Market Street, San Francisco's premier street and most important destination, is envisioned to become a more attractive place for people to visit, promenade and linger. Despite its attractive design and use of high-quality materials, the sidewalks and public spaces fail to work as gathering places. Great streets have always been more than corridors for movement; they are the civic and cultural centers of cities where people gather to see, learn and participate in a vibrant city life.

To achieve this vision, however, the street and adjacent public plazas will need to be improved so that they support a greater number, and a more diverse range of social, cultural, and economic activities. This effort will necessarily extend to the ground-floor design of buildings along Market Street so that they become contributing factors to the success of the public realm.

The Better Market Street Project will engage the public in an exciting visioning process for the future of Market Street. The City will publically launch this process in early Fall 2010. Please visit this site frequently to learn of upcoming events, peruse visual studies of the world's great streets, and share your thoughts and ideas. By leaving a comment on this website, your email address will automatically be added to the mailing list annoucing open participation events.