The death of San Francisco's Market Street

San Francisco’s Market Street has been reduced to a largely empty asphalt corridor flanked by boarded-up storefronts after the 2019 car-free conversion, a pandemic-driven shift to remote work, and an early-2020s crime surge that created a self-reinforcing “Doom Loop.” The collapse culminated with the January 2026 closure of the San Francisco Centre mall, though 2025-2026 saw a 27% drop in property crime and modest signs of commercial revival driven by an emerging AI boom.