Livable Streets

The SF Board of Supervisors today approved changes to the city's planning code to make it easier for developers to convert gas stations to uses like apartments and storefronts on major transit and pedestrian streets.

The demand for car-free streets in San Francisco is easy to see at the Sunday Streets events around the city. If there's no Sunday Street in your neighborhood, though, not to worry: You can bring a car-free event right to your doorstep.

Two important projects will get a hearing before an SFMTA engineering panel tomorrow, and advocates say a show of support is crucial.

Editor's note: This is the first in a series of occasional stories on the "2011 Road Repaving and Street Safety Bond."

Fourteen years of community-driven efforts to improve conditions on Fell and Oak Streets around the Panhandle are finally paying off. The outreach continues on a vision for separated bikeways that would provide San Franciscans safe access to the flattest route connecting the western neighborhoods to areas east while making the neighborhood more livable for residents and businesses.

Eight years ago, the Central Freeway fell, and the sky didn't. The neighborhood long obscured by the structure came up for a year-long breath of air during its reconstruction.

Residents just north of the Mission District who have lived in the shadow of the Central Freeway are beginning to see a glimmer of light. The city appears poised to move ahead with plans to bring street improvements and green space to the area, including a public plaza at the end of McCoppin Street that abuts the Octavia freeway onramp.

San Francisco’s many auto repair shops are mostly concentrated along its motor traffic sewers, but when they’re placed without restriction in the thick of restaurants, shops, and pedestrian traffic, can they hinder our city’s most valuable streets as desirable places to be?

Editor's note: Streetsblog San Francisco is thrilled to launch a three-part series today by renowned Danish architect and livable streets luminary Jan Gehl. The pieces are excerpts are from his book, "Cities for People" published by Island Press. Donate to Streetsblog SF and you'll qualify to win a copy of the book, courtesy of Island Press. Visit the Island Press website to find many more great titles by the nation's leading publisher of books on environmental issues.