ULI San Francisco and the Civic Joy Fund announced the winners of the Market Street Reimagined competition at a ceremony held on July 16 in San Francisco. An exhibition at the Ferry Building in downtown San Francisco will run July 23–August 8, offering the public an opportunity to experience these visions for transformation firsthand.
This international competition of ideas, which attracted 173 submissions from nine countries, challenged entrants to create a new vision for the city’s main thoroughfare that would draw more visitors and businesses to the area. A distinguished jury, hosted by San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie, divided the $100,000 prize among the winning teams and designated eight additional entries as honorable mentions.
In 2023, a ULI Advisory Services Panel offered ideas for revitalizing downtown amid the disruptions caused by the pandemic, the rise of remote work, and other cultural shifts. “The city has implemented almost all of those recommendations so far,” said Natalie Sandoval, executive director of ULI San Francisco. “So, when the city reached out and said, ‘We want to talk about Market Street,’ we were instantly on board. We were able to partner with the city and the Civic Joy Fund to come up with this ideas competition and ask the world, ‘What could Market Street become?’” Submissions came from small business owners, large design firms, urban planners, landscape architects, architects, and local residents.
Flying Colors by Bionic won the Award for Creative Wayfinding and Nighttime Animation for proposing a series of stainless-steel pole armatures sporting programmable LED media mesh banners intended to add vibrancy to Market Street with light, music, and programmable content. The jury praised the idea’s potential to be quickly implemented at relatively low cost.
The 4 Mile Bench by SITELAB urban studio won the Award for Radical Hospitality and Fast, Inclusive Public Space. In contrast with the city’s policy in recent years of removing seating from the public realm to discourage loitering, SITELAB proposes installing a winding four-mile-long bench that would provide respite for everyone.
San Francisco’s Living Heart—by Multistudio, Studio-MLA, Systematica, and Vibemap—won the Award for Place-Making and Connected Neighborhoods. By removing automobiles and select bus lines, the proposal would prioritize the streetcar and pedestrian mobility. It would also add trees to provide shade and designate different zones for leisure, learning, culture, and civic life.
The Market Street Forest by SUR won the Award for Visionary Ecology and Urban Greening, thanks to its call to remake Market Street into a linear forest, connecting the city’s open spaces with greenery and a line of trees that would ultimately extend a canopy of branches over the roadway.
Asymmetry in Balance by SWA Group won the Award for Spatial Innovation and Adaptive Urban Form. It envisions a green promenade on the north side of Market Street, which receives more sunlight and offers more open spaces for plazas, parks, and popups. The shadier south side would become a “mobility boulevard” for faster movement via scooters, bicycles, and public transit.
In addition to those awards, Norman Foster, founder and executive chairman of Foster + Partners, named Yelamu Park on Market Street, by Sequoia: Biomimicry Education and Advocacy, as the winner of the Norman Foster Prize for Innovation. It proposes a tree-lined pedestrian street, reminiscent of Barcelona’s Las Ramblas, that would run along the middle of Market Street.
Jurors were Po Bronson, general partner and managing director of IndieBio/SOSV; Candace Damon, partner and co-chair of HR&A Advisors; Alma Du Solier, studio director and principal at Hood Design Studio; Jony Ive, founder of LoveFrom; Alicia John-Baptiste, chief of infrastructure, climate and mobility for the city and county of San Francisco; John King, former urban design critic for the San Francisco Chronicle; Becca Prowda, community leader and first lady of San Francisco; Janette Sadik-Khan, principal of Bloomberg Associates and former commissioner of New York City’s department of transportation; Stanley Saitowitz, founder of Stanley Saitowitz/Natoma Architects and professor emeritus of architecture at UC Berkeley; and Harriet Tregoning, director at New Urban Mobility Alliance.
The Civic Joy Fund, a branch of the nonprofit Civic Space Foundation, aims to revitalize San Francisco by investing in—and organizing—projects that bring joy to the streets. Empire, the Main Post, and Four Seasons Hotel San Francisco also provided support.
“This competition reminds us that Market Street can transform itself—a street that divides the city, in some ways—to a place where connection happens,” Mayor Lurie said at the ceremony. “I want to congratulate all the winners. You sparked some new ways of thinking, and your ideas will influence both short-term actions and our long-term vision for Market Street. Some may stay on the page. Others might move forward piece by piece, or spark new projects across our departments, but all of them will contribute to the energy that we’re working to bring back to San Francisco.”
All proposals can be viewed online.
