From the Ground Up

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FROM THE GROUND UP

FROM THE GROUND UP LOCAL EFFORTS TO CREATE RESILIENT CITIES

Alison Sant

© 2022 Alison Sant All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, 2000 M Street, NW, Suite 480-B, Washington, DC 20036 Library of Congress Control Number: 2021934509 All Island Press books are printed on environmentally responsible materials.

Designed by MacFadden & Thorpe Illustrations by Packard Jennings Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Keywords: activism, bike infrastructure, bike paths, bike share, bus rapid transit, car-free public space, climate action, climate change, codesign, community-based planning, congestion pricing, COVID-19 pandemic, environmental design, environmental justice, environmental stewardship, equitable development, green infrastructure, greening playgrounds, green jobs, greenway, guerrilla tactics, habitat restoration, heat island effect, managed retreat, micromobility, multimodal transportation, nature-based solutions, oyster-tecture, oyster restoration, Park(ing) Day, parklet, pedestrian safety, pilot project, placemaking, purple-lining, racial justice, redlining, resilience district, Safe Routes to School, shoreline adaptation, Slow Streets, social resilience, stormwater management, street trees, sustainable development, systemic change, tactical urbanism, transportation equity, tree canopy, urban design, urban forest, urban forestry, urban resilience, Vision Zero, watershed planning

For my mother, whose love of cities and their people was infectious

CONTENTS Foreword by Eric W. Sanderson Preface Acknowledgments List of Interviewees A Note on the Illustrations

xi xiii xvii xx xxi

Introduction: Reimagining Our Cities

1

PART 1: RECLAIM THE STREETS

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CHAPTER 1 Places by People, San Francisco CHAPTER 2 Safe Streets for Everyone, Minneapolis CHAPTER 3 Making the City Accessible, New York City ESSAY

Building Inclusive Cities from the Ground Up

by Tamika L. Butler

12 32 47 65

PART 2: TEAR UP THE CONCRETE 69 CHAPTER 4 Living with Water, New Orleans CHAPTER 5 Watershed Planning, Portland CHAPTER 6 Green Spaces for All, Philadelphia ESSAY

Green Infrastructure Lessons from US Cities

by Mami Hara

73 91 107 117

PART 3: PLANT THE CITY

121

CHAPTER 7

Canopy Cover in the “City of Trees,” Washington, DC 125 141 CHAPTER 9 The Forest in the City, Baltimore 155 CHAPTER 8 From Street Trees to Natural Areas, New York City

PART 4: ADAPT THE SHORELINE

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CHAPTER 10 Restoring Nature and Building Equity, San Francisco 174 CHAPTER 11 Growing One Billion Oysters, New York City CHAPTER 12 Moving Away from the Coast, Louisiana ESSAY

Adapting Urban Districts to Sea-Level Rise

by Mimicking Natural Processes

by Kristina Hill

194 211

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Conclusion: A Path Forward

231

Notes About the Author

235 281

FOREWORD ERIC W. SANDERSON

Twenty-first century American cities are on the cusp of change. Climate change, whether it comes in the form of rising sea levels, devastating fires, heat waves, or prolonged droughts, is already remaking the urban landscape. Cities in the United States fail to provide benefits to all their citizens in a fair and equitable way, even the benefits that should be available to all, such as decent work, fresh air, clean water, healthy food, and access to green spaces. Writing from New York during the strange, awful summer of 2020, American cities are locked down, with too many suffering alone in the hospital, too many people out of work, thriving transit systems now abandoned, local economies in decline, and social unrest building in the streets—some peaceable, some not—even as a silent, invisible disease stalks among us. As deadly as the current moment is, one can’t help but feel we have been down this path before.

Many of us recognize that these bitter fruits reflect seeds long cultivated in the American experience. Few countries have contributed as much to climate change as the United States, with its mixed blessing of cheap oil and wide open spaces. xi

F OR E W OR D

Cities were built around the car and, in some cases, for the car, rather than for people, assuming somehow that who you are and how you move are the same. Injustice did not just happen in cities, but was the direct result of racially prejudiced policies: red lines on maps and banker handshakes given or withheld.

Americans’ inability to select leaders with vision and capability to guide the United States through these current troubled times is a mirror of people’s own cultural narcissism, which used to be called American exceptionalism.

Yes, Americans live in the land of the free and the brave, but are finally starting to see that freedom only means something when deployed with intelligence and wisdom and that bravery is essential to compassion and character. Pique and nihilism are the coward’s way out.

If you are like me and hope sometimes fails you, I have good news: Alison Sant has come to help. From the Ground Up: Local Efforts to Create Resilient Cities surveys US cities not for their failings, but for the means of their future remaking. Her solution: Listen. Watch. Inquire.

Communities, most especially communities of color, are developing solutions that do work.

Tactical urbanism is about starting close to the ground, finding a small group of change-minded people, talking about what’s going on, deciding what to do it, and then doing it. It’s okay to start small. Begin in the neighborhoods where you live and work. Show, don’t preach. If people like your idea, they will start doing it too. It’s ecological democracy. It’s not giving in. In this book are examples provided from sea to shining sea.

Talking with Alison Sant and reading the case studies presented here, I sense that a new American frontier is opening in US cities. The frontier is neighborhoods with abandoned houses being replanted with urban forests. It is parking spaces reclaimed as places for people.

The unexplored edge is carefully returning oys-

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ters to coastal waters or digging rain gardens in front yards. We needn’t accede to poor choices made by our parents and grandparents; we can succeed by creating new realities on the ground for ourselves and our kids. Although it is not possible to rebuild cities from scratch, it is possible to change them in pieces, building by building, block by block, park by park, house by house. In the slow collapse of the old structures, in the gradual evolution of fresh ways of living, there is ample opportunity for new kinds of courage, freedom, and American character.

We can all be homesteaders of a new kind of American dream.

For me, and as this book demonstrates, the future lies in rebuilding our relationship to nature, especially where nature has been most diminished in our cities. Every square foot of soil we unseal from asphalt, every few yards of stream we restore, and every acre or forest or wetland we repatriate—whether because we choose to or are forced to because of circumstances—will open new possibilities and provide new gifts. Nature gives to everyone.

Nature’s possibilities are available to us all regardless of our race, gender, class, or circumstance. The truth is that after generations of taking—from the land, from Native peoples, from the enslaved and indentured, from each other—now is the time to give. The place to start is right here, wherever you are. Whatever you can see, lift your eye from this book and peer out the window before you. That is where the future begins.

ERIC W. SANDERSON is a senior conservation ecologist for the Wildlife Conservation Society and the author of Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City and Terra Nova: The New World after Oil, Cars, and Suburbs.

PREFACE

On September 21, 2007, I took my then two-year-old son Ben for a walk. I was living in the South of Market Street (SoMa) neighborhood in San Francisco. It was a part of the city overwhelmed by fast-moving cars and cut through with on-ramps and highways. SoMa has one of the highest number of pedestrian and bicycling deaths in the city and is one of the neighborhoods with the least access to public open space. Unlike many of the city’s residential neighborhoods built with the Victorian apartment buildings and houses so familiar to tourists, SoMa contained industrial buildings, many having been converted to spaces suited to artists and designers through the 1988 San Francisco Live/Work Ordinance. My husband, Rick Johnson, and I could house our wood and metal shop and design studio there, plus trade off parenting—all under one roof.

The only hard part was going outside.

But on that September walk, everything changed.

Some friends—John Bela, Matthew Passmore, and Blaine Merker—who had created an organization called Rebar, proposed that we all participate in the redesign of our cities, repurposing spaces used to store cars to xiii

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create public places of our own design. On September 21, each participant paid the parking meter but instead of using it to “park” a car they used the space to create a “park.” Ben and I found out just what this effort could mean in a neighborhood that neglected its public spaces.

Just a few blocks from the warehouse where we lived, we came across our first stop, on the corner of Folsom Street and 8th Street, where a small nonprofit organization, Garden for the Environment, had installed some plants and benches, as well as some large buckets of soil.

We stopped and talked with the organization’s Blair Randall. While I learned about household composting, Ben ran his chubby fingers through the imported earth. We got a waft of the dark, pungent soil, and even among the stream of cars going by on three lanes of traffic, we were buffered by the experience of a garden. Soon, Blair pulled a few wriggling worms from the heap and put them in Ben’s hands. Ben’s giggles and delight were infectious. Standing on this intensely urban corner, in roughly 140 square feet, he was having an experience of nature.

The day featured many other park installations.

There was a two-spot croquet course, offering a lawn to lounge on and lemonade for all. There were libraries, urban beaches, public yoga classes, and urban chickens. And it was not just in San Francisco: Park(ing) Day 2007 featured two hundred parks in fifty cities, nine countries, and four continents.1 This repurposing of automobile infrastructure captured the public imagination, and Park(ing) Day’s open-sourced design has allowed it to grow to such a scale that many who participate in it today know nothing about its original instigators. Park(ing) Day embodies the hopefulness and power of remaking our cities, one day at a time.

My life has been touched by much of the history described in this book, and in writing it, I have

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come to understand the deeper roots of these events and how they shape our country. I was born in California the day before the first Earth Day. Inspired by the environmental progressiveness that passed the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, my father transitioned from academia to government, where he worked through the days of the energy crisis to affect policies making the nation less reliant on oil and more energy efficient. When our family moved to Washington, DC, the “City of Trees” was being dismantled

by Dutch elm disease. I remember at age eight or nine seeing plastic cups mounted around tree trunks injecting inoculations to save dying trees—and the empty stumps along our block where the trees came down. As Jill Jonnes describes in her book Urban Forests: A Natural History of Trees and People in the American Cityscape, the District lost 64 percent of its tree canopy between 1973 and 1997, a loss the city is still recovering from.2 As I was growing up as a teenager in the nation’s capital, the crime and murder rate were climbing. In 1988, more than one person a day was killed in the District. And by 1991, the city had the highest homicide rate in the United States. At the peak of violence, 482 people were murdered in one year.3 However, the city was highly segregated, insulating me as a White child from much of that suffering.

