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Map of San Francisco
A grid that climbs and drops over hills without swerving, split in two by a diagonal avenue. San Francisco is one of the few cities where you can see the geography through its street plan.
What you see on the map
Market Street. The great avenue crossing the city diagonally from the Ferry Building. To the north, the grid follows the compass; to the south, another grid of larger blocks is rotated. Where they meet, the map fills with triangles.
The hills. The map does not paint relief, but you can sense it: the grid holds on Nob Hill or Russian Hill, however dizzying the slopes, and only gives in at Twin Peaks, where streets curve around the summit.
The parks. To the west, the Panhandle, a narrow strip leading to Golden Gate Park, five kilometres long; and scattered across the grid, the squares of Alamo Square, Dolores or Lafayette.
The bay. To the north and east, the water with its numbered piers like the teeth of a comb, the Marina's harbour and, in the corner, the edge of the Presidio.
Which scale and paper suit it
1:30,000 on a 30 cm square, as in the picture, covers 8 km: from downtown to the Marina and from the bay to Golden Gate Park. At that scale the city is drawn as blocks, here with their outline.
1:12,000 on A3 moves in on a neighbourhood: North Beach and Telegraph Hill, or the Mission with its rotated grid.
A 50 × 70 poster at 1:50,000 takes in the whole peninsula, from the Golden Gate to the southern hills, with the ocean on one side and the bay on the other.
Make it yours
Open the example and move the frame: the Golden Gate Bridge and the Presidio, or Alcatraz island off the piers, deserve a map of their own.
Change all the colours at once with a theme (black ink, sepia, coral, night, blueprint) and download it as PNG. With a free account, also element by element, at 600 dpi, as vector PDF and as SVG.
