About Pavement to Parks

Background

San Francisco’s streets and public rights-of-way make up 25% of the city’s land area; more space than all the public parks combined. Many of our streets are excessively wide and contain large underutilized areas, especially at intersections. San Francisco’s “Pavement to Parks” program seeks to test the possibilities of these underused areas of land by quickly and inexpensively converting them into new pedestrian spaces.

Experimentation and Testing

Each Pavement to Parks project is intended to be a public laboratory for the City to work with local communities to temporarily test new ideas in the public realm. Materials and design interventions are meant to be temporary and easily reversible, should the trial run demonstrate the need for design changes. After testing their performance, some spaces are reclaimed permanently as public open spaces. Seating, landscaping, and paving treatments are common features of all projects.