[3]: 1  [5]: 5–31 An east–west pedestrian mall featuring "great bands of trees, a grass mall and paved areas accented by lights and banks of flags [to] expand and extend this central park area [Civic Center Plaza] from the City Hall down Fulton Street to Market" was first proposed as part of the 1958 Civic Center Development Plan.

[8] Independently, in 1965, the first concepts for the Civic Center Station Plaza were sketched out in the Market Street Design Report written by Ciampi and John Carl Warnecke.

[5]: 4–30  The Market Street Redevelopment Plan was implemented throughout the 1970s, and was substantially complete by 1979, when Joshua Friedwald documented the results for Halprin & Associates.

[11] The paving in the southwest part of UN Plaza, near the border with Market Street, is interrupted by a cross formed by granite blocks inlaid with brass which indicate the coordinates of San Francisco used to measure distances to other cities.

[14] The pedestrian promenade along the Fulton alignment was lit with 16 light standards and featured 24 wood slat benches along the outer edges along with 192 London plane and black poplar trees.

[11] In 1995, for the 50th anniversary of the United Nations, a "Walk of Great Ideas", funded with private donations, was added to the plaza at a cost of US$400,000 (equivalent to $800,000 in 2023).

[18] The Walk consisted of eight white granite paving stones inlaid with the preamble to the UN Charter in brass, matching the style of the coordinates cross in the southwest part of the plaza.

[11][18][19] The original luminaires were semi-translucent and square, matching the shape of the columns; the updated fixtures (which remain today) are frosted glass globes.

In addition, the city began to increase the number of events booked for the plaza to encourage "a healthy, vibrant environment that anybody can enjoy.

The design goals of the subsequent Civic Center Public Realm Plan were to retain the scale but encourage pedestrian traffic.

CMG unveiled three proposals in Spring 2018:[21] Rebecca Solnit, a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, called UN Plaza "the spiritual and geographical heart of a considerable territory" because it was "a place where you know where you stand in the world, in the most practical and metaphysical senses" in 2004.

[32] The round-the-clock vigil was supported by a camp of volunteers staying in UN Plaza[33][34] and continued to be held there over the next ten years, until a winter storm destroyed the encampment in December 1995.

"[40] During the design, Halprin applied a concept he dubbed "motation", meaning how an observer's perception of the environment changes depending on their speed and motion.

In March 2003, the city fenced off the fountain and temporarily shut off its water to alleviate the daily burden of cleaning used needles and human feces from it.

[45] A branch of the subterranean Hayes Creek had been discovered to run underneath UN Plaza during the construction of the fountain's sump; seepage had been pumped for use in street-cleaning trucks, but that source was abandoned in the 1980s.

[50] A follow-up blog posted by the ASLA welcomed the retention of the fountain and the painstaking public outreach process, but expressed skepticism about when (or if) the plan would be implemented.

[51] When the fountain was unveiled, Allan Temko, the architecture critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, declared it to be "pretentious schmaltz" that "rarely work[s] and merely toss[es] around empty muscatel bottles.

[19] In a 2007 retrospective, current Chronicle architecture critic John King said the "mannered drama of [Halprin's] plazas along Market Street" collectively "haven't aged well".