With San Francisco in the Purple Tier, some businesses are allowed to reopen and expand their services. The East Cut's small businesses continue to hurt from the absence of tens of thousands of employees and count on your patronage to make it through the year. Your support of our community's small businesses in turn supports the long-term vibrancy of the neighborhood - thank you!

The Transbay Joint Powers Authority (TJPA) is soliciting applications from Bay Area residents to serve on the TJPA Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC) to help shape the discussion in the development of Phase 2 of the Transbay Program, and provide input in the operation of the Salesforce Transit Center and rooftop park. Past CAC members have contributed to the successful planning, development and construction of Phase 1 of the Transbay Program, which includes the Salesforce Transit Center and Salesforce Park.

A revolutionary trend in Urban Planning is getting attention in 2021. The 1-minute city is a concept that builds on the 15-minute city (already popular in Paris, among other major urban centers), however, with a focus on leveraging streets with modular furniture that can be combined to serve a specific street's needs.

Throughout the article, CityLab walks us through the major selling points of the 1-minute city and the pilot rollout within four sites in Stockholm, Sweden. As mentioned, the major difference between the 15 and 1 minute city models is that while the 15 minute city seeks to meet the needs of all its residents at a hyper local level, the 1-minute city envisions “the spaces beyond the doorstep [as] ideal places for cities to start developing new, more direct ways of engaging with the public...” Effectively, the planning model seeks to challenge the idea of streets as places to move and store cars but rather critical connecting spaces for any given community leveraging street furniture, in particular, to meet these needs. This standardized street furniture can be packaged to meet a certain “street’s” needs, be it cafe seating, exercise, play, or bike storage.

Just imagine if San Francisco had this modular street furniture in development before the pandemic; suddenly, Slow Streets could be leveraged to include everything from exercise stations to play sites! Read more about this revolutionary new urban planning concept via the link below.

Many cities across the United States have used the pandemic to activate public spaces in order to best serve local communities. Learning from project implementation successes and failures is a key goal of the CBD in 2021 so that it can advocate for efficient, value-adding public space activations this year and for the foreseeable future. In this Medium post by the Reimagining the Civic Commons collaboration, an overview of four distinct approaches to leveraging public space to serve civic life is detailed, two examples of which particularly resonated with the CBD. 

In Memphis, the City closed the downtown thoroughfare, Riverside Drive, which increased park attendance to Tom Lee Park by 12 percent. The riverfront transformed into an outdoor active space for training lessons, runners, and skaters. The Memphis River Parks Partnership even brought back roller skating (adding in a DJ!) to increase attendance. Overall, citizens reported feeling safer, more active, and more connected to their City's park due to the closure of Riverside Drive.

The CBD’s restaurants have been hit hard by the pandemic, so an innovative and practical use of public space by the Georgia city of Macon, highlighted in this article, resonated with us. Picnic tables were brought in to median parks to encourage use of take-out offerings by nearby restaurants. This initiative, combined with an open-container policy, encouraged safe socialization while helping to sustain local businesses. The CBD has experienced success with lunchtime and weekend food-centric activations in the past, and feels leveraging the Temporary Transbay Terminal for this sort of effort is an excellent idea to increase socially distanced socialization and economic vitality central to our district.

For additional examples, click the link below.

If you build it, will they come? In the CBD Board newsletter, we presented a story outlining several successful public space activations designed to promote civic engagement. There is still much to be learned from these activations, but we hope to apply their successes to our own plans to support vibrant public space here in the district. Separately, the failures in public programming and open space activation must also be considered, as much can be learned from those, too. 

In this article from 2018, CityLab examines the link between public spaces and public space activation, with the latter serving not as a complimentary feature but an essential one for a public space to succeed. The author argues that, "[a]ctivation provides key elements of public space that even the most well-designed un-activated space cannot.”

One insight that resonates with the CBD is the notion that activating a space can help it be “seen.” A previously passed-by plaza, no matter how thoughtfully designed the public art or water feature, for example, can go unnoticed by residents for years until programming draws people into the space and encourages them to interact with it. What’s more, since activations are not permanent like fixtures are, they can evolve to meet the community’s needs seasonally, or over years!

This also reminds us of a few projects that fell short of reaching the community's expectations here in our own city. One example is McCoppin Plaza on Valencia and McCoppin streets. Programming (food trucks) was originally envisioned for the Plaza, but in the end this activation failed to manifest and the site has been plagued by homeless use, resulting in a fence constructed around the space in 2017 that made it feel derelict and uninviting.

Mechanic's Plaza (at Market and Battery) is an example of a space where a simple swap in furniture and addition of an interactive component dramatically increased use. The plaza previously had fixed benches that were installed in parallel rows that did not attract visitors. As a result, Public Works removed the benches and added a steward, moveable tables and chairs, and a big checker board. These interventions transformed the space, which pre-COVID was bustling during business hours each weekday! 

There is a clear connection between public space, design components, and stewarded activations when optimizing for public use. We hope to employ these learnings towards the temporary activation of the Temporary Transbay Terminal, and in the future at Under Ramp Park!