An earthquake gave birth to the neighborhood spreading around you. Hayes Valley — the blocks of boutiques, restaurants, and restaurants between City Hall and Alamo Square — was for 30 years a depressed neighborhood cut off from the rest of the city by the Central Freeway, an elevated double-deck highway that cast a concrete shadow over Franklin and Gough Streets and drove down property values and street life for blocks in either direction. When the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged the freeway, the city faced the same choice it had faced with the Embarcadero Freeway: rebuild or demolish.
After years of contentious debate, the city voted to tear down the Central Freeway rather than repair it. The demolition was completed in 2003, and the blocks that had been shadowed by the freeway were suddenly flooded with light. Land values rose immediately, artists and independent retailers moved in, and Hayes Valley transformed within a decade from a struggling neighborhood into one of the most desirable retail districts in the city.
The process became a template for urban freeway removal projects across the country. Today the neighborhood around Patricia's Green, the small park created on the old freeway right-of-way, is among the liveliest in San Francisco, with boutiques, farm-to-table restaurants, and wine bars in the buildings that once backed against the freeway's concrete supports.