Beautiful San Pablo is a community organization consisting of neighbors and local businesses dedicated to creating community and vibrancy along Berkeley's San Pablo Avenue. Our group formed about two years ago in response to the City's plan to develop San Pablo Avenue. After the failures of the City to adequately inform the community about what was going on in and around San Pablo Avenue, we took it upon ourselves to inform and advocate for our Community which we conside to include SPA from the Oakland/Berkeley border to the Albany/Berkeley border. 

As a formerly red-lined area, we believe the City has a special responsibility to West Berkeley and San Pablo Avenue "affirmatively furthering fair housing" in the city. 

Safety and beauty can work together.  CPTED design principles create safe and healthy communities through building design and carefully designed streetscapes. CPTED principles connect a building’s occupants and the street. “Natural Surveillance” enhances streetscape vitality and activity, increases opportunities for “eyes on the street” (direct sight-lines between building occupants and public spaces), and improves safety by creating a sense of common responsibility over public spaces. The Berkeley Police Department has a website and training on CPTED. 

Modern standards of CPTED recognize the essential role that strong. connected communities including neighborhoods and engaged businesses, have in creating and sustaining communities, and new CPTED principles support community-strengthening design choices.

We believe that new housing should be inclusive, with a mix of income levels and apartments for all, from families to individuals. 

San Pablo Avenue, the heart of West Berkeley, is representative of the city's most diverse neighborhoods. Careful community sustaining development that works to preserve and encourage small businesses, create community, and honor the history of the area and the communities that have grown up around SPA will hopefully make the SPA again, the destination street it once was in Berkeley as well as a enhance the vitality of SPA and the surrounding neighborhoods.