Safer 6th Street is a community process to implement safety measures in the 6th Street corridor of San Francisco. The project is a collaboration between the SFMTA, District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim, SPUR, Twitter, and URBAN SPACEship. URBAN SPACEship is an organization that I started in NYC to bring fellow urbanists together for expert-led talks about public spaces and creative placemaking, in public spaces - and which gradually expanded to San Francisco, and organically led to urban activations stemming from the members’ interest and enthusiasm.

The challenge: How can we create a safer 6th Street in Central Market?

The coalition gathered input from the local community as to what can be done to create a safer area for residents, workers and passersby alike. The goal of the activation was to envision a vibrant area and help to prioritize treatments to the 6th Street design.

The action: On Saturday, May 18th, 2013 the Safer 6th Street Coalition hosted an interactive activation project on 6th Street (between Market and Stevenson) in San Francisco, to engage the community and gather ideas and feedback towards making 6th Street a safer place.

Projects from Rebar, Artismobilus, and the SF Postcard Project livened up 6th Street for the day. Ideas were collected with the Neighborland public whiteboard and on the Neighborland Question page. A new capability was launched for residents to tweet “I want ____ #safer6th” and have their idea automagically created on Neighborland.

The process: My role was project director. What made this project successful was the diverse array of private and public partnerships. It began as I was consulting with the city of San Francisco’s MTA, who asked how we could do an urban activation to address the crime and safety issues on the 6th Street corridor. Neighborland (a public engagement tech platform) and Twitter were already in the beginning stages of brainstorming an activation as a public benefit project on behalf of Twitter. We joined forces to leverage our energy, resources and skills.

As project director, I brought the partners and community together, and formed a wide-spectrum team that spanned public and private organizations. The nature of the activation was grassroots, determined by the local community through input gathered in advance on Neighborland’s tech platform, leading to the activation day. I managed the budget, secured partners and collaborators, secured permitting from the SFMTA to host the event in public space - including block off the street to traffic.

This activation became an on-going community process to implement safety measures in the 6th Street corridor, and ideas and insights collected on Neighborland were to be considered in conjunction with the SFMTA’s traditional planning forums.