San Francisco’s new vision for the core of Civic Center strikes an ambitious, inventive balance between Beaux-Arts grandeur and small-scale welcome. The present and the past.

This doesn’t mean it is flawless. Or that design alone can solve the social challenges that now mar the procession of spaces from City Hall east to Market Street. But it’s a provocative starting point if we’re to be serious about the troubled district’s long-term health and not just pushing squalor out of sight.

The conceptual design unveiled Wednesday by the city Planning Department would remake Civic Center Plaza, introducing trees along the edge while devoting much of the interior to an oval gathering area across from City Hall’s front steps. The central oval would be ringed by floral gardens. A portion of it would be a mirror-like pool of water, less than ½-inch deep, that could be drained when events are held.

Two popular playgrounds added last year would be incorporated into any design. The cafe pavilion nearby them, also from 2018, might stay in place or might be moved elsewhere.

The spaces to the east would also be redone. Fulton Street would be closed to traffic, the wide band of asphalt traded for a pair of lawns scaled to hold recreational events such as youth soccer matches.

United Nations Plaza would keep its current form, and the granite slab-studded fountain designed by Lawrence Halprin would stay. However, the fountain would be altered so as to make passage through it accessible to people with disabilities.

More of a sculptural landscape. Less of a craggy pit.

These proposals for the three-block span are conceptual: Even in the best-case scenario, the makeover would begin in several years on Fulton Street, since that would cause the least disruption, and then move on to the two plazas, one after the other.

That said, the two-year effort headed by the Planning Department isn’t just wishful dreams and flashy imagery.

“This is a very ambitious proposal, and it will have to be done in phases,” conceded John Rahaim, San Francisco’s planning director. “But you need to put something exciting in front of people for a project to become viable” and attract capital investment from City Hall.

The strength of the conceptual proposal, which has been reviewed by seven city agencies, is that it offers both an overall vision of a civic corridor and a varied collection of spaces along the way.

This is especially true of Civic Center Plaza.

Civic Center timeline A century of evolution: https://bit.ly/2T3DFFx

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The design team, led by CMG Landscape Architecture, has managed to make a contemporary approach fit within Civic Center’s classical framework. If the plan becomes reality you’d have four green quadrants framing the paved oval.

There’d be small entrances through broad-leaf evergreen trees at each corner, and a wide-open passage from east to west — a nod to the original layout of the century-old space, and the orderly drama of such stately landmarks as City Hall and the Asian Art Museum.

Within this framework, the lines grow fluid and the spaces loosen up. The playgrounds would be softened by lush gardens under flowering trees. Benches would curve along the gardens’ outer edges, but also serve as discreet barriers.

“The plaza as now designed is something you walk through,” said Willett Moss, the “M” in CMG. “We heard from groups saying, ‘Give us a place to stroll, to meander.’”

Another smart aspect of the vision: Designers understand that people approach Civic Center from all directions, many of them forbidding. So we’d have small tweaks to humanize the fringes of the main spaces.

That’s why the conceptual design places a dog park on the block of Leavenworth Street that’s a grim offshoot of U.N. Plaza. A flag-studded mini-plaza would fill what’s now a sketchy clearing kitty-corner to Civic Center Plaza.

“We’re trying to seed the path in with activities and small attractions,” explained Lauren Hackney, project manager for CMG.

The conceptual vision is less persuasive in its approach to Fulton Street and U.N. Plaza — not because of design flaws, but the underlying assumption that there are vast numbers of people waiting to spill into the 15-acre zone if only portions of it didn’t feel like unsafe voids.

The promenade from U.N. Plaza that extends to Hyde Street, for instance, might be lined with some kind of artwork or engravings that commemorate “local heroes.” Nice. But so is the current emphasis on when countries joined the U.N.

Feel-good gestures only go so far.

In a more promising vein, the proposed redo would make room for urban families and the adjacent Tenderloin community. Adding recreational greens to Fulton Street, for instance, could give youth from across the city a beneficial reason to be there — which certainly isn’t the case today.

“Right now there are three very disjointed spaces along a central axis,” said Phil Ginsburg, general manager of the city’s Recreation and Park Department. “The trick is to design a great civic space, but ... also accommodate neighborhood needs.”

There’s plenty more to do, no question. If work does proceed — to environmental studies later this year and then the search for funding — design details are certain to change.

But San Francisco’s Civic Center is overdue for thoughtful updates geared to 21st century realities. The new plan is a good place to start.

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