San Francisco recently hosted a series of events to make the city's backbone, Market Street, a little more fun. It's the latest of many efforts to revitalize a street that has been problematic even as the rest of the city has boomed.
For the most part, San Francisco's Market Street is no fun. The section in the Financial District is all business, with commuters scurrying into and out of office buildings at all hours of the day. Further up, the mid-Market stretch through the notorious Tenderloin District has been a pocket of blight in one of the nation's most gentrified cities. The city has a $500 million plan to redesign and revitalize the street by 2018.
In the meantime, the Market Street Prototyping Festival, held in early April, is an attempt to inject some fun into the plans for the new Market Street. The festival featured 50 tactical urbanist projects intended to bring fun and neighborholiness to the urban environment. Projects included six-way table tennis, chalk art, combinations of dance and video art, and odd versions of karaoke. The San Francisco planning department's City Design Group, in collaboration with Ghel Studio, is part of the team that will evaluate the 50 prototypes and choose finalists for permanent installation.
“There are old and new residents vying for space in the city, and so we, as city planners, have to find a way to start bringing these sides together. We feel our public spaces have to be those places where people from different backgrounds come together and start to build some empathy," Neil Hrushowy, manager of the City Design Group, told Next City.
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