The Sunset District is a neighborhood in the western half of San Francisco, California, USA that is primarily residential and is built along a grid pattern. It was one of the last areas of San Francisco to be developed, and most of its homes and buildings date from the 1920s through the 1950s (although parts of the Inner Sunset were developed beginning in the late 1880s).

Golden Gate Park forms the neighborhood's northern border and the Pacific Ocean (or, more specifically, the long, flat strand of beach known as Ocean Beach) forms its western border. The Sunset District's southern and eastern borders are not as clearly defined, but there is a general consensus that the neighborhood extends no further than Stern Grove and Sloat Boulevard in the south and no further east than the Parnassus campus of the University of California, San Francisco and Laguna Honda Hospital.

The Sunset District is in fact often considered to be two separate neighborhoods: the Inner Sunset and the Outer Sunset. The commercial area of the Inner Sunset is centered around Irving Street between 7th and 11th Avenues, and the Outer Sunset is generally considered to begin at 19th Avenue and extend for approximately 30 blocks to Ocean Beach.

Considered by many to be one of the least desirable neighborhoods in San Francisco due to its frequently foggy weather and the monotony of its mid-20th century single-family housing stock, the neighborhood nonetheless has seen its property values rise along with those in the rest of San Francisco, most spectacularly during the late 1990s.

A large percentage of the Sunset's residents are Asian-American (mostly Chinese-American), a result of a demographic shift that began in the 1960s as Asian immigration to San Francisco increased dramatically and many of the original, mostly white residents of the Sunset moved to outlying suburban areas. A major commercial area of the Sunset District, Irving Street between 19th Avenue and 24th Avenue, is today lined with businesses catering to Asian-Americans.

External links