I lived in New York City in the late 1980s and early 1990s, during an era of enormous crime and violence. I was a New York University art student at the time and had friends who were the victims of crime, but living in Greenwich Village was undoubtedly a much different experience than living in the South Bronx, which became a national symbol of the violence of that era.4 Patrick Sharkey, author of Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence, wrote that “spaces that had been created to support

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public life, to be enjoyed by all—those that defined city life in America’s greatest metropolis—were dominated by the threat of violence.”5 In the early 1990s, there were approximately 30 homicides for every 100,000 New York City residents.6 Many of my impressions of the city in the 1990s match those described by Janette Sadik-Khan, New York City’s former transportation commissioner. In her book, Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution, she wrote, “Downtown Manhattan street life around this time amounted to sidewalk hot dog vendors and lunches eaten standing up.… Traffic safety wasn’t on the agenda. The quality of street life wasn’t on the agenda. Plazas definitely weren’t on the agenda.… There was little attention given to the way the streets looked or felt.” Although that would all change, she noted that at the time, “New Yorkers were desperately hanging on, trying to survive, not thinking about how these streets—the greatest asset in one of the world’s most walkable cities—could be used.”7 Later experiments, like New York’s public plaza program, were part of a new era for the city’s public life, where common space was valued, cared for, and safe. As Sharkey wrote, New York became “the poster child for the Great American Crime Decline.”8 This progression came with increasing police presence, police violence, and mass incarceration, however.9 As a young documentary photographer, I watched firsthand as many of the men I knew living in the parks of the East Village and West Village were carted off to jails or sent upstate to mental institutions. Mayor Rudy Giuliani had a reputation for being ruthless, and the city’s streets dramatically changed on his watch. This time also ushered in the collective efforts of organizations like the New York Restoration Project, formed to care for small parks throughout the city, whose members later helped plant one mil-

lion trees across all five boroughs.10 By 2014, the city’s murder rate was down to 328 people, the lowest number since the first half of the twentieth century.11 I have lived in San Francisco during a time of massive displacement, as the dot.com boom of the 1990s turned to the tech boom of the 2000s, still developing today. During this time, I have seen many neighborhoods that I have lived in completely transformed and art spaces, bookstores, and restaurants close. Cities change, but these changes have wiped out much of the Bay Area’s counterculture, distilling it along the way. I am a fan of change, but I miss the informality and creativity that once felt core to the experience of living in San Francisco.

When our children were young, my husband and I packed them on cargo bikes for school and became one of a growing set of families that decided to forgo using a car. We cheered on Critical Mass rides through our neighborhood.

Our photograph showed up in San Francisco Bike Coalition newsletters. And we rode with the mayor on Bike to Work Day, where I spoke on the steps of city hall about our experiences riding as a family in the city.

In 2006, we started the Studio for Urban Projects, hosting events out of a storefront in the Mission District where we worked on public art and design projects. We tracked the urban agriculture movement, growing bike infrastructure, graywater systems, nature in the city, and climate change.12 The Studio participated in the first Market Street Prototyping Festival, hosting talks, tours, workshops, screenings, and even a children’s playground curated with local organizations from our project Outpost, installed on 6th and Market Streets. We created a public field lab outside the Exploratorium, along the Embarcadero, to discuss the effects of climate change on the Bay Area. We were on a team for

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the Bay Area: Resilient by Design Challenge, proposing modular oyster reef systems for San Rafael’s low-lying shoreline and hosting kayaking, walking, and biking tours of prototypes underway. Moderating these talks, first in the storefront and then on the street, informed the content of this book.

From the Ground Up was written during the COVID-19 pandemic, the disaster of the Trump presidency, and the reigniting of the civil rights movement. As a White woman with privilege, I have felt the responsibility to raise my voice along with others. I am not insulated from a society in which racism is embedded in the systems that underlie our culture and am part of structures in which Black people and people

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of color have been treated inequitably. This has left me with blind spots. In the stories I relay, I have relied heavily on interviews with people whose expertise and experiences are close to the ground. I have also depended on the perspectives of peer reviewers to help me be comprehensive. However, I am still learning, and there are bound to be words in this book that may be interpreted as ignorant and even hurtful.

This is not my intention. I am striving to understand perspectives outside my experience, but I would be foolish to claim the process is complete. Still, I am committed to bringing the clarity of the movement we experienced in 2020 forward in the work I do today and in the future.

In that, there is a responsibility to become more aware of our own bias, to listen, and to act.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In the making of this book, I interviewed more than ninety activists, community organizers, city officials, scientists, designers, policy makers, authors, and academics who generously shared their experiences and insights. I have been lucky enough to accompany Bram Gunther to the New York City Urban Field Station and the city’s wildlands; bike the greenways in Minneapolis on a collective bike ride with Matthew Dyrdahl, Bill Dossett, and Soren Jensen; and tour Philadelphia’s parks and green schoolyards with Paula Conolly and Owen Franklin. I traveled with Michael Houck through all his Wild in the City spots in Portland, Oregon, and Peter Malinowski hosted me on a boat ride from Governor’s Island to the Gowanus Canal and up the East River. It was my first taste of the spray of New York Harbor water! I was grateful to be virtually invited into the homes of Matt Burlin, Angela Chalk, Jessica Dandridge, Will Lumpkins, Margarita Mena, Lena Miller, Ricardo Moreno, Andrea Parker, Alexis Pennie, Samuel Schwartz, Destiny Thomas, and many others who took the time to talk with me during the depths of the COVID-19 crisis. Everyone I had the honor of interviewing was extremely generous with their time, insights, and passions for improving their cities. xvii

AC K NO W L E D G M E N TS

These people are at the forefront of forming a bold, new vision for US cities in a time of urgency and uncertainty. The questions they are asking, challenges they are facing, and solutions they are generating are carving a path for many others to follow in creating a better future for millions of people in cities across the United States. I commend them for their commitment and spirit in working to make a difference in their communities and country.

Collectively, they share a common goal of meeting the urgency of climate change while healing this nation’s divisions and creating an inspiring future. Behind these individuals sit networks of people who do the work of the hundreds of organizations featured in this book.

They are the restoration volunteers, foresters, bus drivers, bike mechanics, pavement stripers, gardeners, canvassers, interns, administrators, and data collectors who give momentum to the grassroots and compel people to participate in remaking their cities. The success of participatory democracy relies on their energy.

I am extraordinarily grateful to Robert Ungar, my tireless research associate, who signed on for the short term of this project and was committed over the long term to its final notation.

I cannot overstate how much I relied on him for his wisdom, passion, worldly perspective, and extraordinary research in writing this book.

Artist Packard Jennings leant the full weight of his artistic talent to this project, filling its pages with data-informed illustrations that capture the spirit of the projects this book focuses on. Robert and Packard were an extraordinary team, working with me over countless Zoom meetings during the pandemic to make sure the drawings were informed, spirited, and beautiful.

Scott Thorpe, Anna Carollo, and Maggie Wallace, of MacFadden & Thorpe, skillfully translated the ideas in this book to the crisp design of its pages.

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In her role as an advocate and friend, Emma-Louise Anderson was an insightful companion on site visits to several of the cities and projects featured in this book. Our conversations have broadened my understanding of climate solutions and her passion for making a difference emboldens my own. She also reviewed initial versions of chapters and provided significant help with final edits. I will be forever indebted to her for spending her precious time helping me with this book. Yasmin A. McClinton, editor at Tessera Editorial, and Maria X. Ipis-Bautista lent their perspective to making sure the book’s words and illustrations truly represent the people and places they intended to describe. I also thank Kathleen Lafferty, copyeditor at Roaring Mountain Editorial Services, for her careful edits. Lauren Worth and Milo Vela contributed to the early stages of this book, researching potential directions and projects that informed its context, and Nehama Rogozen finished it up with her careful citations. I am grateful to the Headlands Center for the Arts for giving me the time and space to begin working on this project.

Island Press is a one-of-a-kind publisher. It consistently produces books that inspire the world and inform solutions. I am grateful to cofounder and former president Chuck Savitt, who encouraged me to write this book, and to David Miller, current president, who saw it through. Heather Boyer, my brilliant editor, stuck with me through the long and winding path of conceiving, researching, and writing From the Ground Up. Her advice, clarity, and friendship shaped every detail of its pages.

My thanks also go to this book’s contributors, Eric W. Sanderson, Tamika Butler, Mami Hara, and Kristina Hill, who took time from their own projects to write thoughtful and passionate additions to mine. The guidance and thor-

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ough comments of my expert peer reviewers improved this book enormously. I am grateful to John Bela, Adrian Benepe, Simon Bertrang, Matt Burlin, Douglas Burnham, Richard Campanella, Sarah Charlop-Powers, Paula Conolly, Jessica Dandridge, Jaime Ramiro Diaz, Robin Grossinger, Morgan Grove, Steven Higashide, Michael Houck, Jill Jonnes, Ian Leahy, James Lodge, Ashwat Narayanan, Liz Ogbu, Alexis Pennie, Matt Sanders, Rachelle Sanderson, Lex Sant, Samuel Schwartz, and Darryl Young, as well as to the team of Portland experts that supported Matt Burlin’s review: Megan Callahan, Kate Carone, Daniel Kapsch, Jennifer Karps, Naomi Tsurumi, and Marie Walkiewicz.

