Market Street Revitalization, Meeting #3
I finally made it to a Market Street Revitalization meeting (like I thought I finally might)! So, it was somewhat of an introduction by the folks who have been working on it for a while. It was good. As you can see, there were about 25 or so people, there. Lots of people are excited about making Market Street a better place to ride, and a better place to be. We saw a proposal for what Market Street might could look like it - I kinda dug it - definitely some interesting ideas about how to fix Market Street.
It’s clear to me that we need to do something about giving us bikers and walkers more room to breathe on Market Street - we need to be able to be, and feel, safe - that’s non-negotiable. At the same time we accomplish this goal, though, I also want to make sure we think about this project in the right way, which in my opinion, follows Jane Jacobs’ way of thinking - always looking to increase the positive aspects of the street, instead of looking to decrease the negative aspects of the street. That’s what she sold in this book, and that’s what I bought - hook, line, and sinker.
A few days ago I took a ride down the street and couldn’t figure out what to do with it - even if I had my way - total say. It’s kind of a disaster. Then a couple of days ago I took a walk down Market after midnight - ‘disaster’ doesn’t quite describe it. Below 5th Street, it’s downright scary. And the walk experience is much different than the ride experience. Keep in mind that I live in the Tenderloin right now - I don’t scare easy.
I went to the Streetsblog.net email list and said, “Help!,” and got back a bunch of good suggestions for how to learn about how we might approach Market Street - not that others need to know how, but I need to know how. There were a bunch of good suggestions, but one overarching theme really resonated with me — the concept of placemaking. More details can be found in this post here by Richard Layman, a self-described ‘historic preservation-centric urban revitalization advocate and consultant in Washington, DC’.
So, this may be old news for those ‘in the business,’ but it’s definitely something I was happy to be reminded about - we want to concentrate on placemaking - we want to make Market Street an awesome place to live, work, play, ride, walk, etc. Market Street is more or less fine during the day, but before and after business hours - it’s not a place you want to be. We need to change that by looking at the big picture - encompassing all of the best aspects of complete streets, livable streets, placemaking, etc. Someone mentioned ‘a holistic approach’ to making Market Street more lively, and that, I think, is a good characterization of how we want to work on this thing.
In talking with folks after the meeting, we kind of decided that we wanted to figure out more concrete ways to help out. Some of the folks in attendance had professional backgrounds in some type of urban planning-related competency, but many of us do not - we talked about having concrete ‘homework assignments’ that we could work on and accomplish for each next meeting. This sprung from some questions from the audience where we might ask, “Well what about this and that?,” and one of the organizers might say, “That sounds great. Great idea. Please find out an answer to that for us and bring it back to the next meeting.” It was said in a lighthearted way, but serious too. The problem is, some of these questions are too big. For instance, I said something about wanting to ‘not lose sight of the development-type aspects of things on Market,’ and I got this type of response, but really, I have no idea where to begin. I sent that email to the list, I’m doing my reading now, and then I’m going to start trying to break down my massive question into smaller, manageable chunks - homework assignments. Sometimes, I figure, you just need to plow straight ahead until you find out what questions you even need to ask.
It does sound like there is a good amount of support from the biker community and elsewhere to fix Market Street - so that’s great news. If you want to get involved in re-making what is probably the most important street for bicyclists in San Francisco, make sure to come on down to the next meeting - Tuesday, January 13, 2009.
We have a lot of talented and passionate people in this city - it’s pretty exciting when you think about what’s possible. 
[p.s. The Forums are open for participation.]
