Bicycle parking in front of David Baker’s house, managed by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

San Francisco has recently sprouted an increasing number of clever and improvisational public spaces. Every one of them was designed to be temporary, with the possibility of becoming permanent. And all of them have been discreetly carved out of the city’s 25 percent surface area that’s normally reserved for cars, not people. Last week urban designer Andres Power was the first person ever given a “Street Champion” award, at a party thrown for the Great Streets Project by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and architect David Baker. The party raised nearly $6,500 for the Great Streets project, and raffled off a new PUBLIC bike. A photo auction that included an image by Tim Griffith, who provided the cover for Metropolis last month, raised $2,200.

 The story of how these spaces, both temporal (Sunday Streets) and physical (Pavement to Parks ) come to pass is a saga with many heroes, and a few villains. One space, Castro Commons, is now a permanent park. After the event, I caught up with Power and asked him about city politics, community input, and other matters.

Read more…