I entrusted my twin brother, Lex Sant, with some of the most critical parts of this text. I am thankful for his steady advice, confidence in me, and appreciative prodding along the way.

My father, Roger Sant, cheered me on with enthusiasm and deep interest. He has set a beautiful example to me with his extraordinary life, resilience, and integrity. When I was a child, he also showed me how to write in the early hours of the morning as he finished his own book, Creating Abundance: America’s Least-

Cost Energy Strategy. My mother, Vicki Sant, had enormous warmth and kindness, which she offered to most everyone she encountered. She cultivated a spark in me that compelled me to reach out to so many people for their perspectives in writing this book. I will be forever grateful for her generous spirit and wish more than anything that she had lived long enough to read this text. My parents’ commitment to making a difference in this world set the bar for me.

I am enormously grateful to my husband and creative partner in the Studio for Urban Projects, Rick Johnson. He encouraged me to write long before the idea of this book had hatched, he helped lay the foundation for its writing, and he covered home when I could not. His talent has been the backbone of our practice and created the context for the experiences that seeded this book. His scope and curiosity have always infected my own and sent me researching new ideas and projects throughout this process. I am also beyond thankful to our children, Ben and Caleb, whose lives make my commitment to improving the world all the more pressing.

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LIST OF INTERVIEWEES

The following people were extraordinarily generous in allowing me to interview them and in sharing their remarkable work for this book.

Robin Abad-Ocubillo Mike Anderer Kristin Baja Erin Barnes John Bela Adrian Benepe Bethany Bezak John Bourgeois Katharyn Boyer Matt Burlin Douglas Burnham Mark Busciano Tamika Butler Marc Cammarata Tracey Capers Kate Carone Jeff Carroll Angela Chalk Aron Chang Seth Charde Sarah Charlop-Powers Steven Coleman Meredith Comi Paula Conolly Mark Conway Jad Daley Jessica Dandridge Danielle Denk Jennifer Dill Susan Donoghue

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Bill Dossett Matthew Dyrdahl Sheryl Evans Davis Ethan Fawley Cara Ferrentino Shannon Fiala Jacqueline Flin Owen Franklin Maureen Gaffney Phil Ginsberg Robin Grossinger Morgan Grove Bram Gunther Mami Hara Cameron Herrington Sarah Hines Michael Houck McKay Jenkins Soren Jensen Kenneth Jessup Ian Leahy James Lodge Kaitlin Lovell Jeremy Lowe Will Lumpkins Peter Malinowski Natalie Manning Patrick Marley Rump Jodie Medeiros

Margarita Mena Tracy Metz Lena Miller Greg Moore Ricardo Moreno Ashwat Narayanan Liz Ogbu Kate Orff Andrea Parker Alexis Pennie Shaun Preston Jeff Risom Guillermo Rodriguez Eric Rozell Jessica Sanders Mathew Sanders Eric W. Sanderson Rachelle Sanderson Samuel Schwartz Jane Silfen Dani Simons Andrew Stober Jeff Supak Laura Tam Destiny Thomas Gretchen Trefny David Waggonner Fiona Watt Liz Williams Russell

A NOTE ON THE ILLUSTR ATIONS

The illustrations in this book were drawn by artist Packard Jennings to provide a visual representation of the complex realities described in each chapter.

The characters depicted in the drawings were inspired by volunteers and participants of community events as reflected in images published by featured organizations in public platforms or shared with the author. To represent places as realistically as possible, the demographics of each area were taken into account, and cultural signifiers were included to reflect the many identities, styles, ethnicities, and body types consistent with those places. Maps are based on GIS data and planning information provided by the organizations and individuals involved in the projects described in this book.

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Thousands of people hit the streets in Washington, DC, to demonstrate in the People’s Climate March, demanding action on climate change rooted in economic and racial justice.

(2017) (Source: Astrid Riecken/Getty Images)

INTRODUCTION

REIMAGINING OUR CITIES

For more than three decades, US cities have experimented with ways to remake themselves in response to climate change. From tactical interventions and urban prototypes to pilot projects, streets have been reconfigured to accommodate people, bikes, and transit. Roads, parks, and backyards have been made absorbent. Forest canopies have been broadened and urban waters restored. These efforts have been motivated by necessity as the impacts of the changing climate are not only projected into the future, but are being experienced today.1 However, the set of opportunities to remake cities as more vibrant, equitable, humane, and joyous places is also aspirational.

Today, the bar is being lifted to make cities places in which people don’t just survive the future, but thrive in it.

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IN T RODUC TION

As the United States grows in its capacity to respond to climate change, the path to progress will go through US cities. The year 2007 was the first time in human history that the majority of the world’s population lived in urban places. By 2018 in the United States, 83 percent of the population lived in just 3 percent of the country’s total land area.2 This density makes cities one of the most significant opportunities for addressing human’s impact on climate change. Together, the world’s cities are responsible for 75 percent of global carbon emissions.3 The United States faces unique challenges in addressing the climate crisis.

It is the second-largest emitter in the world after China, a country with a population four times larger.4 Transportation alone accounts for the largest share of emissions in the United States.5 The dense footprints of many US cities support low- and zero-carbon mobility options, including transit, biking, and walking. Expanding these modes is essential to mitigating climate change and holds the promise of building more equitable transportation systems, creating more equally distributed opportunities, and increasing economic mobility.

From the Ground Up: Local Efforts to Create Resilient Cities focuses on the unique ways in which US cities are expanding the scope of global solutions that mitigate and adapt to climate change while creating equitable and livable communities in the process. The best examples of this work bring together the energy of community activists, the organization of advocacy groups, the power of city government, and the reach of federal environmental policy. At its strongest, the structure of American democracy—stacked with local, state, and federal structures of governance—provides a context for local innovation that doesn’t exist in the same way as places with centralized authority. However, when administrations leave much undone, more is taken up by the American people.

As a result, this country has a long history of grassroots activism and local invention. Americans are used to rolling up their sleeves and digging in. When ignited by funding and government leadership, and supported by science and policy, the United States provides fertile ground for local solutions to grow quickly.

This book details the pathbreaking work that is remaking US cities, providing evidence that the best of American ingenuity holds the promise for more livable, equitable, and resilient communities in the century to come. The twelve chapters in this book focus on projects in nine places throughout the nation. They profile the questions, provocations, and insights of more than ninety activists, practitioners, academics, government officials, scientists, and advocates who are working in their communities to make a difference.

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Part 1 starts at street level, describing how the land allocated to cars is being reclaimed for people. The narrative cuts through the concrete in part 2, describing how streets, yards, roofs, and parks are being made porous to function within watersheds. Part 3 focuses on how US cities are being reforested to mitigate air pollution and heat while making neighborhoods lush. The book ends along the US shorelines in part 4, examining how large-scale ecological restoration is helping buffer future storms in vulnerable communities while returning life to our urban waters.

It also looks at the processes by which communities are migrating to higher ground.

Three essays provide national context. Tamika Butler, a national expert on the built environment and equity, writes about the experience of systemic racism and public space. A civil service perspective is offered

by Mami Hara, who discusses her work in Seattle Public Utilities and the Philadelphia Water Department. And Professor Kristina Hill, who studies urban hydrology’s relationship to design and social justice, focuses on the ways in which nature-based solutions in watersheds and along shorelines will help populations adapt to sea-level rise and severe storms.

This book is a call to react creatively to the challenges we face. Tested experiments can be built upon and scaled to keep pace with the urgency of climate change. As witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic, change can happen overnight. Humans’ future resiliency will be measured not just by the infrastructure put in place to manage stormwater or make transit accessible, but by how well we have supported the social infrastructure that allows our communities to respond to the challenges that lie ahead.6 Much of the work profiled in this book charts a path to confronting racial inequities, focusing on climate mitigation and adaptation as a context for creating opportunities for all communities while making neighborhood-led solutions the centerpiece of change.

Tragically, the comfort of the private automobile has been prioritized above the quality of life in cities. As Richard Rothstein described in his book The Color of Law: The Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, the US highway system ripped through Black communities to serve mostly White commuters.7 As described in part 1, the Rondo neighborhood, the center of Saint Paul’s Black community, was demolished in 1956 to construct the I-94 freeway.8 In the 1960s, highspeed roadways were run through the Tenderloin, a community of color in San Francisco where many residents live well below the poverty line, creating the city’s most dangerous streets.9 Nationwide, a staggering

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number of traffic injuries and fatalities occur each day on US roads. As Angie Schmitt documented in Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America, more pedestrians died on streets in 2018 than at any point in a generation, disproportionately killing low-income, Black, Brown, elderly, and disabled people, many of whom exclusively rely on walking and public transit.10 Living near roads and highways also exposes residents to toxic levels of air pollution. More than 45 percent of Americans live where pollution levels are too often dangerous to breathe.11 Worse, this burden is not evenly shared. Communities of color are exposed disproportionately more than White communities to air pollution due to decades of residential segregation and have higher rates of asthma, cancer, and premature death as a consequence.12 The coronavirus pandemic exposed these underlying inequities. Studies found that even a small increase in longterm exposure to air pollution leads to a large increase in the COVID-19 death rate, making communities of color especially vulnerable.13 As this book describes, the legacy of slavery and systemic racism has created long-term disparities legible in every aspect of the urban landscape, including access to efficient transportation, well-maintained parks, street trees, economic and educational opportunities, and even the community engagement processes that shape neighborhoods and cities.

