Deborah Cullinan is executive director of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Neil Hrushowy is manager of the City Design Group in the San Francisco Planning Department. The two organizations are partnering on a festival to promote civic engagement and improve public spaces, an effort that Knight Foundation supports. Photo by JulianPhotographe on Flickr.

In 1847, surveyor Jasper O’Farrell placed a new street grid in the center of San Francisco to help accommodate its growing population. This grid became Market Street: At 120 feet wide, it allowed for many modes of transit, and most importantly, grand sidewalks.

Over 160 years later, Market Street is in the midst of an historic transformation; being redesigned and reimagined from the ground up. For a street with the greatest levels of pedestrian activity on the West Coast, this is no small undertaking—and it is critical that the diverse communities of people and organizations that share Market Street are deeply involved in this process. It is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for civic engagement on a massive, public scale, with the potential to affect the way cities around the world undertake urban design projects.

Today, we are thrilled to announce the Market Street Prototyping Festival—a new platform (inspired by the 2012 Urban Prototyping Festival led by Gray Area Foundation for the Arts) for residents to engage in the planning process in a way that is active, innovative and fun. For three days in October, nearly two miles of San Francisco’s main thoroughfare will showcase new ideas to improve a city’s public spaces in a way that encourages them to think differently.

While this project will be focused in San Francisco, thanks to the support of the Knight Foundation it will have a much bigger impact. Civic leaders from Knight communities will attend the festival to see what ideas they can take to their own cities. We’re hopeful that it will be instructive.