Co-Designing Equitable Transportation in Southeast San Francisco
By: Ezra Kong
Tags: Social Innovation, Equity Design, Transportation, San Francisco, Community Engagement

Reflex Design Collective facilitates creative processes that lift up the brilliance of front line innovators who navigate through lived experiences of oppression every day. We call this process Equity Design. This is a story about Equity Design in action.

The Landscape: Black San Francisco, Displacement, Environmental Justice, and a home to Immigrants

Last spring, San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) brought on Reflex Design Collective as a consultant to improve transportation in a historic but rapidly gentrifying area of San Francisco. San Francisco district 10, which includes Bayview-Hunters Point, Potrero Hill, Dogpatch, and Visitacion Valley, is full of vibrant, resilient communities. It’s also difficult to get around in. There are few public transportation options and traffic congestion is common. Parking is highly limited and there is little infrastructure for bikers. It’s not uncommon to see cars parked on sidewalks or experience 20 minute delays at Muni stops. We heard stories of unreliable bus routes, especially near the public housing — one resident shared that she is often left waiting on the bus in the middle of her route for half an hour while the driver goes on break.

There is also a sense of feeling forgotten. Some shared observations that the Muni line becomes more unreliable as it enters the Bayview-Hunters Point area, where a car may go out of service with no warning, while others reflected on the larger sense that San Francisco’s tech boom has left this area behind. These companies do not often employ residents of Bayview-Hunters Point or Visitation Valley, and if they do, it is often through gig jobs rather than salaried tech positions. Many of these transportation-tech companies do not serve this area, instead drawing service maps that exclude the low income neighborhoods. When you Google a map of San Francisco, you’ll notice that it often cuts off halfway through Bayview-Hunters Point, leaving the southern half of this neighborhood and Visitation Valley out of view.

Image Description: A generic city map of San Francisco that cuts off above Bayview-Hunters Point and Visitacion Valley.

These disparities are not by accident. Structural factors like institutional racism and classism shape the built environment here. Bayview-Hunters Point is a historically African American neighborhood and currently contains the highest remaining concentration of Black San Franciscans, whose population has more than halved since 1970. While there was a considerable white working class population for much of the district’s history as a hub for industrial jobs, today the district is home to sizeable immigrant communities including Asian, Pacific Islander, and Latinx groups. Many areas of district 10 are home to low-income residents due to its more affordable housing.

District 10 has experienced a history of institutional neglect and disinvestment that includes redlining by the Federal Home Owners Loan Corporation, meaning that residents were denied access to federally guaranteed home mortgages that helped many communities establish wealth¹. As of 2014, 47% of district 10 residents rent², meaning nearly half of residents are vulnerable to displacement in the current expensive housing market. Right now, this corner of San Francisco is set to host the largest redevelopment project in San Francisco since the 1906 earthquake, which includes Lennar Homes’ Shipyard, and is reaching a significant turning point with the imminent wave of gentrification.

Along with the threat of displacement, the district is also a flashpoint for community organizing around environmental justice challenges. Residents have a history of standing up against the environmental health hazards they disproportionately face from nearby highways, industry, and the contaminated EPA Superfund site at the Hunter’s Point Shipyard. The persistence of these structural factors for decades, despite promises to address them, has created low levels of trust in government amongst community members.

Given this history and conversations with community members, Reflex adopted a Mobility Equity approach to address the history of injustice, neglect, and associated trauma affecting long term residents. Mobility Equity is defined by the Greenlining Institute as: “a transportation system that increases access to high quality mobility options, reduces air pollution, and enhances economic opportunity in low-income communities of color.” In the context of this project, the goals expanded from simply improved mobility to include all of the following goals that leverage transportation to create a more equitable future: