PORTOLA GREEN BEtWEEN

Our cities are full of fringe, forgotten spaces adjacent to major infrastructure. For the Portola neighborhood of San Francisco, the community has started reviving these leftover easements and buffers along Highways 280 and 101 into community green spaces.

Following two successful pocket parks, SITELAB partnered with The Greenhouse Project, the Portola Neighborhood Association (PNA), and the Portola Urban Greening Steering Committee to create a new public open space along an undeveloped easement adjacent to Highway 101 between Burrows Street and Bacon Street. Through collaboration with Caltrans under the leadership of State Assemblyman Chiu, the 20- to 40- foot wide greenway (“The Green Between”) builds on the energy created around the existing Burrows Pocket Park and transforms an underutilized space into a new public place of respite near the neighborhood’s commercial corridor. Following two successful pocket parks, SITELAB partnered with The Greenhouse Project, the Portola Neighborhood Association (PNA), and the Portola Urban Greening Steering Committee to create a new public open space along an undeveloped easement adjacent to Highway 101 between Burrows Street and Bacon Street. Through collaboration with Caltrans under the leadership of State Assemblyman Chiu, the 20- to 40- foot wide greenway (“The Green Between”) builds on the energy created around the existing Burrows Pocket Park and transforms an underutilized space into a new public place of respite near the neighborhood’s commercial corridor.

The Green Between has already brought immense benefits to the neighborhood. The greenway brings a new neighborhood attraction with outdoor seating along the San Bruno Avenue commercial corridor as it recovers from the pandemic. New plantings support carbon-capture and buffers freeway particulate in an area with one of the highest concentrations of roadway pollution and asthma cases in San Francisco. The many murals and art installations along the corridor capture imagination. Last but not least, volunteerism along the greenway has inspired a new wave of multi-generational community building and activism in the neighborhood. In the words of Portola community members, it’s the “Little Hood that Could.”

Community Engagement

Throughout both phases of the project, SITELAB and PNA engaged community members of all ages to identify preferences in programming, materials, and stories that represent the neighborhood. The Green Between is a model for community-led planning, design, and action through inclusive engagement, public agency partnerships, and neighborhood land stewardship.

Check out other projects