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November 16, 2010SPUR's Take on Amending the Bay Plan By Laura Tam, Sustainable Development Policy Director [Photo Credit: flickr user Ostrosky Photos]We know that the climate is changing. We know that sea levels are going to rise at a faster rate in the coming decades—as much as 16 inches by mid-century—and we know that large parts of the Bay Area are going to become vulnerable to flooding in the process. (Read SPUR's papers on sea level rise here and here.) Policy failure outside our region (nationally and internationally) is making it even more important within our region to both...
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November 12, 2010Weekly Snapshot BY ANIKA JESI Demolition of the Transbay TerminalSchool Brings Farming to the Big Apple: A formerly vacant lot in the East Bronx now serves as a classroom for The New York City School of Urban Agriculture, a new venture aimed at helping students use urban farming to foster a healthy food culture in their community. Washington Rethinks its Rules on Building Height: Washington, D.C. is reexamining its outdated zoning laws that restrict building height in the city. While some argue that taller buildings...
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November 10, 2010SPUR Tours Recycle Central BY MARK DREGER Just because you can recycle it, doesn't mean you should be using itSan Francisco is successful at many things, but there is one place where we shine above all other cities in the country – our recycling and compost programs. San Francisco was the first major city in the U.S. to implement a citywide curbside composting program open to all residents and businesses. Almost a decade after the program's initial roll-out, alongside an ever-expanding recycling program, San...
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November 9, 2010DIY Urbanism: An Interview with PlantSF Founder Jane Martin BY JENNIFER WARBURG This fall SPUR has featured the projects of local "Do-It-Yourself" urbanists in DIY Urbanism: testing the grounds for social change. In lean economic times, individuals have become the driving force behind some of the most successful initiatives to make San Francisco a better city, often providing the crucial impetus to address problems on a larger scale. SPUR spoke with Jane Martin, whose image as a jack-hammer wielding advocate for greener sidewalks has made her emblematic of the do...
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November 5, 2010Weekly Snapshot BY ANIKA JESI Elections Cloud High-Speed Rail's Future, Just as New Survey Shows It's Potential: The recent wins of politicians opposed to high-speed rail funding could threaten to stall rail projects in several states such as Florida and Ohio when, only days prior, the American Public Transportation Association had released a survey showing that 62% of people would patronize high speed rail service.Sustainable Growth Formula Eludes Many China Cities: While some Chinese cities are making strides...
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November 4, 2010World Series Also a Victory for BART POSTED BY ED PARILLON [Photo Credit: flickr user NicoleAbalde] As those who follow the Bay Area transit blogosphere already know, Wednesday's Giants World Series victory parade spurred BART on to its highest ridership ever"”by a huge margin. The system carried over half a million riders — 522,000 to be exact, which beat the previous record (from Oct 29, 2009, when the Bay Bridge was closed for emergency repairs) by 18%. BART wasn't the only regional system with a bumper day either: Caltrain...
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November 2, 2010Exploring Future Job Centers of the Bay Area: Hacienda Park, a Midpoint for the Megaregion BY POONAM NARKAR Across the Bay Area, only one in 10 commuters takes transit work each day. And half of those transit commuters go to one job center: downtown San Francisco. But since most work is outside of downtowns, SPUR is trying to understand a little more about emerging suburban and non-downtown job centers. This series will look at the Bay Area's evolving and emerging business districts. For each district, we will ask four main questions:The Location: Where is this place located? How far or...
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October 26, 2010California Forward Features Interview with Gabriel Metcalf "The only way we're going to do something about sprawl, which is the environmental problem of our generation, is to increase density near transit and already urbanized areas." Watch the full interview with SPUR's Executive Director.
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October 26, 2010Canadian Suburbanites More Likely to Ride Transit than Americans POSTED BY ED PARILLON Jarrett Walker of Human Transit has an intriguing post comparing transit ridership in American cities to those in Canada. As you can see in the chart below (based on these data), Canadian cities seem to have higher transit usage than American metro regions of similar size (the points on the chart are all based on metropolitan areas, not central cities). [Chart via: urbanist.typepad.com/]There's been a lot of speculation over at Human Transit as to why this might be, as the reasons aren...
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October 22, 2010Weekly Snapshot BY ANIKA JESI SPUR members toured Recycle Central last week [Photo Credit: Colleen McHugh] Can We Farm in Skyscrapers? Author Dickson Despommier thinks we can. His newest book on "vertical farming" advocates for growing food in multi-story urban agriculture centers as a way to cut down on the resources traditionally involved in producing and transporting crops.How SoHo Can Save the Suburbs: As more young families opt to live in cities rather than suburbs, suburban renewal has taken on a new level...
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