The Sac Catalyst Competition re­ceived al­most 50 en­tries world­wide to re-en­vi­sion the Capitol Mall cor­ri­dor of down­town Sacramento, an eight block civic boule­vard with a wide grassy me­dian but not much pedes­trian ac­tiv­ity.

Our pro­posal brings peo­ple back to the Mall with three prin­ci­ples in mind: to ac­ti­vate the edges of the mall, frame the view of the Capitol, and to di­rect vis­i­tors down a path from the river to the civic cen­ter.

A se­quence of dif­fer­ent pedes­trian zones cre­ate a pro­ces­sion of views and ex­pe­ri­ences from nat­ural to higher or­der. Strategies to ac­ti­vate the space in­clude re­mov­ing a lane of traf­fic in each di­rec­tion, re­mov­ing curbs, en­cour­ag­ing food trucks and other pe­ri­odic events, and in­fill­ing build­ings to cre­ate a bet­ter street edge. As the city lacks funds to im­ple­ment large pro­jects, each com­po­nent of the Promenade plan can be im­ple­mented sep­a­rately un­til the fi­nal space is re­al­ized.