As extreme weather events become increasingly common, low-income communities and communities of color are often the hardest hit. Increasing economic disparity and substandard public infrastructure make the most vulnerable populations less resilient in the aftermath of storms.

As the case studies in Louisiana describe, of the seven ZIP codes that suffered the costliest flood damage from Hurricane Katrina, four were in neighborhoods with a majority of Black residents.14 Part 3 examines the inverse relationship between communities of color and urban treecanopy coverage in Washington, DC, and Baltimore.15 These disparities can make it 15 degrees Fahrenheit hotter in these communities.16 Along the coastlines and in the hearts of the cities, societal inequities are being exacerbated by the changing climate. These injustices have been allowed to persist, normalized in a country that has left systemic racism unchecked.

Acknowledging and addressing racial inequality in US cities is not only a cobenefit to the changes ahead, but a moral imperative. The solutions to health inequities will be furthered by removing cars from roads and decommissioning highways in favor of bikeways and transit. Investing in parks to protect neighborhoods from flooding will provide much-needed green space in places without access to nature. Community-led solutions for streets can make them safer and cooler while managing stormwater 4

IN T RODUC TION

and creating jobs. Communities must direct the transformation of their neighborhoods. Public education, civic participation, local expertise, and collaborative planning are critical to generating successful urban solutions. As Ashwat Narayanan, executive director of Our Street MPLS, said, “I truly believe in the power of cities to be engines for large-scale change. If we look at how movements have progressed across history, many, many, times it’s communities and cities who’ve taken the lead.

Cities have been a driving force for social movements.”17 Cities remake themselves in pieces. There are opportunities—with every road that is redesigned, sidewalk that is planted, open space that is forested, and shoreline that is restored—to interject a new idea about how people live in urban spaces and who benefits from them. Can city streets prioritize pedestrians, cyclists, and transit riders? Can public spaces be made greener and safer by supporting community-led solutions? Can investments in cities be the impetus for jobs and economic stability in neighborhoods that need them the most? Can public dialogue give agency to the people most impacted by our changing climate? The case studies in this book provide examples of how these questions are being addressed. There are massive changes ahead. Let’s make sure they are the ones we want to live with.

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Portable park installation along Maiden Lane by Bonnie Ora Sherk with Howard Levine, San Francisco (1970) (Source: A Living Library)

PART 1

RECLAIM THE STREETS

“NOT TV OR ILLEGAL DRUGS BUT THE AUTOMOBILE HAS BEEN THE CHIEF DESTROYER OF A MERICAN COM MUNITIES.”1 —JAN E JACOBS

In the United States, 25 to 35 percent of a city’s developed land is devoted to streets, which are dominated by the automobile.2 Many of the city’s streets are inhumane, lacking enough space for safe walking and biking, efficient public transit, or vibrant public spaces. Cars take up a lot of room in cities.3 While the private automobile carries 600 to 1,600 people an hour, two-way protected bikeways move 7,500 people, sidewalks 9,000, and on-street bus or rail transitways between 10,000 and 25,000.4 7

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As Christof Spieler described in Trains, Buses, People: An Opinionated Atlas of U.S. Transit, the advantages of transit are “a matter of geometry.”5 Cars not only claim space while they are being driven, but also when they sit parked and idle nearly 80 percent of the time. For example, San Francisco’s 440,000 on-street parking spaces make up enough space combined to create another Golden Gate Park and still fill the floor space of 120 Transamerica Pyramids with affordable housing.6 This reality has prompted tactical interventions to reclaim parking spaces in San Francisco and permanently close entire streets in New York City (see chapters 1 and 3).

ROADS WERE NOT M ADE FOR CARS

Americans pay dearly for roads whether we drive on them or not. The cost of automobile debt and ownership is often more than an average household spends on food, twice what it spends on health care, and three times what it spends on rent.7 In addition, US households pay an average of $1,100 per year in taxes to pay for the costs of driving.8 As addressed in this book’s introduction, roads cost lives as well (see introduction). Reclaiming city streets presents one of the greatest opportunities to mitigate global climate change.9 Expanding lowand zero-carbon mobility options is essential to curbing greenhouse gas emissions. It is also an opportunity to build equitable transportation systems that offer affordable fares and reasonable daily commutes, especially for those who have been pushed to live farther and farther from the center of cities due to the rising costs of housing. New York City, for example, is expanding its Select Bus Service (SBS) and creating new busways that prioritize transit on city streets and make service more reliable throughout the five boroughs.

As urban populations and traffic swelled, the rules of the road became more formalized and space more congested. As Evan Friss described in his book The Cycling City: Bicycles and Urban America in the 1890s, “The American city of the 1890s was, more than ever before or after, a cycling city.”11 In fact, bicycles were nearly as ubiquitous in cities across the United States as they are today in the best cycling cities in the world.12 Ironically, “good roads” campaigns were advanced by cyclists to replace the cobblestone streets, muddy paths, and hazardous cable-car tracks with smooth streets for speedy travel on two wheels.13 The roads were paved for bikes. However, cars soon came to dominate streets that were once shared public spaces. Pedestrians became criminalized in the 1920s as “jaywalkers” for disregarding traffic rules, and cyclists were increasingly marginalized from roadways.14

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In the 1890s, city streets were shared spaces, used mainly by people walking, biking, riding transit, and occasionally by those driving cars.

The iconic San Francisco film A Trip Down Market Street characterizes what roads once felt like. It depicts a blur of trains, bikes, horsedrawn carriages, pedestrians, and cars all in a seemingly chaotic but slow dance.10 It also depicts the rhythm of the street before the crosswalk and the traffic light. People had the time and space to encounter and negotiate with each other directly.

Historically, transportation investments have favored those who have access to cars. The Collier-Burns Act, passed in 1947, reoriented

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the state highway system from multipurpose rural roads to limited-access superhighways and extended them into the cities for the first time. Republican President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Federal Highway Act of 1956 devoting $25 billion to reorienting the American landscape to the automobile. Black neighborhoods were often gutted by new freeways (see introduction). These planning choices have left multigenerational scars that physically divide communities, promote segregation and disinvestment, and perpetuate poverty.15 Simultaneously, public transit was underfunded, often exacerbating underlying inequities as inadequate service made communities car-dependent or commuting times excruciatingly long and thus limiting access to jobs, schools, and services. As this book describes, the legacy of slavery and systemic racism has created long-term disparities legible in every aspect of the urban landscape.

“PURPLE-LINING” During 2020 shelter-in-place orders, Oakland, California, was one of the first cities in the country to begin closing streets to traffic. These streets allowed space for physical distancing while making room for walking, rolling, jogging, and biking. They provided critical social services, room for schools, and opportunities for businesses to stay open as the pandemic wore on.16 In cities worldwide, where temporary street closures created safe space for biking during the pandemic, ridership increased by as much as 48 percent.17 Oakland prioritized routes in under-resourced neighborhoods, recognizing that many of the communities hardest hit by the pandemic were those that have the

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least access to parks, open spaces, and streets that are safe for walking and biking. However, these programs were criticized by urbanists for not engaging the community in the process.

Many were asking, who are these streets for?

Dr. Destiny Thomas is a cultural anthropologist and planner, as well as the founder and chief executive officer of Thrivance Project, an organization focused on social justice and racial equity. She argued that because Black and Brown communities were not involved, an opportunity was missed to reverse the legacy of discrimination.18 She refers to this practice as “purple-lining,” an analog to the post– Depression era “redlining.”19 In his book The Color of Law: The Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, Richard Rothstein describes how discriminatory housing policies were repeated in cities throughout the United States, effectively creating the nation’s Black ghettos.20 Redlining was a practice whereby neighborhoods predominantly occupied by people of color were considered high risk for home loans, causing banks to avoid lending in these areas for mortgages and home repairs. Insurance companies wouldn’t offer homeowner’s policies. These racist policies were followed by disinvestment in public infrastructure, including transportation, civil services, parks, and street trees, and have left an indelible mark on the landscape of US cities.

Thomas explained that her use of “purple” came from her own experiences in the Los Angeles Department of Transportation leading community engagement efforts. She described walking into meetings at which her mostly White colleagues—having left her out of conversations—would update plans, and areas of the

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map where Black people lived would be shaded in purple. She said, “We outlawed redlining practices. But it became so ingrained in our processes and policies that no one ever blinks an eye at the fact that the legacy of redlining is still written into everything. To me, purplelining is a reiteration of keeping people out of the process and stripping people of selfdetermination.”21 For Thomas, the process of creating Slow Streets was analogous. As she explained: “I’m excited about open streets, too, but I can’t help but to acknowledge that we have undermined their value by not centering the people who we’re saying they are most beneficial to.” She continued, “We can’t lose sight of the fact that our personal experiences, and relationships to and with the built environment, don’t always match that of other people who, in this crisis, are experiencing disparities, by way of structural racism.”22

somebody, you are open to the possibility that however you start that engagement might not be how you end it.”24

During the pandemic and beyond it, Thomas advocates for a “community planning model” in which decision-making power is shifted to residents. “I think that it’s time for something radical,” she said. “We need to think creatively about how to funnel resources directly to the people who are actual experts in the land use area, which is the people who live on the land.”23 Tamika Butler (see Butler’s essay, “Building Inclusive Cities from the Ground Up”) explained that the community must drive the process. That is true whether advocating for a Slow Street in San Francisco or a bike lane such as the Northside Greenway in Minneapolis (see chapter 2).

“For so long, folks have conflated community outreach and community engagement and they think they’re the same thing,” Butler said.

