If there was a common theme to San Francisco architecture in 2017 — the structures built or brought back to life — it’s that with money, all things are possible and that the city’s ills can be tackled in part by thoughtful design.

So don’t look at what follows as a best-of list. It’s not. Rather, it’s a subjective survey of 10 buildings and one public space that speak to the San Francisco of today. The map is in flux and the economy is strong, but the underlying problems are as daunting as ever.

1338 Filbert St.: San Franciscans love to preserve old buildings and our overheated economy means that just about anything can be saved. Here, four dilapidated but landmark cottages built in 1907 have been restored with meticulous taste and discreet additions by architect Jerome Buttrick. The landscaped pathway by Marta Fry pays homage to artist Marian Hartwell, the one-time owner. The scene is so sedate you wouldn’t know opponents went to court to stop the project. The price of admission? The low-key quartet went on the market last summer with prices starting at $4 million each.

181 Fremont St.: Only in 2017 would an 800-foot tower with a structural frame of diagonal metal stripes escape notice in this city, but that’s how it is when you’re second fiddle to Salesforce Tower. But this 55-story spike-topped shaft designed by Heller Manus Architects deserves a place on the list: with the bottom two-thirds leased to Facebook and the upper floors reserved for condos starting at $3.25 million, it’s an architectural snapshot of a city where height no longer is taboo, living in the clouds is sexy and Silicon Valley keeps growing.

Proper Hotel: Five years after tech firms started moving to ever-squalid Mid-Market, we’re starting to see buildings keyed to the new population. Leading the way: this makeover of the former Renoir Hotel, a flatiron from 1926 near United Nations Plaza. The brown brick exterior is freshened up but pretty much the same; the interior is a fantasy of baroque boho decadence designed by Kelly Wearstler. It’s as if the grunginess and drug scene outside doesn’t exist — except that the only way into the club-like lobby of the renamed Proper Hotel is past doormen on McAllister Street.

Central Waterfront Navigation Center: Late Mayor Ed Lee’s legacy includes his admirable push for homeless assistance centers where people could be taken off the street and steered toward housing, social services and job training. It was architects at the Department of Public Works who made this one in Dogpatch at the end of 25th Street stylish as well as humane — a short-term haven next to a Muni yard where prefabricated modules are enlivened by outdoor courtyards and such color accents as “marigold yellow” and “inchworm green.”

American Industrial Center: Speaking of Dogpatch, this two-building behemoth at Third and 22nd streets shows why the neighborhood has become a destination. It isn’t new (the northern half, a former canning plant, dates from 1915), and the blend of light industry and the design economy has simmered for years. But in 2017, the proliferation of locally sourced storefronts hit head-turning critical mass, including such artisanal hipster outposts as a bike shop, a brew pub and a barbershop that grandpa would scorn.

Transbay bus bridge: Amid the glassy towers of our new southern skyline, this straightforward cable-stayed span across the 500 block of Howard Street is old-school in the best way. To allow buses to drive directly between the Bay Bridge and the soon-to-open transit center, the engineering firm Arup placed a slender concrete tower between narrow ramps, then shaped each element with distinction. The result: infrastructure that is a pleasure to walk underneath, not a blight.

Willie B. Kennedy Apartments: The 1960s-era redevelopment of the Western Addition left cultural scars that still linger — but also, in hindsight, provided underutilized land that could be used to make a few lives better. That’s the case with this five-story complex at Turk and Webster streets that holds 98 senior apartments on what once was the parking lot for the public housing tower next door. Designed by MWA Architects for the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, it’s laid out to allow cross-ventilation in most apartments, while the interior finishes include seamless flooring in bathrooms to prevent tripping.

844 Lombard St.: In the spirit of houses painted purple and crazed statuary on staid stucco, architect Andre Rothblatt conjured up a three-vehicle carport that’s also a conversation piece. He arranged two concrete retaining walls and the cedar fence behind them with slanted walls, zig-zag-zig, to form a stylized tribute to the legendary hairpins two blocks to the west. I’m sure it wasn’t cheap, but well-executed whimsy deserves notice, especially in contentious times like these.

600 S. Van Ness Ave.: It’s not the worst housing complex added to the landscape in 2017, and it’s certainly not the best. Instead, Leavitt Architecture and developer Toboni Group delivered a slightly above-average example of the formulaic infill that either drives neighbors crazy or puts them to sleep. The five-story box is generous on the ground, a planning priority, then shifts to boilerplate contemporary above, with right-angled bays in colors bleak and bland. Can’t we do better than this?

South Park: Not everyone loves this remake of the historic oval hidden inside the block bounded by 2nd, 3rd, Brannan and Bryant streets. But give landscape architect David Fletcher credit for an imaginative realm that seeks to invite all factions of a neighborhood that includes subsidized elderly apartments as well as condos for the tech crowd — complete with a single, ambling path that’s wheelchair- and stroller-friendly, and an all-ages play structure with two metal hoops that seem to fly apart but are connected by netting.

Millennium Tower: Yes, this posh residential tower at Mission and Fremont streets opened in 2008. Yes, it’s old news that the high-rise has sunk more than a foot and is tilting to the north. But this is still the building your out-of-town visitors want to see, and this year it sank at least another inch. In other words, the saga isn’t going anywhere — unless the entire 58-story tower gently disappears into the bayfill below.

Place is a column by John King, The San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic. Email: jking@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @johnkingsfchron