San Francisco's Living Innovation Zones (LIZ)

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Civic innovation program creating temporary public space installations on Market Street to demonstrate science, technology, and innovation through community engagement and experiential learning.
What are the main aims and objectives?

The primary objectives of Living Innovation Zones are to activate public spaces by engaging and delighting the public; to make innovation that is often "behind closed doors" visible and accessible to everyday people; to explore new placemaking tools for public benefit using technology and creativity as means for community connection; and to strengthen economic and cultural development in San Francisco.

More specifically, LIZ aims to create a platform for experimentation and prototyping where communities can "learn by doing" and propose new, unfamiliar concepts; to celebrate San Francisco's diversity of thinking, creative expression, and DIY spirit; to support local businesses by creating urban moments that draw people to public spaces and encourage lingering, socializing, and local economic activity; to inspire curiosity and facilitate informal learning through public demonstrations of innovation; to create venues for innovation, connection, and play in public outdoor spaces central to people's everyday lives; to demonstrate that technology should catalyze meaningful human engagement rather than replacing human connection; and to establish a "culture of yes" where the City collaborates positively with the public on creative projects.

How does the program work?

The Living Innovation Zone (LIZ) program aims to enhance the public realm with innovation, simplify the permitting process for projects in public space and support innovators by providing real-world demonstration opportunities. 

Living Innovation Zones (LIZ) are temporary installations on Market Street, the City’s cultural, civic and economic spine. The primary goal of the program is to activate public spaces by engaging and delighting the public. The program is structured to seed cross-disciplinary collaborations that result in place-based experiences. LIZs can serve as opportunities for testing new ideas, projects, and technologies. They are intended as enhancements to the public realm, encouraging people to connect with each other and their city.

LIZ sets forth a model to make it easier and less expensive for innovators, artists, and designers to engage with specially designated public spaces in the City. These types of urban infrastructure “hacks” have already created new types of public space, community participation, and socio-cultural development in San Francisco via the success with parklets.

LIZ seeks to build on these successes, providing innovators with a real-world setting to test new ideas, evaluate next generation technologies, collect data about impact on street activation and educate the public about innovative solutions. In doing so, LIZ aims to steer San Francisco’s tech and creative communities toward advancing sustainable community development, efficient government and a better quality of life for San Franciscans.

What is the overall cost?

No available information. 

How was it implemented?

San Francisco's Living Innovation Zones emerged from recognition that the city's streets, comprising 20-30% of city space and approximately 80% of open space, were significantly underutilized. Additionally, Market Street—as the city's cultural, civic and economic spine connecting diverse neighborhoods (Financial District, Twitter headquarters area, neighborhoods with homelessness, artistic communities)—required revitalization and activation.

Gehl Architects, commissioned to address Market Street transportation challenges, conducted community engagement and discovered that transportation solutions didn't align with community priorities. Instead, residents wanted streets to be safer, more lively, and more inviting—seeking social interaction and places to linger. Gehl Architects proposed the concept of "Living Innovation Zones" as flexible, temporary installations enabling community creativity and placemaking.

The Mayor's Office of Civic Innovation collaborated with Gehl Architects and the Exploratorium to develop the LIZ concept as operationalizable program framework. The collaboration emphasized community-driven, crowdsourced, and crowdfunded approaches enabling public participation in street activation.

The City developed formal LIZ program processes and guidelines documented in the Living Innovation Zone (LIZ) Manual (July 2015), a "living document" articulating vision, goals, processes, and guidelines for partners seeking to develop LIZ installations. The manual established governance structure (Mayor's Office of Civic Innovation, Planning Department, and San Francisco Arts Commission co-leadership) and defined program principles emphasizing culture of collaboration and community-responsive design.

The first LIZ, "Pause on Market Street," was launched in October 2013 as partnership between the City, Exploratorium, and Yerba Buena Community Benefit District. Mayor Edwin M. Lee announced the program more formally as part of Innovation Month in June 2018, positioning it as the nation's first Living Innovation Zone initiative demonstrating San Francisco's commitment to innovation and public space activation.

What impact has been measured?

No available information. 

What lessons can be learned?
  • Streets as underutilized public assets offer placemaking opportunities: LIZ concept emerged from recognition that city streets comprise 80% of open space yet remain underutilized, suggesting cities have substantial latent capacity for public activation through strategic placemaking interventions.
  • Community priorities differ from expert assumptions: Gehl Architects' experience discovering that residents prioritized sociability, liveliness, and safety over transportation-focused interventions demonstrates importance of community engagement in identifying actual needs rather than relying on professional assumptions.
  • "Culture of yes" and regulatory flexibility enable innovation: The City's commitment to simplified permitting and "culture of yes" in relation to LIZ applications suggests that bureaucratic flexibility and welcoming regulatory stance can facilitate civic innovation and public participation in placemaking.
  • Temporary installations enable low-risk experimentation: LIZ design as temporary installations (maximum two-year duration) with flexible, easily removable components suggests that temporary projects enable experimentation and learning without requiring permanent capital commitments, reducing perceived risk of innovation.
  • Collaborative governance structures increase legitimacy and participation: The LIZ governance model involving Mayor's Office, Planning, Arts Commission, CBDs, community organizations, and public partnerships suggests that inclusive collaborative structures increase stakeholder buy-in and project quality.
  • Aligning innovation messaging with public benefits requires authenticity: LIZ emphasis that installations be "non-commercial" and "free of advertisement" and focused on "placemaking and civic engagement" rather than profit suggests that public trust in innovation programs requires genuine public-first orientation rather than corporate co-option.
  • "Hackable sidewalks" concept invites community creativity: Framing streets as "hackable" and providing "canvas" for community-defined placemaking proved more engaging than conventional urban design top-down approaches, suggesting that metaphors and frameworks inviting community participation generate stronger engagement.
  • Limited comprehensive evaluation constrains learning and optimization: The absence of published comprehensive evaluation documenting visitor engagement metrics, business impact, or comparative effectiveness limits evidence-based program improvement and prevents systematic learning about what design elements drive greatest impact.
  • Sustained momentum requires ongoing institutional commitment: The continued investment in Market Street ideas competition (2024-2025) and mayoral directives committing to implementation suggest that LIZ-type programs require sustained leadership commitment and resource allocation to maintain momentum.
  • Lesson on accessibility of innovation through public space: The LIZ philosophy that "innovation that is sometimes behind closed doors" should be "brought into the light of day" demonstrates commitment to democratizing access to innovation rather than restricting knowledge to specialized communities.
Notes + Additional Context

About cultural quarters and attractions:

Many cities have designated ‘cultural quarters’ or spatially-defined creative spaces. There is a persuasive argument that Berlin’s independent music scene has not only contributed to the number of music-related startups from that city, but also been a factor which has attracted young entrepreneurs in all sectors into the city. Whilst this is difficult to prove, there is evidence that “creative workers in cities with high levels of cultural clustering enjoy a wage premium, which suggests that not-for-profit arts and cultural sectors may be generating knowledge spillovers into the commercial creative economy”.Certainly, providing cheap or easy access to a city’s cultural attractions like museums and music festivals is bound to be a popular policy with young entrepreneurs looking for a fun and inexpensive way to spend their leisure time.

Read more about this type of policy instrument in Nesta's "Digital Entrepreneurship: An ‘Idea Bank’ for Local Policymakers".

CURATED BY

Simona Bielli

Research Programme Coordinator – Digital Startups
Nesta
United Kingdom