“Just going out and telling people what you’re going to do is not the same as actually engaging them. Because when you are engaging with

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BLACK LIVES M ATTER In the United States, Thomas makes clear that “‘Safe streets’ are not safe for Black lives.”25 On May 25, 2020, the nation witnessed evidence of this enduring reality when George Floyd, a forty-six-year-old Black man, was murdered in South Minneapolis, Minnesota, by a White police officer. Floyd is one of many Black Americans killed by police on the nation’s streets.26 Captured on video, the footage of Floyd’s murder was instantly seen by many Americans. Street protests erupted throughout the nation (and many parts of the world), reigniting the civil rights movement, with calls voicing “Black Lives Matter” and demands to reallocate police funding. The names of Ahmaud Arbery, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Breonna Taylor, and many other Black people who were killed by White police officers were written on the signs of millions of protesters. Streets provided important sites for protest, reaffirming their fundamental place in civic life.27 As sociologist and criminologist Patrick Sharkey pointed out in his book Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence: “These deaths are not independent, isolated incidents. They are only the most visible examples of a national approach to confronting violent crime, and the larger problem of urban poverty, in the nation’s poorest, most segregated neighborhoods.”28 Today, emerging community policing models empower what Sharkey described as the “new guardians” who care for their neighborhoods through a benevolent community presence.29

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These approaches are explored in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood (see chapter 1). They speak to the history of the Black Panthers for Self Defense, whose “survival programs” in the mid-1960s resisted police brutality and provided food, clothing, and safe passage in Black communities.30

RECLAIMING OUR STREETS For the benefit of humanity and the sustainability of the planet, this is a time to reclaim the streets for people. As Janette Sadik-Khan, former commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation, described, “If cities truly want a future where more people choose to take buses or trains, to bike or walk, then cities must invest in trains and buses, bikes and better streets.”31 Congestion pricing, which requires drivers to pay a toll for entering the central business district, has been approved in New York (see chapter 3). Estimates project $1 billion in revenue from the program, part of which will go to pay for public transportation.32 A $10 billion federal pilot program was proposed to help communities tear down urban highways and invest in communities of color through the Restoring Neighborhoods and Strengthening Communities Program (also known as the “Highways to Boulevards” initia-

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tive).33 These large-scale funding approaches are necessary to create equitable public transportation and rebuild communities that have suffered from long-term disinvestment.

Equity will require commitments that no longer continue the flawed “separate but equal” approaches of the past, but, rather, ensure that greater resources will be devoted to the communities that deserve them. To be successful, these investments must be directed by the type of community planning model defined by Thomas and an open-ended engagement process described by Butler to ensure that community investment is activated by communities themselves.

The streets will continue to be the place in which Americans assert their democratic rights.

From the freeway revolts of the 1950s, the civil rights protests of the 1960s, and the bike-ins of the 1970s, to the Critical Mass bike rides started in the 1990s and the Black Lives Matter protests today, Americans have occupied the streets and made their voices heard.34 Let’s make sure that the calls for change deliver streets that are the stage for healthy lives, safe cycling, affordable transit, and meaningful connections, regaining what has been lost by putting cars in the center of our public spaces.

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CHAPTER 1

SAN FRANCISCO PLACES BY PEOPLE

In 2005, a San Francisco collective of artists and designers called Rebar ignited a global street intervention, which later became known as Park(ing) Day. John Bela, one of Rebar’s founders, said, “We observed that 70 percent of the right-of-way was allocated to vehicles while only 20 or 30 percent was for people on foot or bike. That just seemed like an imbalance.”1 The group decided to reclaim a small piece of the road. On a sunny weekday morning in November, Rebar members fed a downtown San Francisco parking meter and set up a temporary park with grass, a bench, and a young bay tree.

There the park remained for two hours until the

meter ran out. They rolled up the sod, packed away the bench and the tree, gave the spot a sweep, and left. Bela recalled the day, saying, “When people sat down on the bench and began having a conversation, we realized it was a success.”2 Rebar wasn’t the first to reclaim San Francisco streets for pedestrians. Artist Bonnie Sherk had introduced portable parks under freeway overpasses and alleyways in the 1970s. But in 2005, the idea took off. Flooded by requests from other cities, Rebar published an open-source how-to manual empowering others to create their own installations.3 Many people were eager to see cities change, and

The first Park(ing) intervention in downtown San Francisco, which instigated Park(ing) Day (2005) (Source: John Bela)

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Park(ing) Day allowed them to take this process into their own hands. Park(ing) Day is now an annual open-source global event, a day when people take back parking spots to make spaces for people in hundreds of cities all over the world.4 By 2009, cities across the United States were finding inventive ways to reclaim city streets with tactical experiments using quick, low-cost methods. These increasingly common practices became known as “tactical urbanism.”5 Street interventions were not just the creation of guerrilla artists and activist planners; they were the work of transportation agency directors and mayors. The introduction of New York City’s plaza program, including closing Times Square to traffic, set a new bar for cities.

Inspired by Park(ing) Day, the San Francisco Planning Department began an official program repurposing parking spaces into what they called parklets. By design, parklets are temporary microparks, permitted with one-year renewable permits; they usually occupy one to three curbside parking spaces.6 Parklets often include seating areas, planters and greenery, bike racks, and café tables, but in contrast to more typical restaurant patio or sidewalk seating areas, parklets are public spaces. They are an extension of the sidewalk into the parking lane and offer a fast, inexpensive way to create much-needed open space on city streets. Rebar strongly advocated for parklets to be public, and today each has a small sign indicating that seating and amenities are open to all. Parklets are constructed and maintained by residents and local businesses in public-private partnerships with the city’s Planning Department.

Robin Abad-Ocubillo, the director of Shared Spaces at San Francisco Planning, ran the parklet program for ten years after his tenure at the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.

Working in parks gave him an appreciation of their democratic influence. “Our shared

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open spaces are the venue and the vehicle for connecting us as individuals across class, race, and other demographic divisions. They cultivate civic engagement and our sense of stewardship,” he said.7 These principles could be applied not only to San Francisco’s large parks, but to the small ones as well. Abad-Ocubillo and his colleagues envisioned the 25 percent of city land given up to roads as the perfect site for a new park system.8 Since the parklet program began, close to 80 parklets have been installed, turning more than 100 parking spaces green across the city and inspiring similar programs worldwide.9 However, the biggest expansion of the program came during the COVID-19 pandemic when, as an emergency response, a version of parklets was initiated as the Shared Spaces program. Within one year, close to two thousand applications were approved, transforming many of the city’s commercial corridors and supporting the operation of businesses during the pandemic.10 Despite the open-space benefits of parklets, their design-heavy execution by upscale coffee shops and restaurants associated them early on with the forces of gentrification and displacement. They have been called “utopian window dressing on gentrifying development plans.”11 San Francisco is one of the most expensive and challenging housing markets in the United States.12 Minimum-wage workers must work more than four full-time jobs to afford a two-bedroom unit in the city.13 The Mission District, which is home to at least fifteen parklets, has become a symbol of these forces. With the city’s highest eviction rate, the neighborhood is steadily losing its long-term Latinx population and has the third highest rates of unhoused people in the city.14 Bela, once a resident of the Mission, rejects this view.

“In the Mission, along the 24th Street corridor, they didn’t want parklets as they saw them as vectors of gentrification,” he said. “However, gentrification and displacement are a bigger 13

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structural issue of systemic inequality that shouldn’t be conflated with access to safe sidewalks, public transit, and a quality public realm in that neighborhood. How many cycles of disinvestment are we going to allow before we address these systemic causes? It’s critical that any public space investment be distributed equitably throughout the city.”15 As a planner, Abad-Ocubillo sought to guide the parklet program to invest in communities, not just commerce. “We emphasized technical assistance and outreach to parts of the city that needed extra support because of our legacy of neighborhood disinvestment, including less well-provisioned park spaces,” he said. “We diversified the composition of parklet sponsors to include cultural institutions such as art galleries, youth development organizations, and educational institutions that could experiment with programming public space.”16 Swissnex created the Event Machine parklet, which hosted film screenings, panel discussions, and workshops. A Mission District gallery used its parklet for rotating art exhibitions. A progressive science museum called the Exploratorium created Ciencia Pública, in collaboration with the Boys & Girls Clubs of San Francisco, and installed it outside the Buena Vista Horace Mann Community School as an outdoor lab for science classes.17 San Francisco has even experimented with installing bathrooms in parking spots, such as the P Planter designed by Hyphae Design Laboratory, which uses plants as biofilters to treat urine and wastewater, aiming to solve the problem of public urination.18

Opposite, top: Four Barrel Coffee Parklet on Valencia Street, San Francisco (2011) (Source: Lucy Goodhart). Opposite, bottom: Ciencia Pública parklet, designed for informal science learning at Buena Vista Horace Mann School, planned by San Francisco Boys & Girls Clubs and a team from the Exploratorium, San Francisco (2017) (Source: Amy Snyder, Exploratorium).

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The trial contributed to the Public Toilet Project masterplan in the Tenderloin neighborhood.

It is not just parking spots that have been reclaimed in San Francisco, but entire streets.

