Focus Area

UP:SF will focus on the area from Halladie Plaza at the Powell Street BART station, down Fifth Street to the iconic Chronicle Newspaper Building at Fifth and Mission Streets, the intersection that gave the 5M Project its name.

The 5M Project

The 5M Project is a creative development designed to support an increasingly interconnected economy and urban culture. Intersection for the Arts, Hub San Francisco, and TechShop are among the partners that make 5M a lab for social and economic innovation, leveraging the power of shared resources to advance creativity and community. Over the next ten years the four-acre site will become a mix of low-, mid-, and high-rise buildings for office use, housing, and a range of flexible community spaces that aim to transform the way we connect and innovate.

5M sits at a crossroads sometimes known as ‘the Hinge,’ a uniquely rich location on the edge of several diverse neighborhoods—including the Sixth Street Corridor, the Tenderloin, SOMA, Mid-Market, and Yerba Buena—and also borders one of the most transit-rich corridors in Northern California. This area is full of opportunities for urban transformation rooted in the network of streets, sidewalks, and alleys.

5M provides a particularly apt opportunity for urban prototyping since alternative uses of space and infrastructure could substantively inform the development. We invite you to re-imagine the current landscape and create interventions that are exciting to the people who live and work here, changing the landscape of San Francisco from this hinge neighborhood. We’ve created a catalogue of opportunity sites to give you an idea of how you might work in this area.

5M PlaceWorks

The 5M Project and Intersection for the Arts are hosting UP:SF as part of a larger initiative called 5MPlaceWorks that will launch at the October exposition. 5MPlaceWorks is spearheading a new model for urban development as a sustainable opportunity for economic and social inclusion, driving programming in the neighborhood that creates jobs and provides opportunity and access so that San Francisco can continue to have the diverse economy and creative complexity it thrives on.