The ReImagined City: San Francisco 2000-2025

Imagine a San Francisco where Crissy Field is off-limits to the public. Downtown’s towers stop at Mission Street, the Ferry Building sits empty and the largest cultural facilities in Golden Gate Park – the California Academy  of Sciences and the de Young Museum are housed in seismically suspect structures cobbled together over time.

The differences between then and now are startling but this was our city as the new millennium approached in 1999. Which makes 2025 a fitting vantage point from which to contemplate the rebuilt urban landscape, and how it reflects the region’s shifting cultural currents.

What follows is neither a comprehensive survey nor “best of” compilation. Instead, consider it a collection of loosely arranged snapshots – new or renewed elements of the larger civic scene that, taken together, hint at the overall shift in how people live, how they work, their modes of transportation and what they seek in 21st Century San Francisco.

If nothing else, think of  “The Reimagined City” as an invitation to take a closer look at what’s around you, the new as well as the old. Even in the most altered stretches of our built terrain, the ones that make long-timers wonder where they are, there are architectural or experiential pleasures to be had. Nooks to be explored at scales large and small – and evidence everywhere that more change is on the way.  

Curated by John King and Robin Abad

Center for Architecture + Design