With growing recognition of the public appetite to create public spaces, city officials built upon the parklet program and other public space experiments to create the Places for People Program in 2016.19 This interagency permitting framework aims to lower the barriers to participation for all the city’s communities. It integrates permitting processes for curbs, sidewalks, streets, and lots into one public space program called Groundplay. With the tagline “When imagination goes public,” the program intends to enable a fast-paced grassroots process that promotes resident initiatives to create and activate inventive public spaces on sidewalks, curbsides, roadways, crosswalks, and public parcels.20 Jodie Medeiros, executive director of Walk San Francisco, said that “experiments like Park(ing) Day, Parklets, and Groundplay have enabled us to do a lot more with city streets. These pilots go even a step further with car-free streets.”21 Now these tactical approaches are being used to retake roadways with Vision Zero quick-build projects deployed to help make San Franciscans safer from the threat of speeding cars.22 In January 2020, San Francisco realized a long-envisioned goal of eliminating cars from ten blocks of its central commercial corridor, Market Street. Improvements at intersections were installed to make the street safer for pedestrians and cyclists.23 Within the first two months, bike and scooter usage increased by 25 percent, and bus travel speeds went up an average of 6 percent.24 When the pandemic hit, the city expanded car-free streets by deploying a 45-plus-mile network of slow streets, supporting walking and biking.25 In March 2021, Mayor London Breed announced legislation to transition Shared Spaces from an emergency 15

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SAN FR ANCISCO PARKLETS

2005: 1 PARKING SPOT

2011: 36 PARKLETS

2019: 76 PARKLETS

(SOURCE: SAN FRANCISCO PLANNING DEPARTMENT)

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2005 2011 2019 2021

2021: 2,032 APPROVED PERMITS FOR SHARED SPACES

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Public spaces in the Mission District created under the Shared Spaces Program to allow for physical distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, San Francisco (2020) (Source: Alison Sant)

response into a permanent program, helping to move San Francisco more aggressively toward the goal of making pedestrians safe.26

WALKING IN THE CITY Traffic violence is a persistent threat in San Francisco, where every year approximately thirty people lose their lives and two hundred more are seriously injured while walking and biking on the city’s roadways.27 Vision Zero SF identified a network of streets, called the High Injury Network, where there is a higher incidence of severe and fatal collisions.28 More than 70 percent of collisions occur on just 12 percent of streets—often located in communities of color—where many residents are low income or seniors who rely on walking and transit as their primary means of transportation.29 A confluence of systemic factors, including decades of funneling investment in street safety to affluent or gentrifying areas and housing policies that concentrate poverty 18

around highways and industry, make lowincome people twice as likely as others to be the victims of fatal crashes.30 In San Francisco, this silent epidemic has made it critical to focus on areas of the city disproportionately affected by traffic violence.

Among these is the Tenderloin, a forty-block section of downtown San Francisco bordered

by Union Square to the east and City Hall to the west. It is one of the most diverse populations in San Francisco and home to more than 28,000 people, including a mix of Asian, White, Latinx, and Black residents.31 The area, which has the city’s densest housing, four times higher than the city average, is home to many families, seniors, and immigrants.32 It has the most children per capita of any neighborhood in the city and the greatest number of families living below the poverty line.33 Eighty-three percent of Tenderloin households do not own cars, and these residents walk, bike, and take public transit instead of driving.34

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Although the Tenderloin is one of San Francisco’s most walked neighborhoods, it is the least safe.35 Nearly every street in the Tenderloin is designated as a “high-injury corridor” due to traffic crashes.36 In fact, the roads were designed for speed. Most are one-way, constructed to increase speeds for through traffic traveling to and from the freeways and downtown San Francisco.37 For generations, Tenderloin residents have suffered blatant neglect for their safety in favor of the swift movement of automobile traffic. In 1988, neighbors strung banners across high-speed streets in protest and warned cars to “Drive Slowly,” but today their calls are still relevant.38 Historically, the neighborhood has acted as a “containment zone,” a place where activities like open drug dealing and use, prostitution, and homelessness are condensed to avoid spread to other parts of the city.39 It is also a neighborhood where social services offering shelter, meals, clothing, medical aid, and addiction recovery programs are gathered, keeping many in need of these services local.40 This long-term pattern of containment has neglected the lives of Tenderloin residents. In 2019, twenty-nine people were killed in traffic violence in San Francisco.41 Five of the deaths recorded were concentrated in the Tenderloin, outraging community activists.

Simon Bertrang, executive director of the Tenderloin Community Benefit District (TLCBD), said that “the neighborhood’s role as a containment zone produces a general disregard for the people who live there. That perception produces the kind of recklessness and negligence that kills and injures people.”42 Community organizations, including the TLCBD, have protested for years to advance neighborhood safety. Finally, a Tenderloin Traffic Safety Task Force was formed in 2018 to demand the city be responsive, invest in street improvements, work alongside residents to make streets safer,

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and provide emotional support services for the many residents who experience trauma from traffic violence.43 The group combines community-based organizations and citywide transportation advocacy groups.44 As described below, their requests have begun to change the Tenderloin’s streets.45 As Bertrang said, “We want our streets to be for the neighborhood, not highways for people to move from one side of the city to the other.”46 Bertrang believes that the positive activities of the neighborhood could be enhanced by better infrastructure. At its best, people occupy the sidewalk for community barbeques and bring chairs down from their apartments to sit together. Small businesses and restaurants are fixtures in the neighborhood and take responsibility for looking after their sidewalks and streets. There has been some progress on Taylor Street, where a Vision Zero quick-build project has created temporary improvements.47 Permanent designs are planned to protect pedestrian safety and improve public space with wider sidewalks, seating, public artwork, plants, trees, and trash cans while officially creating a Transgender Cultural District, reflecting the neighborhood’s cultural legacy.48 The city also constructed quick-build projects on Golden Gate Avenue and Leavenworth Street, and temporary Slow Streets have been installed during the COVID-19 pandemic.49 Providing spaces for neighborhood culture is not only part of the neighborhood’s character; it is a part of its safety. Patrick Sharkey, author of Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence, pointed out that social cohesion and trust within a community are often the key to limiting violence—not police enforcement.50 The prevalence of crime, homelessness, filth, violence, and forceful police presence impact the safety of the street and can cause residents to fear walking to school, work, and daily needs.

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Tenderloin residents rally for traffic safety on Eddy Street, San Francisco (1988) (Source: Lance Woodruff/Dogwood + Lotus)

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Residents blocking traffic in a protest for safety on Eddy and Taylor Streets, San Francisco (2019) (Source: Tenderloin Community Benefit District)

“There’s a lot of street culture that helps contribute to the feelings of safety,” said Bertrang.

“What doesn’t is the intense, open-air drug trade. The intensity of the people, many who are not welcomed anywhere else in the city, who are addicted, using publicly, and end up on the sidewalks in the Tenderloin. That concentration of people and chaotic energy can make it difficult to create a neighborhood that feels safe.” Decades of neglect and disinvestment have created problems that must be remedied by supporting the people and organizations already at work in the Tenderloin and providing new ways for them to direct the future of their neighborhood and the safety of its streets.51

THE NEW GUARDIANS

violence in poor neighborhoods. He wrote: “The new guardians looking out over city streets are not just public and private security guards but also residents, mobilized in new organizations specifically formed to build community life and control violence. And their presence is a crucial part of the story about how urban communities have changed over the past twenty years.”52 In the Tenderloin, a network of public space guardians has been slowly growing. Their model is to create a nonthreatening presence on the street that inspires safety and is born out of community responsibility. By bringing a benevolent attitude to the neighborhood, they make streets accessible and safe, even for a short time. Their care makes all the difference to children walking home from school.

Sharkey argues that the actions led by community groups have been critical to addressing

In 2008, Safe Passage was instigated by concerned mothers from La Voz Latina, a local 21

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Safe Passage corner captains help students safely cross Turk Street, San Francisco (2019) (Source: Tenderloin Community Benefit District)

organization supporting the needs of the Latinx population living in the Tenderloin.53 This group would gather to discuss ways of keeping their children safe in a neighborhood with open drug use and dealing, people with mental health problems, and gun violence. Margarita Mena, one of the mothers who started the program, recalled its beginnings: “One day, there was a child that was missing. This boy left school and was supposed to go to his after-school program, but nobody saw him there. The mother got very scared. So, people gathered together to try to look for him. Fortunately, they found him safe and unharmed. In order to avoid a repeat of the situation, the mothers decided to take action.”54 They conceived of Safe Passage as a way to supervise neighborhood children to and from school by positioning corner captains at high-risk intersections.55 According to Mena, they made sure not to threaten anyone on these 22

corners, telling them, “We are not here to take you away. We have come to protect the children and get them safely to where they need to go.”56 Over time, she believes that the people on the streets of the Tenderloin have come to understand and respect Safe Passage. Even if they are dealing drugs, they tend to move elsewhere when the kids come through. By being a visible presence on the street, Safe Passage is helping promote a culture of safety in the neighborhood.

Mena, working as a corner captain today, believes that their efforts have dramatically helped the families of the neighborhood. “The changes are big for families,” she said. “Since the beginning, when parents started to notice all the corner captains, they started feeling confident. Many have to work when their kids are getting out of school, but they know that

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the corner captains will ensure that the kids get safely home or to their after-school programs. The children feel safe when the corner captains are around and often say ‘good afternoon’ or ‘thank you so much.’”57 In 2016, Safe Passage was formalized as a program of the TLCBD. It has expanded to cover fifteen city blocks, serving two hundred neighborhood children daily. Through the TLCBD, Safe Passage has now grown into a small workforce development program employing seven part-time corner captains on staff in addition to awarding stipends to approximately thirty volunteers.58 The program also provides chaperones for the neighborhood’s approximately seven thousand seniors.

