ABSTRACT
In the United States, a national policy to reduce transportation greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has mostly faltered, leaving cities and states to mitigate global warming on their own. This chapter profiles one section of San Francisco, known as the Market and Octavia area, which was one of the first substantial low carbon rezonings in a residential section of San Francisco and a bellwether for similar smart growth and transit-oriented development plans in the Bay Area, California and throughout the United States. The Market and Octavia area is a viable place to live without a car. With combined effort, proponents of freeway removal countered the state's highway department, automotive interests and a group of politically conservative, pro-freeway homeowners on San Francisco's more automobile-oriented west side. The Market and Octavia Plan was one of the most far-reaching and innovative rezonings to take place in San Francisco in decades.
