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Blog
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Starting May 20, SPUR embarks on a week-long experiment in public placemaking in San Francisco. Working with the Yerba Buena Community Benefit District, we will close Annie Alley to car traffic in order to host a series of outdoor public events, including a picnic, a film screening, a concert and a discussion of the role Zuccotti Park played in Occupy Wall Street.What is it about an alley that inspires urban invention? As we kick off our week of investigation, we pause to reflect on the humble...
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Article
Monday, May 13, 2013
Each day, millions of Bay Area residents shop at grocery stores and farmers’ markets, cook meals at home, dine at restaurants and compost their food waste. Individually, our food choices impact our taste buds, pocketbooks and health. Collectively, though, our choices have an enormous impact throughout the region — on the future of agricultural land, the viability of thousands of food businesses and the size of our environmental footprint. Our food system, which encompasses the...
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Blog
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
How would you improve the transit system for neighborhoods in the northeast part of San Francisco? This was the key question SPUR asked at a transit planning workshop for the city’s northeast neighborhoods last month. The workshop brought together representatives from key public agencies, North Beach and Fisherman’s Wharf businesses, the tourism industry and neighborhood advocacy groups, as well as transportation professionals.Neighborhoods in Chinatown, North Beach and other...
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Blog
Monday, May 6, 2013
Over the last year, there’s been palpable buzz in San Francisco around eco-districts — essentially, sustainability plans that operate at the neighborhood scale. We’ve learned about different eco-district models and how eco-districts are working in Portland, Seattle, Brooklyn and Denver. The San Francisco Planning Department has been especially proactive in this learning process, putting together numerous presentations on district-scale infrastructure and sustainability...
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Blog
Monday, April 29, 2013
SPUR has written several times about the development of Plan Bay Area since the planning process was kicked off a few years ago. Last month, the draft of the plan was finally released. What are the highlights in this 158-page plan and the accompanying 1,300-page environmental impact report? This post provides a summary of the Plan Bay Area draft and some of its key points. Keep an eye on the news feed at spur.org in the coming weeks for our official comment letter on the plan and what we think...
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Blog
Thursday, April 25, 2013
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has selected SPUR Executive Director Gabriel Metcalf and Monique Zmuda of the SF Office of the Controller to co-chair his 2030 Transportation Task Force. While the mayor has made it clear that fixing Muni one of his top priorities, the group will look broadly at both local and regional transportation needs. Like other task forces the mayor has convened, this one will tackle a seemingly intractable problem: transportation funding.The group’s goal is to “...
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Blog
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Last Thursday, on the 107th anniversary of the 1906 Earthquake, SF Mayor Ed Lee signed the mandatory soft-story retrofit program into law. SPUR has long advocated for this legislation, which will help make San Francisco more resilient in a major earthquake.Soft-story buildings are those with large openings for storefront windows or garages, which cause the ground floor to be weak, leaving it vulnerable to damage or even collapse in an earthquake. The legislation focuses on wood-frame apartment...
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Article
Thursday, April 4, 2013
In the early 1950s, downtown San Jose was the cultural, civic, shopping and economic hub for then-agricultural Santa Clara County. As the heart of this rich valley, downtown San Jose remained prominent from its dusty beginnings as the first civilian town in California in 1777 to its selection as California’s first state capital in 1850 to the place where IBM first developed the technology for computer disks in the early 1950s.But as technology firms began to grow around the epicenter of...
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Blog
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Of the many food and agriculture bills California legislators have introduced this year, three stand out for their potential impact on the Bay Area’s food system: a tax incentive to promote the use of private land for urban agriculture; a change to CEQA to require agricultural land preservation for certain projects; and a statewide sugary-beverage tax. Here’s a closer look at these bills, which we will be tracking this year. Urban Agriculture Incentive Zone Act (AB 551)...
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Blog
Monday, March 25, 2013
After a number of delays, the wheels are finally turning on a bike-sharing program for the Bay Area. Earlier this month, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) signed a contract with Alta Bike Share, which runs successful programs in Washington, D.C., and Boston. A Bay Area pilot program will launch this summer for two years of testing with 700 bikes at 70 locations from San Jose to San Francisco.Bike sharing allows anyone to rent a bicycle from a self-serve kiosk and drop it off...
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SPUR Report
Monday, March 18, 2013
More than two-thirds of the Bay Area’s water is imported from outside the region. Today these supplies are regularly threatened by drought, earthquakes, water quality impairments and new regulations on availability and usage — risks that will intensify with future climate change. Meanwhile, our region of 7 million people will add 2 million more by 2040 — growth that will require more water.Do we have the water we need to support our projected population growth? And what are...
