SITELAB worked with the Portola Urban Greening community steering committee to create a series of community-building workshops that used narratives of the neighborhoods past to prompt stories, concerns, goals, and opportunities for the future.

Using “fill in the blank” prompts with note cards, the team was able to garner more active participating from often-silent meeting attendees. The presentation and note cards, written in English and Chinese, provided a bilingual toolkit that the committee members used to conduct additional meetings. The input informed the Portola Green Plan, and the responses themselves became a part of a custom-designed poster series posted in San Bruno Avenue storefronts to build broad recognition and excitement in the community. With the top opportunities mapped, and additional ideas for early actions, the committee has received multiple grants to implement a number of the Green Plan projects with SITELAB’s ongoing participation.