to build them. Apparently, he wasn't grandstanding.