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July 14, 2010Muni Reform Certified by San Francisco Department of Elections for November Ballot BY BEN LOWE [Photo Credit: Colleen McHugh]The San Francisco Department of Elections announced on Monday that the Fix Muni Now campaign had submitted enough voter signatures to qualify their Muni reform measure for the ballot.The Department of Elections conducted a random sample of 2,248 signatures of the total 74,933 submitted and, based on this statistical sampling, determined there were more than the 44,382 signatures required.The measure, if approved by voters in November, would require the Muni...
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July 13, 2010Layering the Map BY JORDAN SALINGER Golden Gate Bridge, circa 1933 [Photo via Historypin user megscannell]Beyond simply serving as tools to express our knowledge of our physical surroundings, maps have frequently served as an artistic medium, allowing for the expression of biases and acting as a platform for storytelling. Since the start of the 21st century, online mapping services, led by Mapquest and more recently Google, have focused less on creativity and more on accuracy in attempting to map the planet. Google's Street...
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July 12, 2010PPIC Releases CA2025 Report on Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Public Policy in California BY FABIANA MEACHAM What are the most pressing issues facing California in the next 15 years and how should we deal with them? If only there were one comprehensive PDF document floating around the internet with all the answers.Policy wonks across the state will now be thrilled to discover the Public Policy Institute of California's recently released CA2025 report, a "briefing kit" covering California's most important long-term policy issues. Outlining policies on topics ranging from water to...
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July 12, 2010W Hotel Greens Existing Building BY TIMOTHEA TWAY [Photo Credit: Timothea Tway]At SPUR we work hard to promote the use of green building and energy efficiency practices. (Did you know the SPUR Urban Center recently achieved a LEED Silver rating? Look for it in our lobby soon!) The City of San Francisco has a comprehensive green building ordinance to address new buildings and large retrofitting projects, however we always love to see more retrofitting of existing buildings in order to further conserve resources. That's why we're so...
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July 9, 2010Weekly Snapshot BY ANIKA JESI Signing petitions for the Fix Muni Now campaign. [Photo Credit: Colleen McHugh]Elbsernd Muni reform measure has money and signatures to spare: SF Supervisor Elsbernd proudly presents the nearly 75,000 signatures collected for Fix Muni Now, the SPUR/Elsbernd Muni reform campaign which has proved successful despite union and mayoral opposition.The case for pay-as-you-drive car insurance: This idea for usage-based car insurance, charging a fee per miles traveled, could deter unnecessary driving...
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July 9, 2010HSR Report: What can California Learn from High-Speed Rail Systems around the World? BY EMILY EHLERS This Week: JAPAN For evident selfish reasons, I like to tout the Golden State as the breeding ground for innovation. And as California attempts to build the first high-speed rail (HSR) network in the country, it's tempting to consider ourselves warriors heralding in a new day for transportation. Really, though, HSR has been successful for decades in Asia and Europe. Nations from South Africa to South Korea are doing precisely what California hopes to achieve.Scheduled to break ground in two...
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July 7, 2010What's in a Name? Mission Bay's "Block 27 Parking Structure" Highlights Neighborhood's Potential BY FABIANA MEACHAM Maybe "Block 27 Parking Structure" isn't the most promising of names, but there's not much one can do to jazz up this widely reviled building type, so why try to come up with something catchy -- right? At least that's what I thought before encountering WRNS Studio's garage on SPUR's Mission Bay walking tour last week. The Mission Bay Redevelopment District, home to luxury condos, swanky biotech headquarters, and a burgeoning UCSF campus, contains one of the most...
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July 6, 2010Datablog: Does Unemployment Equal More Crime? BY JORDAN SALINGER Crime and unemployment: two things cities consistently battle with, but rarely like to talk about. While it may seem like these two issues are linked, with crime rising out of necessity, GOOD's recent infographic shows that a positive correlation may not exist. Working with Part and Parcel, a small design firm in New York, GOOD's Transparency graphic confronts this issue in a very direct manner. Using the FBI's crime data going back to 1989, this graphic sorts crime into two...
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July 1, 2010Fix Muni Now Campaign and Supervisor Elsbernd Deliver Nearly 75,000 Petitions to City Hall BY BEN LOWE [Photo Credit: Colleen McHugh]For the past several months, SPUR has been working with Supervisor Sean Elsbernd and the Fix Muni Now campaign to get Muni reform on the November ballot. Later today, the campaign will submit to the Department of Elections nearly 75,000 petitions—about 30,000 more than needed to qualify for the November ballot. The signature-gathering effort relied heavily on the help of hundreds of volunteers from throughout the city who, over the course of the past two...
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June 24, 2010Urban Field Notes: Lessons from Eight SF Alleys Alleys serve many purposes and people, often all in the same space. They provide back access so that service vehicles and garages don't conflict with transit and pedestrians, and so that main frontages can be preserved for shops and lobbies. They provide affordable and quirky commercial spaces for small businesses. They reduce the scale of large blocks, bringing light and air into dense areas, and creating a humane physical and mental framework for walking — with shortcuts, variety,...
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