San Francisco Parks Alliance in support of Blue Greenway project

The Blue Greenway initiative is transforming San Francisco’s southeastern waterfront into 13 miles of waterfront parks and trails, from AT&T Park south to Candlestick Point. The project will increase access to the Bay and numerous outdoor recreational opportunities for the city’s southeastern neighborhoods. It will also address a legacy of pollution and physical blight within underserved and low-income communities by remediating contaminated industrial sites and building several new large-scale waterfront parks.

We believe that through sustainable development and by close community collaboration, the Blue Greenway can have a tremendously positive environmental impact, while also delivering social, economic, and health benefits to the people it serves. The Blue Greenway initiative is restoring important habitat and wetlands to create a shoreline resilient to sea-level rise; transforming former hazardous industrial areas into healthy, community assets; increasing the tree canopy; expanding the SF Bay Trail to provide carbon-free transportation options; and repurposing industrial equipment to serve as furnishings and retaining walls in the new parks.

Our efforts in lower-income and minority-majority neighborhoods have revealed a long history of exclusion from civic life and public spaces. Residents and business owners express a feeling of lack of access to engage in their public spaces. In response, we aim to share power with all local residents and community groups in shaping the design, culture and character of their parks and public spaces, while fostering a feeling of collective ownership and community pride.

The Blue Greenway will provide much-needed open space, recreation, and active transportation opportunities to the city’s lowest-income and most underserved neighborhoods. These neighborhoods are slated to grow by more than 30,000 new residents over the next 20 years. The new open-space network will connect these neighborhoods to their waterfront and serve as a catalyst for high-quality development, employment opportunities and economic vitality.

To learn more, visit http://bluegreenway.org/#/home/page