Urban Ecology: Change, Continuity, and the Modified Ground
Octavia Boulevard Competition, San Francisco, CA
Award of Merit
2005

Jacob Atherton
Aimee Chan
​Rene Davids

The construction of the Central freeway which divided the Hayes Valley in the mid-twentieth century treated the City of San Francisco as a blank slate, destroying the existing neighborhoods and community infrastructure in its path. Wide ribbons of asphalt were seen as the way to a better world and the future the California Department of Highways (now Caltrans) envisioned for San Francisco also included a spider web of limited access highways. Protests ensued, parts of the planned freeway were never built and other portions were torn down in the aftermath of the Loma Prieta earthquake. Today the Hayes Valley portion of the central freeway is being replaced by a landscaped boulevard and housing with the intention of creating a whole new place.