Many in the audience called on MTC and ABAG to add an additional scenario focused on equity, jobs and the environment. There were several dozen supporters of this scenario, and they heavily outnumbered the small contingent who spoke about the evils of central planning, socialism, income distribution and the perceived illegality of the entire planning process. SPUR weighed in on the debate with a policy letter to the MTC commissioners. At the meeting, we boiled down our recommendations to two main points:

It’s easy to point out what activities are dangerous and illegal in Gabriel’s video: pedestrians jaywalking, bikes travelling against traffic, cars running red lights or refusing to yield when turning. But it’s not always easy to know the correct way for cars, bicycles and pedestrians to interact. For instance, did you know that in California, when making a right turn on a street with a  bike lane, a car is required to merge into the bike lane anywhere between 50 and 200 feet before the intersection? In other states, such as Oregon, the car would make its turn at the intersection, crossing the bike lane. Differences between states may be one reason that laws related to bicyclists are not as well known as other traffic laws.

The SFMTA estimates that bike ridership in San Francisco increased 58 percent between 2006 and 2010, and the organization is taking steps to make travelling around the city safer and easier for cyclists. Most recently, the SFMTA painted “bike boxes” on Market Street, adding to those already at 14th and Folsom streets and at  Scott and Oak streets. Bike boxes are solid green squares on the pavement just before the crosswalk, behind which cars must stop but on which bicyclists may idle. This creates a designated space for cyclists to pause at red lights, rather than leaving them stranded between cars, and could help make drivers more aware of cyclists around them. However, it could also prevent drivers from making right-on-red turns.

The SFMTA has also approved 34 miles of new bike lanes for San Francisco. These include a lane down 17th Street from Castro Street to the Bay, a lane on Kirkham Street from 7th Avenue to the Great Highway, and an extension of the lanes on JFK Drive that would continue on Oak and Fell Streets, connecting Divisadero to Golden Gate Park and the ocean. These new lanes and improvements could make biking in the city safer and easier, and make bike movements more predictable for motorists trying to avoid them -- so long as everyone follows the rules. Whether the improvements will cut down on the aggressive driving, cycling and jaywalking featured in Gabriel’s video remains to be seen.

Due to overwhelming demand pre-registration for this event is closed. A limited number of tickets will be available at the door.

This Tuesday night SPUR will host DENSER, a "Pecha Kucha" night on density, infill and urban development. What's Pecha Kucha? Named after the Japanese word for conversation or “chit chat,” it's a place for designers and other thinkers to showcase their work to the public. In Pecha Kucha's patented fast-and-furious format, presenters are allowed to show 20 slides -- each for just 20 seconds. That's a total of about 6.5 minutes to quickly convey one's ideas or work to the audience, allowing for a greater number of voices and more idea swapping.

Pecha Kucha originated in Tokyo in 2003. Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Klein Dytham Architecture came up with the events as a way for young designers in architecture and other fields to meet, mingle and share their work. It quickly grew, turning into large-scale celebrations of creativity and collaboration, with PK nights now taking place in 418 cities worldwide.

Among the impressive and thought-provoking presenters with us Tuesday night will be John Wong from SWA, Kit Hodge from SF Bicycle Coalition, Craig Scott of Iwamoto/Scott Architecture, David Baker of David Baker Architects, Grady Gillies from UCLA Superstudio, Ben Grant from SPUR, Robin Levitt, Julie Kim, Antonio Roma-Alacala of SF Urban Agriculture Alliance and Pecha Kucha’s Paul Jamtgaard.

The event will begin at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 21, at the SPUR Urban Center. Pre-registration is full, but a limited number of tickets will be available at the door.

There’s something in it for everyone to hate and something for everyone to love, but after two years, we are optimistic: We may be very close to a consensus on how to amend the San Francisco Bay Plan with new information about climate change.

Over the last two years, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) has been working on a proposal to amend its guidance document, the Bay Plan, to include new findings and policies related to climate change and sea level rise. BCDC has held countless public hearings and public workshops, amended its draft staff recommendation more than three times, and received thousands of public comments. Last November, SPUR provided specific language suggestions to BCDC, which were widely read and used as the basis of other stakeholders’ comments.

In May, SPUR Executive Director Gabriel Metcalf was invited to appear on a panel before the commission at a public workshop. Seated right between the two most vocal and oppositional groups engaged in this process — three people representing the environmental community, and three people representing the building industry — Gabriel suggested that the commission consider both protection of the Bay and good infill development around it as equally important regional benefits. And within the limited areas where it’s possible to site new transit-oriented infill development, he urged, the plan should encourage such projects on a case-by-base basis. This is no overreaching assault on the environment: The Bay Plan already presumes no development in fragile managed wetlands, and BCDC has almost no authority to site or permit new development anywhere else.

Since that meeting, the proposed Bay Plan Amendment has changed again, in ways that SPUR strongly supports. Instead of rewriting an entirely new definition of infill development — a subject of wide disagreement — the new amendment refreshingly removes the definition and replaces it with information about the FOCUS program, which identifies the Bay Area’s regional priority development areas for infill. It also recognizes that BCDC is one of several regional agencies working to align policies around sustainable communities and transit-oriented development. The document now references the California Climate Adaptation Strategy, a guidance document developed by and for state agencies on how to plan for climate change. While mildly controversial in that it has not been legally adopted, the strategy is already being followed by a number of other state agencies and was recently endorsed by the California Ocean Protection Council.

The new amendment also recognizes that we will need to invest vast resources in protecting communities and infrastructure along the shoreline and that we need a regional strategy, so that one city’s levee doesn’t worsen sea level rise for its neighbors. Finally, it is abundantly clear that the proposed amendments are not an expansion of BCDC’s jurisdiction — which is extremely limited.

In the first week of June, I testified to BCDC about our support of this new proposal and shared my optimism that we are very, very close to a final amendment. Alongside an intrepid and persevering BCDC staff, SPUR is hoping to see it adopted in October.

SPUR’s recent report “Climate Change Hits Home” explores what rising sea levels will mean for people, property, infrastructure and fragile Bay wetlands.

Read the SPUR report "Climate Change Hits Home" >>

Read our previous coverage of the Bay Plan amendment >>

Read more about our climate adaptation work >>