City Walk: Mission Bay
Few neighborhoods in San Francisco have transformed as fast as Mission Bay. Once a rail yard and industrial waterfront, it’s now the city’s newest mixed-use district. It’s home to a research university, a professional sports arena, several new parks, more than 6,000 housing units, and 7 million square feet of office space—built almost entirely from scratch in two decades.
Join us for a walk in our YEP City Walks series, led by guest John G. Ellis, as we trace that transformation on foot. We’ll meet at Caltrain King St. Station, head down 4th Street into the heart of the mixed-use district—passing the waterfront, Chase Center, and UCSF Campus—and talk through the planning decisions and lessons behind one of the city’s most ambitious redevelopments.
We’ll close out the walk at the Mission Bay Commons Park food and beer garden—good food, good views, and a chance to connect with fellow planners.
📍 Meet: Northwest corner of 4th & King St intersection (In front of the station entrance)
🚶 Walk: 1.5-2 miles, flat.
🍽️ Networking over a light lunch at the Mission Bay Commons food and beer area. Lunch is at your own expense.
Deadline to register: August 21, 2026
Additional Details
Event Cost - No fee to participate in the walk. No host lunch to follow.
Credits pending or approved - N/A
Speaker names
John G Ellis
John Ellis is an Anglo-Californian architect, urban designer and teacher. He grew up in an architectural household in London, graduating from Cambridge University and practiced for several years in England before emigrating to California. He worked with David Roberts in Cambridge on college buildings and the Fitzwilliam Museum extension (1972-3) and with Richard MacCormac in London on social housing for Milton Keynes and Warrington New Towns (1974-6). John has lived and worked in the Bay Area since 1977. He has worked for a number of firms including KMD Architects, ELS, Anshen + Allen on projects as varied as the Oakland Federal Building (1992), and the Far East International Building in Shanghai (1995), before joining Daniel Solomon in 1996, where he has been a partner and Directer of Urban Design. Since joining Daniel Solomon, John has led the urban design on many large-scale social housing projects, including Othello Station, Seattle; Hunters View in San Francisco; and Jordan Downs in Watts, Los Angeles. In addition, he has master-planned projects including the Coyote Valley, the San Jose Vision Plan for the Greenbelt Alliance, and campus plans for UC Berkeley and UCLA. John has taught at CCA in San Francisco and UC Berkeley for many years and was the inaugural Marshall Visiting Professor of Sustainable Urban Design at Cambridge University in 2012. In 2023 he was a Visiting Professor at Notre Dame University. John has been an active member of SPUR in San Francisco and is a Fellow of the Congress for the New Urbanism CNU. John was made a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 2021.