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Want to know the person behind all of SPUR's good sustainability work? Check out planetshifter.com's interview with Laura Tam, SPUR's Sustainable Devepment Policy Director and hear Laura's thoughts on the necessary relationship between environmentally responsible practices and making good cities, how SPUR moves beyond important research to implement policy and how she works on reducing her ecological footprint at home.

SPUR members toured the Mission Armory, the 200,000 square foot Moorish Castle Reproduction completed in 1914.  From it's completion until 1976, the Armory was used as a National Guard facility, and later joined the National Register of Historic Places.

The drill court, spanning nearly an acre, served not only as a military training facility, but also as boxing arena, and hall for social events for the City's national guardsmen.  Future use as a community space will be managed by The Armory Community Center (TACC).

The interior space contains 160 rooms grossing 190,300 square feet.  Decor ranges from utilitarian to the more decorative, as seen in the Main Entrance Hall:

Filming By CyberEntertainmnet, Inc, which acquired the Armory in 2006, occupied many areas of the Armory, sadly restricting the SPUR visit.  Tours conducted by employees of CyberEntertainment are offered the 2nd Friday of the month.  For more information, please visit: http://www.sfarmory.com/

Today was the second day of the six-week Better Market Street Project trial number one, which diverts cars headed north off of Market Street at 8th and 6th avenues, in an attempt to reduce traffic on the oft-clogged street. What a transformation! The morning bicycle commute has become a breeze and we hope will encourage more workers to choose their two-wheeled vehicle.

The Better Merket Street Project hopes his traffic reduction trial will be the beginning of the metamorphosis of Market Street into one of the great city boulevards of the world. More trials to come will include new mini-plazas with tables and chairs. See our own SPUR Deputy Director Sarah Karlinksy share her thoughts on the matter here. 

This summer, somewhere in California, the state Energy Commission denied an application for a new urban natural gas-burning power plant, citing that urban solar (PV) might be a better alternative.  The CEC said that new "peakers" were not obviously the most cost-effective or environmentally preferable option to close that city's energy reliability gap.  For years, SPUR and a loose coalition of environmental advocates, led by the Brightline Defense Project, have suggested that our own City consider more environmentally-friendly alternatives to closing the Potrero Power Plant than siting new gas-fired peakers. Although we are on the brink of success here, the CEC's decision sets a precedent that other cities will be required to analyze rooftop PV as a feasible alternative to new gas-fired generation.  Read Brightline's brief legal analysis of the decision here.

A little backstory illustrates why this is so important. In the wake of the 2001 energy crisis, to help bolster the state's grid reliability, many cities built new natural gas-burning 'peaker' power plants that could be fired up to meet local energy needs on days of unusually high demand.  More often than not, low income communities, or communities of color, were the recipient locations for these peakers - increasing emissions in places that were many times already shouldering disproportionate environmental burdens.   The new CEC decision means that this could be reversed, and in a way that brings green jobs and environmental justice along with a more sustainable energy supply.  Let San Francisco (er, Chula Vista), lead the way!