Safe Passage is not the only group working to make the streets safer in the Tenderloin. In 2013, Mike Anderer was a schoolteacher in the neighborhood’s De Marillac Academy. That year, he helped start a block safety group on the 100 block of the school’s street, Golden Gate Avenue. As Anderer recounted, the idea caught on. “It grew to encompass neighbors on the 200 and 300 block. Then it became the mother of all block safety groups and a hub where lots of city representatives and neighborhood leaders met,” he said.59 This group was a collection of residents and local businesses who organized to take responsibility for their public spaces.

Resident Eric Rozell is one of the 300 block group organizers. “It all really began in our residential building’s lobby, with shared complaints among our neighbors as we came and went, about how seriously the situation outside our doors had declined,” he recalled. “Our most active members have been living in the building for many years and have memory of a time when we didn’t have drug dealers and users camped in our doorway. As we kept running into each other and our frustration grew, we began to think of ways to improve the situation.”60 They engaged in simple acts like sweeping the sidewalk, speaking positively with people on the

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street, and planning for emergencies.61 Block safety groups meet monthly to connect as neighbors, lead community-building activities such as hosting public art installations in their storefronts, and participate in local festivals, such as the Tenderloin Halloween Crawl, that strengthened neighborhood pride.62 Block safety groups have begun to focus on other areas of the Tenderloin as well. They volunteer for Safe Passage and have been involved in advocacy to reduce open-air drug dealing.

Anderer also helped create an outgrowth of the Block Safety Groups called Four Corner Friday.63 It started in 2015 on the 100 block of Golden Gate and was quickly formalized.

Concerned with neighborhood safety, local business owners and organizations began activating the sidewalk on Friday evenings, putting out balloons, passing out food, and playing music.64 While being careful not to make people feel unwelcome, these acts aimed to marginalize activities like drug dealing by elevating activity on the street, creating acts of kindness, and generating a sense of community. Four Corner Friday is now held throughout the neighborhood on the first Friday of each month.65 As Anderer recalled, “Little by little, we took responsibility for our sidewalks.

We tried to give people opportunities to have positive experiences in these shared spaces.

We would take students out on our corner, and they would give away hot chocolate. They would engage with a homeless person, who before they may have been fearful of. Students were having really positive exchanges with people on the street, including eye contact and smiles.

That was the idea.” Today, six block safety groups are working throughout the Tenderloin.

According to Sharkey, groups like them began to form across the United States starting in the early 1990s when, as he wrote, “groups of neighbors began to organize, on a large scale, to reclaim the streets around them.”66 Today, Safe Passage, block safety groups, and Four Corner 23

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Friday are all supported by the framework of the TLCBD.

people,” she said. “Every day it was a possibility, even in prison. So, they’re not real quick to react; they figure out how to de-escalate.”72

URBAN ALCHEM Y Anderer continues to work in the Tenderloin and is currently director of strategic partnerships and special projects at a nonprofit organization called Urban Alchemy.67 Urban Alchemy creates economic opportunities for men and women who have been previously incarcerated, many of whom were formerly serving life sentences. Prison reforms have made these individuals eligible for parole, but not without considerable effort. In earning their freedom, they have had to transform themselves and their attitudes to society in the process.68 As Anderer noted, “Those who really did their work are very motivated to give back to the communities that, at one time in their lives, they were tearing apart.”69 Many of Urban Alchemy’s employees now work in the Tenderloin neighborhood, making its streets, parks, and people safer. Urban Alchemy was started in 2018 by Lena Miller, a passionate and tireless activist. Miller grew up in Bayview–Hunters Point and is well aware of how limited job opportunities make the illegal drug trade one of the few economic options for many young Black people (see chapter 10).70 She said, “If people don’t have a way to make money, then they get into the underground economy.”71 She saw an opportunity to apply former inmates’ unique capacities to programs that could benefit communities like the Tenderloin, offering legitimate employment in the process. Miller, who holds a doctorate in psychology, believed that Urban Alchemy employees’ life experiences prepared them with the social and emotional intelligence to handle any situation. “These guys have been on prison yards, they’ve been in riots, they’ve spent decades in situations where people were trying to kill them, or they were trying to kill other 24

The name Urban Alchemy describes its approach. Alchemy is a metaphor for the methods staff use to shift chaotic and violent streets to calm ones—from metal to gold. Employees are called practitioners to convey the alchemical process of this transformation. They help create a positive experience, not by criminalizing people or engaging in punitive methods, but by setting a high standard of social behavior through their presence. Urban Alchemy began serving the Tenderloin by maintaining city-run public toilets called Pit Stops. Their presence made these facilities safe and accessible, providing dignity to those who are unsheltered.

They quickly expanded to providing litter reduction services in the neighborhood, ensuring safe, clean, and accessible sidewalks. Soon they partnered with Bay Area Rapid Transit and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) to create a presence on public transit elevators, keeping them operational.

In 2020, two Tenderloin neighborhood parks, Turk-Hyde Mini Park and Sergeant Macaulay Park, reopened in the spring and summer after major renovations.73 In an area of the city with few parks, these open spaces are essential for the neighborhood’s high concentration of children and families. Once reopened, the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department hired Urban Alchemy to ensure a safe and welcoming experience for park goers.74 Bertrang said, “These sites have been an experiment, and we’ve been very pleased with the local results. At Turk-Hyde Mini Park, Urban Alchemy has made it feel calm and safe for families to bring their kids and for seniors to come. It’s still pretty intense right across the street where there is dense dealing and using of drugs. And yet, the corner is calm.”75

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Anderer explained that “because of their life experience, our practitioners can see and understand everything that’s going on out there.” He said, “They are ‘them’ whether ‘them’ is the intravenous drug user, the dealer on the street, the gang leader, or the person who is unhoused—they’ve been through all of that.

They’ve also survived it and transformed that experience into something positive.”76 In training sessions, Miller validates her employees.

She believes that their leadership experiences in gangs, intuitive read of social dynamics, and hyperawareness of potential violence are transferable and necessary skills. She often tells them, “All those years that you did in prison, that you thought was a waste of time, you’ve been getting a triple PhD in all this stuff.

The world may not appreciate it, but we do. Now you’re the one with the superpower to change this Pandora’s box that is let loose on the world.

Nobody knows what to do, now only you do. You have the skills.”77

STATE OF EMERGENCY No place in San Francisco was hit harder during the pandemic than the Tenderloin. In a community where homelessness is already routine, these numbers increased during the crisis. In January 2020, the number of homeless tents in the Tenderloin hovered between 100 and 150.78

By June 2020, there were more than 400 tents on the street.79 Encampments overwhelmed sidewalks throughout the Tenderloin, and residents felt unsafe leaving their homes.80 “With the pandemic, the streets are even worse,” said Mena. “There have been shootings in the middle of the day, the drugs and drug dealing are worse, and the sidewalks are really, really dirty.

It’s impossible to keep them clean because of the number of people that are living outside.

Most people in these buildings are families with children, and parents have to go out to get some groceries or take their children for a walk, and those things are happening where they are.

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Families don’t feel safe.” Ultimately, the city was sued by six plaintiffs, including the University of California, Hastings College of Law, which compelled San Francisco to find solutions to crowded encampments, rampant drug dealing, and unclean conditions.81 Despite the urgency for open space in the Tenderloin during the COVID-19 crisis, the city’s response was delayed. As Slow Streets programs closed miles of streets to cars across the city, just one block (and several blocks of parking lanes) had been closed in the Tenderloin.82 These closures were intended to accommodate people in need of services and meals at neighborhood support centers, such as St. Anthony’s and Glide Memorial, where streets were used to distribute food and clothing, medical services, counseling, and information.83 On the city’s official Slow Streets program map, the Tenderloin was indicated by a yellow rectangle, marking it as an area of concern, but without specific plans for street closures appropriate to the problem’s scale. Bertrang was frustrated by the response. “As the city rolled out its third round of Slow Streets, we were still waiting for ours,” he said.84 According to the SFMTA, keeping the Tenderloin’s fast-moving one-way streets open to traffic was one reason the neighborhood was “not a good fit for the program.”85 By Labor Day weekend 2020, just one block of Turk Street was closed for six hours to provide a play street to neighborhood kids, and four blocks of Jones Street were planned for the temporary removal of traffic lanes to provide a “physical distancing lane.”86 Greg Moore of Safe Passage put it bluntly: “You’re talking about decades of institutional inaction and operating procedure that has created these impacts. Over generations, the belief has been instilled that this is all we can expect.”87 This neglect fueled protests blocking the intersection of Taylor and Eddy Streets to demand more street closures.88 By necessity, streets 25

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SLOWING THE TENDERLOIN’S STREETS 1. ST. ANTHONY FOUNDATION 2. URBAN ALCHEMY PIT STOP LOCATION 3. PLAY STREET

CIT Y HALL

(SOURCE: TLCBD; SFMTA; SFDPW)

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SHARED SPACES SLOW STREETS PHYSICAL DISTANCING LANE/ PARKING LANE CLOSURES PLAY STREETS PARKS TENDERLOIN NEIGHBORHOOD ASSESSMENT PLAN AREA 20 MPH SPEED LIMIT AREA QUICK-BUILD PROJECTS EXISTING NO TURN ON RED INTERSECTIONS PARKLETS/PLACES FOR PEOPLE

had been abandoned for months under shelterin-place orders, until people filled them to protest injustice when George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020 (see chapter 2). In San Francisco, thousands joined Black Lives Matter protests on Market Street night after night. Just a few blocks away, the Tenderloin held reverberating demonstrations. On June 19, hundreds showed up to protest for Black transgender rights and equality for people of color, beginning at the federal courthouse, crossing Market Street, and ending in the Tenderloin.89 And on June 23, the Black Unhoused Lives Matter rally at the Tenderloin San Francisco Police Department station resisted the unjust criminalization of homelessness and called for defunding the police.90 Market Street has long been a site for labor demonstrations, strikes, transportationrelated activism, and political marches. In 1934, in the West Coast waterfront strike, 150,000 Longshoremen and other marine workers hit the streets, shutting down the port in a four-day general strike to protest for workers’

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rights. Antiwar marches were held there in 1967 against the Vietnam War, in 1991 against the Gulf War, and in 2003 against the Iraq War. Market Street was the site of the AIDS/ ARC vigil from 1985 to 1995 and has been the epicenter of the annual San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride parade for more than fifty years. In 1992, Critical Mass demonstrations, a monthly bike ride taking over the streets, began along Market Street, becoming an international movement that continues today. While San Franciscans continued to be confined to their homes during the pandemic in 2020, the streets fulfilled a critical role as the locus for expressing the American right to gather and protest. Black Lives Matter demonstrations around the United States underscored that ending police brutality is critical to ensuring that the streets remain a place where people—all people—have the right to assemble.91 Protests also focused public attention on the systemic inequities that deteriorated the lives of Tenderloin residents during the pandemic.

