The Community Corners program will allow communities to install beautification elements like planters and murals in daylighting zones. It is up for approval at the June 16, 2026 SFMTA board meeting.
This program is the result of community advocacy over the past several years from Slow Streets Stewards and many others.
The city will also be protecting daylighting zones on the high-injury network and other high foot traffic locations with bike corrals, soft-hit posts, turn calming, and concrete islands.
Send a letter to the SFMTA Board supporting the program, or make public comment tomorrow at the board meeting, which starts at 1pm in Room 400 at City Hall.
Community Corners are here!
Early in the pandemic, residents began transforming the city’s newly installed Slow Streets into more than just spaces for social distancing. At Page and Stanyan, art appeared, then tree stumps and planters, lovingly installed and maintained by the Slow Page Street stewards and Al Hawley of Fauvescraper Studio. Noe Valley residents also added planters along Slow Sanchez. What started as grassroots beautification started to look like something the city could and should support.
Stewards of Slow Page Street and Fauvescraper Studio designed and installed planters, stumps, and art to beautify and protect the safety zone at Page and Stanyan.
The idea gained momentum when Supervisor Myrna Melgar included a provision in the Street Safety Act, which passed the Board of Supervisors in September 2025, directing the city to develop a process for community groups to install planters, bike racks, and other landscaping in areas where parking had already been removed. After a traffic fatality on Cortland Ave last October, Bernal Heights neighbors worked with Supervisor Jackie Fielder’s office to install a prototype at a corner by the Bernal Heights library.
Community Corner at Cortland and Moultrie St
The city’s first Community Corner, at Cortland and Moultrie, installed by the Civic Joy Fund’s Green Streets Guild, Greening Projects, Alec Hawley from Fauvescraper Studio, and the Sierra Club SF Group.
Now, SFMTA is creating an official program to allow anyone to install planters in daylighting zones across the city. It’s called Community Corners.
What is a Community Corner?
State law now requires a 20 foot no parking zone at every intersection to create improved visibility for pedestrians crossing the street – otherwise known as “daylighting”. Streets For All sponsored AB 413, the 2023 state law that established this standard in California.
Cities typically paint the curb red to prohibit parking. But in practice, red paint alone does not stop people from parking in the daylighting zone illegally, and empty curb space also creates new opportunities.
A Community Corner fill that space with something better for the neighborhood. Neighbors can apply to install planters or murals in their local daylighting zone, which protects the safety of pedestrians in the crosswalk that the law requires, while also adding greenery and public art to the neighborhood.
More good news: SFMTA is also announcing new daylighting protection on the high-injury network
Alongside Community Corners, SFMTA’s Streets Division is also seeking board approval to install city-managed protective elements in daylighting zones across the high-injury network and in other high-foot-traffic locations to deter illegal parking. The protection will include new bike corrals, concrete islands, turn calming features, and soft-hit posts.
How do I get a Community Corner in my neighborhood?
Today SFMTA is announcing and approving the program, but there is not yet a live application process. If you do want a corner in your neighborhood, you can expect that the installations will need to happen on low-traffic streets at stop-controlled intersections within a painted safety zone–khaki-colored extensions of the curb that are protected by soft-hit posts. SFMTA will publish a more detailed list of criteria for eligible intersections later this summer, along with a registration process.
Support Community Corners Now
Streets For All supports both parts of this program. We're also asking the board to reconsider one aspect of the Community Corners design: the requirement that community groups carry general liability insurance to participate.
That requirement would effectively limit the program to well-resourced neighborhoods — the ones that don't need it most. Most volunteer groups can't obtain that kind of insurance, and most of the city's corners aren't in affluent areas with organized neighborhood associations. Together with our partners at the Sierra Club, Civic Joy Fund, and WalkSF, we believe the city should treat community-installed planters as gifts of safety infrastructure, not as liability risks to be managed.
Send a letter to the SFMTA board today asking them to approve the new daylighting program and Community Corners–and to drop the insurance requirement so the program can work in every neighborhood, not just the ones with the most resources.
We’re excited to enter this next era of stewardship for San Francisco’s streets. Community Corners will make San Francisco’s streets greener, more beautiful, and safer for everyone who uses them.