South Park: A Hidden Gem of San Francisco

During my trip to San Francisco earlier this year I made sure to visit a rather delightful, if slighlty anachronistic, little residential square called South Park located in the extensive SoMa (South of Market) urban regeneration district.

This lovely little park has a chequered history. It was laid out by a developer in the 1850s and patently modelled on European residential squares to provide an upmarket, enclosed neighbourhood of townhouses facing onto a compact little urban park. In the 1890s it became a public park. The 1906 earthquake destroyed the neighbourhood and, while the park itself survived, the area went steadily downmarket and seedy (as indeed much of the SoMA area remains today, at least in my observation; it's a very schizophrenic environment, with huge glass and steel devleopments side by side with homeless missions - but I am digressing). South Park started sprucing up in the 1970s and '80s, as artists and other bohemian types attracted by low rents and its quirky charm, moved in, but they were sadly pushed out by the 1990s "dot com boomers" who took over the neighbourhood - a pity as it would have made a lovely artists' colony. Despite the new money apparently the park itseld remained a popular homeless and/or drug dealing haunt at nighttime. With the dot com bust in the early 2000s this square is now assuming its next personality. It seems an environment in transition - the housing stock surrounding it is nothing special, but there are several little cafes and the park itself is a charming little green oasis in an area of this lovely city that is not exactly blessed with a huge number of green spaces.

The size is just right - large enough for mature trees that provide a leafy outlook for the houses and offices overlooking the square, room to stroll and sit and chat, a small playground and open areas for children to run about or for people to laze about in the sun.

It's a public park so anyone can enjoy it, if they can find it. It is such a narrow little park squeezed into the middle of a standard sized city block and with very ordinary looking street opening, so "stumbling" across it is a little like stumbling across a long forgotten, somehow more genteel urban environment cloistered away from the rest of the modern city - how lovely and restful.

It's certainly not the busiest square in San Francisco, nor the grandest nor even the most beautiful. But it is a real little gem and it is the sort of balanced urban environment that I think comes close to perfection.