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Policy Letter
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
The legislation, spearheaded by Supervisor Wiener, outlines three key changes that collectively take a small step towards creating a clearer and more streamlined CEQA process for San Franciscans. It would codify procedures for appeal of negative declarations and exemptions to the Board of Supervisors, including the timing of those appeals. It would expand noticing provisions related to exemptions, none of which are required by CEQA. It would establish that when the Board of Supervisors must...
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Policy Letter
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
San Francisco's Community Action Plan for Seismic Safety estimates that at least 58,000 residents and 7,000 workers occupy wood-frame buildings with a soft-story condition that make them vulnerable to damage or even collapse in an earthquake. Currently, soft-story buildings pose a significant threat to San Francisco’s ability to recover from a disaster. Retrofitting these 2,800 buildings will better protect occupants from injury and/or displacement and increase our city's...
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Blog
Monday, March 11, 2013
How do we create the kinds of compact, walkable environments that can have a real impact on car use and carbon emissions? SPUR San Jose’s Urban Design Task Force is working to foster well-designed new development that will support the city’s 2040 General Plan goals of a more walkable, livable and transit-friendly built environment. To understand the current state of development practice, we spent a recent Saturday visiting projects up and down the peninsula, focusing on large, multi...
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Blog
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors is facing heavy criticism and a lawsuit for its decision to approve the Cordova Hills subdivision, a new development for 25,000 residents on what is now rolling hills and ranch land 22 miles east of downtown Sacramento. The development would add thousands of new homes far from the region’s center, violating the Sustainable Communities Strategy that every city and county in the region agreed upon last year. As the Natural Resources Defense Council...
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Blog
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
An enthusiastic group of 45 urbanists on bikes kicked off a crisp Sunday morning to tour a few of San Jose’s historic neighborhoods with SPUR. Using the new bike lanes on 10th and 11th streets, along with a number of established bike routes and separated bike paths, we wove our way through three amazing gems — Naglee Park, Palm Haven and Willow Glen. Setting off from the San Jose State University campus downtown, we made our way to our first stop. Naglee ParkThe first...
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Blog
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Could the Caltrain station and railyards at 4th and King streets be San Francisco’s next big planning opportunity? The current station is the node that links San Francisco to Silicon Valley and the peninsula. It’s also the hub of an extraordinary network of Muni rail lines: the N Judah, the T Third and soon the Central Subway, which will run down 4th Street before heading underground to Chinatown and North Beach. In addition, the area is served by numerous Muni bus lines. Very few...
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Blog
Monday, February 18, 2013
The Bay Area economy has rebounded from the recession. Yet major regional challenges threaten our continued prosperity. These topics were a major focus at the 2013 State of Silicon Valley, the annual event where Silicon Valley and Bay Area leaders gather to discuss the state of our region’s economy. This year the conference organizers, Joint Venture Silicon Valley and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, invited SPUR to write a special analysis about regional governance for...
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Blog, Ocean Beach
Thursday, February 7, 2013
For the past two years, SPUR has led an extensive interagency and public process for the development of the Ocean Beach Master Plan. This work represents the first move SPUR and San Francisco have made to directly address sea level rise. Now we are beginning the first steps to implement the plan, which presents recommendations for the management and protection of San Francisco’s Ocean Beach through the year 2050. The master plan lays out an ambitious and proactive vision to adapt to...
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SPUR Report
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
When a major earthquake strikes the Bay Area, it could take months to reestablish essential services and years to rebuild. Successful recovery will depend on whether or not we make good land use planning decisions now. Local jurisdictions that lay the groundwork for rebuilding — by continuously updating their general plans and zoning codes before a major disaster — will be in a much better place to begin a conversation with residents about a recovery vision. By understanding...
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Blog
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
2012 was a big year for SPUR and for the urbanist agenda. Years of work culminated in dramatic victories on the November ballot: San Francisco voters created a Housing Trust Fund, passed a parks bond and reformed the business tax. San Francisco also adopted the Transit Center District Plan for the part of downtown surrounding the new Transbay Transit Center. The Central Subway and the electrification of Caltrain were fully funded. State legislators gave the green light to begin building the...
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Policy Letter
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Downtown San Francisco is the most sustainable job center in the region due to its walkable compact nature and its position as the hub of the region's transit infrastructure. The Central Corridor is one of the very few areas in the entire city that has the existing and planned transit infrastructure to build on these successes. It is critical that we consider the rezoning of the Central Corridor in the context of our long-term need for employment and housing space. It is with these...
