This tour, showcasing examples of the city’s best pocket parks, pedestrian alleyways and one of the newest Pavement to Parks projects, highlights the growing efforts to take back city streets for public use. It begins at 23rd & Harrison Street, the site of a thriving pocket park designed by local architect Jane Martin, principal of Shift Design Studio and founder of Plant*SF. The walk continues to the home office of Urban Interstice Gallery, former studio of Interstice Architects, where principals Andrew Dunbar and Zoee Astrakhan have staged the exhibition “Public Networks of Urban Access,” which showcases the emerging network of pedestrian access and pedestrian-centered environments that have been designed, built and improved upon in the last two decades in San Francisco. The tour concludes at the new Guerrero Park, one of the latest Pavement to Park’s projects where Jane Martin designed a contemporary interpretation of a sylvan landscape—connecting to the history in San Francisco by use of trees felled from the 1870s initial planting of Golden Gate Park—to create a botanical garden of 60 climate-adapted and native species.

Tour led by Jane Martin of Shift Design Studio and Andrew Dunbar and Zoee Astrakhan of Interstice Architects.