The Three-Minute Community | Idea Competition
Market Street redefined: walkable, connected, human-scaled
Mixed-Use Living
City life can be exhilarating, but too often it’s also isolating. Personal interactions slip into transactions, and people’s social needs go unseen and unaddressed.
But the “Three-Minute Community” brings city life to a human scale. This plan – a competition entry for Market Street Reimagined – draws on Robin Dunbar’s theory that humans thrive and form meaningful social ties in groups of around 150 people.
To accomplish this, the plan proposes the development of compact, connected communities where core human needs can be met within a three-minute journey from your front door (roughly 800 feet).
Cities like San Francisco can rethink zoning to allow mixed-use, hyper-local living: co-housing, food production, healthcare, social services, retail, and workplaces all clustered together.
The opportunity to find space for these changes presents itself in one of the city’s biggest challenges. Its 33% office building vacancy rate is the worst in the country.
The ripple effects of these vacancies on the surrounding areas are significant: small businesses in decline, squatting on the rise, and drops in both municipal tax revenue and tourism. These challenges show the need for competitions like this one, and the promise of the “Three-Minute Community” to reimagine San Francisco’s vacant spaces as flexible, innovation-driven hubs, and cultivate a dynamic ecosystem where tech, co-working, and daily life converge.
- Location
- San Francisco, CA
- Client
- Urban Land Institute San Francisco, Civic Joy Fund
- Completion
- 2025
- DIALOG Services
- Collaborators
Tango Studio (renderings)
Architecture
Reimagining the urban core through the lens of the “three-minute community,” this entry proposes a decentralized, human-scaled city model that transforms underused space into vibrant, walkable neighbourhoods where essential needs are met within 800 feet.
Against the backdrop of California’s strained water supply and rising climate risks, this vision integrates vertical farming into underused portions of buildings – creating self-sustaining “farm ecosystems” that enhance food security, reduce emissions, and support a healthier, more resilient urban future.
Amid San Francisco’s deepening homelessness crisis, this concept repurposes underused buildings into mixed-use housing with integrated support services – providing stable shelter, job training, healthcare, childcare, and food access to help residents regain long-term stability.
Reimagining San Francisco’s vacant space as flexible, innovation-driven hubs, this vision cultivates a dynamic ecosystem where tech, co-working, and daily life converge – supporting the Bay Area’s ever-evolving culture of invention within a three-minute community.
A map of key underused assets – 425 Market (office), 865 Market (mall), and 1231 Market (hotel) – reimagined as vibrant, mixed-use anchors of a new three-minute community along Market Street.
The Team