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Article
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
What happened: Google’s proposed new vision for retrofitting its Mountain View campus as a dense and walkable urban place was embraced by the City of Mountain View in its updated general plan (though the city balked at Google’s request to include housing). What it means: Increasingly, we are seeing expressions of the urban future of work through specific proposals by companies interested in retrofitting the suburban corporate campus rather than moving into cities. This proposal...
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Article
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
What happened: More than 4,220 units of housing began construction in San Francisco in 2012 — following a year in which just 269 net units were added.What it means: After years of underbuilding, new housing and commercial construction is booming in San Francisco. Years of work on neighborhood plans and rezoning are paying off as new construction targets transit-served areas and neighborhoods that support greater residential density. Walk down Market Street from the Castro...
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Blog
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
In November, BART released conceptual plans for a multi-billion dollar rejuvenation that would introduce a new wave of service called BART Metro. BART expects vast ridership expansion in the next several years, and these changes would allow 50 percent growth — bringing the number of daily riders to an average of 560,000 — by 2025. The plans hinge on the idea that BART is not only a commuter rail that connects the suburbs to the cities, where most rides happen during rush hour, but...
Bus rapid transit (BRT) projects can be transformative, as we have learned from cities like Cleveland in the U.S. and global examples like Mexico City. But making space on streets for travel modes other than the car is a challenge for cities and transit operators around the world. The Bay Area has five BRT projects in development today, and each has met with difficulty and delays.Last month one of these projects, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority’s Santa Clara/Alum Rock line...
After the Embarcadero and Central freeways were severely damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake, San Francisco took a tragic situation and turned it into a great urban planning success story: the creation of the Embarcadero and Octavia boulevards. Taking down these freeways and replacing them with surface boulevards created enormous positive land use changes in the surrounding neighborhoods. This enabled San Francisco to reconnect with its waterfront and supported the creation of the...
Before we paved the streets of San Francisco, little creeks and wetlands were abundant. Today, as in most cities, these natural water features have been replaced by a sewer network that effectively throws away rainwater instead of finding ways to reuse it. But a new 20-year, $6 billion capital program could be the start of a new approach to stormwater management. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is launching this effort with a handful of small demonstration projects — and the...
Last month the San Francisco Planning Department released a draft of the Central Corridor Plan, the result of several years of planning efforts. The plan represents an enormous opportunity to build on the substantial transit investment in the area, including the $1.6 billion Central Subway project, as well as existing transit in the form of the 4th and Caltrain station and the N-Judah Muni line, as well as many frequent local buses. While the plan is a great step in the right direction, it...
Starting May 20, SPUR embarks on a week-long experiment in public placemaking in San Francisco. Working with the Yerba Buena Community Benefit District, we will close Annie Alley to car traffic in order to host a series of outdoor public events, including a picnic, a film screening, a concert and a discussion of the role Zuccotti Park played in Occupy Wall Street.What is it about an alley that inspires urban invention? As we kick off our week of investigation, we pause to reflect on the humble...
Each day, millions of Bay Area residents shop at grocery stores and farmers’ markets, cook meals at home, dine at restaurants and compost their food waste. Individually, our food choices impact our taste buds, pocketbooks and health. Collectively, though, our choices have an enormous impact throughout the region — on the future of agricultural land, the viability of thousands of food businesses and the size of our environmental footprint. Our food system, which encompasses the...
How would you improve the transit system for neighborhoods in the northeast part of San Francisco? This was the key question SPUR asked at a transit planning workshop for the city’s northeast neighborhoods last month. The workshop brought together representatives from key public agencies, North Beach and Fisherman’s Wharf businesses, the tourism industry and neighborhood advocacy groups, as well as transportation professionals.Neighborhoods in Chinatown, North Beach and other...
Over the last year, there’s been palpable buzz in San Francisco around eco-districts — essentially, sustainability plans that operate at the neighborhood scale. We’ve learned about different eco-district models and how eco-districts are working in Portland, Seattle, Brooklyn and Denver. The San Francisco Planning Department has been especially proactive in this learning process, putting together numerous presentations on district-scale infrastructure and sustainability...
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has selected SPUR Executive Director Gabriel Metcalf and Monique Zmuda of the SF Office of the Controller to co-chair his 2030 Transportation Task Force. While the mayor has made it clear that fixing Muni one of his top priorities, the group will look broadly at both local and regional transportation needs. Like other task forces the mayor has convened, this one will tackle a seemingly intractable problem: transportation funding.The group’s goal is to “...