Sheryl Evans Davis, executive director of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, was instrumental in focusing City Hall on the crisis there. Davis has spent her career leading community-based organizations and advocating for the people living in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods across San Francisco.92 During the pandemic, she established the Tenderloin Working Group, bringing together community members, nonprofit organizations, businesses, and other stakeholders with the Emergency Operations Center, a citywide group tasked with managing the pandemic. Together, they created routines of communication and city accountability for directing emergency response in the Tenderloin. These efforts produced the “Tenderloin Neighborhood Plan for COVID-19.”93 Davis described how the community led this effort: “To work with the folks in the Tenderloin, 27

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I didn’t go into the Tenderloin and say, ‘This is what we’re going to do.’ They came and said, ‘This is what we want.’” She made certain their requests were heard. “I worked to make connections that would amplify their voices.”94 Community members asked for increased pedestrian safety, space for physical distancing, a safe tent policy, health and social services, and access to bathrooms, food, and water. Most importantly, they sought continued collaboration between the city and community-based organizations so that, post-COVID, the Tenderloin would receive the support it deserves.95

THE ROAD AHEAD

Among the solutions created by the Tenderloin Neighborhood Plan were city-sanctioned camping areas called Safe Sleeping Villages.96 These sites provided protected encampments with spaced tent sites, meals, toilets, hygiene kits, and access to showers and laundry services for the unhoused.97 Urban Alchemy was hired to staff Safe Sleeping Villages to ensure the safety and dignity of the people living in them. Reflecting the last words of Eric Garner, George Floyd, and so many others in the hands of police officers, Miller pledged, “I promise you, by the time we’re done with this, you’ll never hear ‘I can’t breathe’ again.”98 Most recently, Urban Alchemy was hired by Hastings College of Law for a six-month experiment to test a community policing model that brings a sustained presence to the blocks around its campus. Rather than rely on police enforcement, this model tested positive and insistent engagement, holding people to standards of behavior. The experiment worked. Students and staff reported that having Urban Alchemy there made a dramatic and positive difference on the street.

Its approach encouraged peaceful interactions and was carried out with dignity and respect.99 At the end of the pilot, Urban Alchemy’s contract was extended by another six months.

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In April 2021, the Tenderloin became the first neighborhood in the city to limit speeds to 20 miles per hour and outlaw cars from making a right turn on a red light.100 Quickbuild projects, sidewalk widening, and street safety improvements on four major streets are scheduled for completion in 2021.101 Street closures that have provided crucial space for social services are being proposed for permanent pedestrianization.102 More play streets are planned and will occur more often.103 As neighborhood children returned to school after the pandemic, a new blockscale parklet, called Safe Passage Park (SPark), was constructed along a Safe Passage route to local schools. It creates an outdoor play area for local youth, seating areas for residents, and open space for community classes and gatherings.104 The park was designed and constructed by Bay Area design firms Envelope and Studio O in collaboration with local block safety groups and community volunteers (see chapter 10). The park is seen by local advocates as a model for creating more public spaces throughout the neighborhood.105 To complement these efforts, the TLCBD and other neighborhood community groups envision an expanded role for Urban Alchemy and other urban guardians to steward these public facilities and ensure that they are usable by all Tenderloin residents. Led by the TLCBD, Opposite, top: Safe Sleeping Village at city hall hosted by Urban Alchemy Practitioners to provide shelter for unhoused people during the COVID-19 pandemic, San Francisco (2020) (Source: Santiago Mejia, ©San Francisco Chronicle/Polaris). Opposite, bottom: Neighbors volunteer for a community build day to create Safe Passage Park in the Tenderloin (2021) (Source: Douglas Burnham).

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the coalition has requested that the city fund a multimillion-dollar program to create a community-based safety program for the neighborhood. Bertrang is optimistic that the combination of prototyping through quick-build approaches developed in the years before the pandemic and the strategies of emergency response will create the momentum for change.

“The city is supporting all this, and it feels like we might be able to transform the Tenderloin to really increase pedestrian safety and to make public spaces that are available for people,” he said.106 As Sharkey discussed, this trend is growing nationally.107 Acknowledging that police enforcement can be negligently violent, community models are emerging in which neighborhoods are kept safe through the relationships of urban guardians who understand local dynamics and protect communities with mutual respect.108

Community guardians are hard at work in the Tenderloin, creating new models of workforce development, community policing, and neighborhood altruism. They are doing what they can to improve people’s lives and make the streets accessible to all. This work deserves public recognition and support. Sharkey claimed that there is an opportunity to fight the war on violence in neighborhoods like the Tenderloin by relying on community resilience rather than enforcement. “The residents and institutions that look out over city streets must be supported on the front lines, as these urban guardians have the greatest capacity to create safe, strong urban communities,” he wrote.112 Urban resiliency requires that cities no longer overlook underresourced neighborhoods and communities of color, routinely or in times of crisis. Remedying the systemic imbalances that have concentrated poverty, drugs, violence, and homelessness in neighborhoods like the Tenderloin must be a part of reclaiming our streets for people.

With expansions during the COVID pandemic, Urban Alchemy now employs seven hundred people. According to Anderer, “We’re seizing on every chance to redistribute wealth by continuing to seek opportunities for our workforce to receive the wages that they deserve. It’s about trying to create wealth in communities that were not given the opportunities to build it because the systems were set up against them.”109 Miller is demanding higher wages for her employees, in some cases making them equivalent to the salaries of police officers or hotel workers. As she said, “Police officers are making about 100 grand a year starting off. Our people are making around 40 grand, $16.50 an hour. They need to be paid more.”110 Better living wages also validate their unique skills and experience. Davis aims to make the future different. “Hopefully, the long-term impact is that these strategies, relationships, and efforts don’t go away once the pandemic is over, but that we continue to value the building of these relationships and let them inform the city process,” she said.111 30

STREETS FOR PEOPLE San Francisco is a city that has long experimented with ways to initiate change. It has shown that individual residents, businesses, and community groups can transform their cities. From reclaiming parking spots to activating their streets, people are organizing to create safe, livable, and car-free public spaces.

Equal access to public space is critical to a healthy democracy and a just society. Although closing streets to cars helps mitigate climate change, it also empowers civic participation.

It gives people access to the outdoors, access to their neighbors, and a connection to one another. The freedom to walk, bike, occupy, and peacefully protest on city streets safely is a right that all must share. Unintentionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has allowed new ways of making streets for people. It has pushed cities to rapidly reallocate streets and sidewalks for

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the public good. These spaces have tested ways to provide access to the outdoors, emergency medical services, food, and areas to gather and sleep. Emergencies exaggerate the endemic conditions of neighborhoods such as the Tenderloin, where poverty, drugs, and violence have been condensed and ignored, even in a wealthy city like San Francisco.

The pandemic exposed these glaring inequalities, shining an undeniable light on long-term neglect. The streets were the stage for this tragedy; they were also the site for its remedies.

City streets are undoubtedly made better with infrastructure that constrains cars and offers safe places to walk, ride, and rest. However, these spaces are only accessible when residents feel safe using them. The insistent presence of urban guardians assures parents, their children, the elderly, and those that are unhoused that they are looked after. This seed of community health is rooted in the Tenderloin, but it needs support to thrive. The Tenderloin and many other communities like it have organized around a vision for their neighborhood. We must invest in their capacity to act on it. Access to jobs, neighborhood economic development, and affordable housing will be key to ensuring an inclusive city. As Mena said, “We cannot do this alone,” and as Moore added, “It will take

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everybody. Not only the village of the Tenderloin but all of San Francisco, California, and the country to make the change.”113 As Bela noted when reflecting on these times, “The tool kit of tactical urbanism, short-term experiments leading to long-term change are more relevant now than ever. There is a new sense of urgency around how we use our public space and our streets, but we need to ask, who are they for?” The events of 2020 will certainly shape the design of city streets in years to come, but they also have the potential to shape much more. Bela continued, “It has become clear that we need to support local economies.

We need to meet our needs within our communities and rely on our neighbors. We need to create space for the unhoused, mentally ill, and elderly because we conceive of them as part of our community, not somebody else’s problem.

This COVID experience is training us for the big crisis, which is the climate crisis.”114 We have an opportunity today to learn from the shocks we encounter now to better prepare the road ahead. Creating community resilience demands looking after those who are the most exposed to the future crisis of outbreaks, natural disasters, and storms. Only then can we ensure that our streets may serve us all.

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