Last Thursday, on the 107th anniversary of the 1906 Earthquake, SF Mayor Ed Lee signed the mandatory soft-story retrofit program into law. SPUR has long advocated for this legislation, which will help make San Francisco more resilient in a major earthquake.Soft-story buildings are those with large openings for storefront windows or garages, which cause the ground floor to be weak, leaving it vulnerable to damage or even collapse in an earthquake. The legislation focuses on wood-frame apartment...
In the early 1950s, downtown San Jose was the cultural, civic, shopping and economic hub for then-agricultural Santa Clara County. As the heart of this rich valley, downtown San Jose remained prominent from its dusty beginnings as the first civilian town in California in 1777 to its selection as California’s first state capital in 1850 to the place where IBM first developed the technology for computer disks in the early 1950s.But as technology firms began to grow around the epicenter of...
Of the many food and agriculture bills California legislators have introduced this year, three stand out for their potential impact on the Bay Area’s food system: a tax incentive to promote the use of private land for urban agriculture; a change to CEQA to require agricultural land preservation for certain projects; and a statewide sugary-beverage tax. Here’s a closer look at these bills, which we will be tracking this year. Urban Agriculture Incentive Zone Act (AB 551)...
After a number of delays, the wheels are finally turning on a bike-sharing program for the Bay Area. Earlier this month, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) signed a contract with Alta Bike Share, which runs successful programs in Washington, D.C., and Boston. A Bay Area pilot program will launch this summer for two years of testing with 700 bikes at 70 locations from San Jose to San Francisco.Bike sharing allows anyone to rent a bicycle from a self-serve kiosk and drop it off...
More than two-thirds of the Bay Area’s water is imported from outside the region. Today these supplies are regularly threatened by drought, earthquakes, water quality impairments and new regulations on availability and usage — risks that will intensify with future climate change. Meanwhile, our region of 7 million people will add 2 million more by 2040 — growth that will require more water.Do we have the water we need to support our projected population growth? And what are...
How do we create the kinds of compact, walkable environments that can have a real impact on car use and carbon emissions? SPUR San Jose’s Urban Design Task Force is working to foster well-designed new development that will support the city’s 2040 General Plan goals of a more walkable, livable and transit-friendly built environment. To understand the current state of development practice, we spent a recent Saturday visiting projects up and down the peninsula, focusing on large, multi...
An enthusiastic group of 45 urbanists on bikes kicked off a crisp Sunday morning to tour a few of San Jose’s historic neighborhoods with SPUR. Using the new bike lanes on 10th and 11th streets, along with a number of established bike routes and separated bike paths, we wove our way through three amazing gems — Naglee Park, Palm Haven and Willow Glen. Setting off from the San Jose State University campus downtown, we made our way to our first stop. Naglee ParkThe first...
Could the Caltrain station and railyards at 4th and King streets be San Francisco’s next big planning opportunity? The current station is the node that links San Francisco to Silicon Valley and the peninsula. It’s also the hub of an extraordinary network of Muni rail lines: the N Judah, the T Third and soon the Central Subway, which will run down 4th Street before heading underground to Chinatown and North Beach. In addition, the area is served by numerous Muni bus lines. Very few...
For the past two years, SPUR has led an extensive interagency and public process for the development of the Ocean Beach Master Plan. This work represents the first move SPUR and San Francisco have made to directly address sea level rise. Now we are beginning the first steps to implement the plan, which presents recommendations for the management and protection of San Francisco’s Ocean Beach through the year 2050. The master plan lays out an ambitious and proactive vision to adapt to...
When a major earthquake strikes the Bay Area, it could take months to reestablish essential services and years to rebuild. Successful recovery will depend on whether or not we make good land use planning decisions now. Local jurisdictions that lay the groundwork for rebuilding — by continuously updating their general plans and zoning codes before a major disaster — will be in a much better place to begin a conversation with residents about a recovery vision. By understanding...
2012 was a big year for SPUR and for the urbanist agenda. Years of work culminated in dramatic victories on the November ballot: San Francisco voters created a Housing Trust Fund, passed a parks bond and reformed the business tax. San Francisco also adopted the Transit Center District Plan for the part of downtown surrounding the new Transbay Transit Center. The Central Subway and the electrification of Caltrain were fully funded. State legislators gave the green light to begin building the...
In November, BART released conceptual plans for a multi-billion dollar rejuvenation that would introduce a new wave of service called BART Metro. BART expects vast ridership expansion in the next several years, and these changes would allow 50 percent growth — bringing the number of daily riders to an average of 560,000 — by 2025. The plans hinge on the idea that BART is not only a commuter rail that connects the suburbs to the cities, where most rides happen during rush hour, but...
