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February 19, 2010T4A: Create Jobs by Investing in Transportation BY BEN LOWE Public transportation gets millions of Americans to and from their jobs every day. Transportation for America, a national public-transit and smart-growth advocacy organization, thinks investing in our transportation sector can create jobs as well. In response to the jobs bill now working its way through the Senate, which would largely offer tax cuts to small businesses, T4A has proposed instead that funding be put toward projects such as:$16 billion for transit$8.1 billion for the...
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February 5, 2010A Flip of the Lens: What's RIGHT with San Francisco? BY JULIE KIM [Image: flickr user VancityAllie] Slow buses. Skyrocketing housing costs. Preventable budget deficits. It's easy to rattle off the myriad things wrong with our city. In many ways, SPUR's very existence and mission are rooted in a practice of taking a hard look at our bad decisions, and accepting responsibility for them as a first step toward changing the city for the better. But we are a little too good at being honest with ourselves, a little too quick to look elsewhere for answers:...
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February 3, 2010Despite Recession, Cycling Sees Dramatic Increase in SF BY BEN LOWE The recession has caused both private auto and public transit use to fall in the past couple of years, both in San Francisco and throughout the country, as travelers cut out superfluous trips to save money and those who have lost their jobs simply do not have anywhere to go.Yet one mode of transportation in SF has shown massive mode-share gains over the same period: bicycle ridership in San Francisco increased 8.3% from 2008 to 2009, the MTA reports. During this same...
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January 29, 2010Eat on the Street! BY COLLEEN MCHUGH Streetfood is not new. In fact, since the existence of streets and the commoditization of food, streetfood has been an integral aspect of daily life for cultures around the world. That being said, it is undeniable that there has been a growing trend in San Francisco and other American cities towards selling a creative array of food – from Korean tacos to crème brulée – prepared on the street.Streetfood in China and the Netherlands [Images: Colleen McHugh]Tuesday’s...
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January 22, 2010Sustainability and Simplicity BY ELIZABETH HOLDEN As students rushed home for the day, SPUR members filtered in for a tour of the San Francisco Friends School. Built in 1906 after the earthquake and fire, the building housed Levi Strauss & Co. until 2002. Fundraising for the Friends School began in 2006, and classes commenced in September of 2008. Peter Pfau and Kami Kincaid of Pfau Long Architecture explained their process of renovation. With general contractor Plant Construction Company, the team designed the...
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January 20, 2010Woe is Parking. BY COLLEEN MCHUGH As someone who has lived in this city for virtually my entire life, there is one thing I know for sure – parking is a pain. Were I to calculate the total time I’ve wasted cruising for a parking space or the total amount of money I’ve spent in parking tickets, I might go insane. However, we are not just losing our time, money, and sanity in this parking climate. We are also increasing traffic congestion and, in the process, greenhouse gas emissions. But...
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January 7, 2010Is America in Decline? BY EGON TERPLAN, REGIONAL PLANNING DIRECTOR Not so fast says the Atlantic’s James Fallows in a new article on “How America Can Rise Again.” People have argued we were in decline since the earliest days of the republic. His prescription: Focus on maintaining our top universities to foster innovation and open immigration to keep people and ideas flowing into our country. From SPUR’s perspective, we would add – and invest heavily in high speed rail and other infrastructure that enables non-auto...
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January 5, 2010Learning from Washington D.C. BY BEN LOWE This past fall, a group of SPUR board members and staff traveled to Washington DC to learn from the urban-planning successes of our nation's capital; today, three members of that group presented their findings at a lunchtime forum.SPUR Deputy Director Sarah Karlinsky began the discussion with an overview of the Washington urban planning models from Pierre L'Enfant's plan of 1791 to and James McMillan's Plan of 1901 through modern-day endeavors to enliven the long-neglected...
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December 18, 2009Sea Level Rise, Way Worse than We Thought (Again) BY LAURA TAM, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT POLICY DIRECTOR A paper this week in what is arguably the world's most prestigious scientific journal, Nature, says that the last time the Earth warmed up as much as it will under climate change, sea levels rose about 8 meters. This means that global sea level rise over the coming decades may be about twice as worse as we thought. When we published two articles in the Urbanist last month on the topic of sea level rise, we reported that sea level rise might possibly be 5-7 m higher in 300 years, and very...
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December 18, 2009SPUR and streets on film! - posted by Colleen Deputy Director Sarah Karlinsky was featured in a short film this week on the future of San Francisco’s streets. Streetsblog San Francisco posted a video on Monday showcasing the Making a Better Market Street Project. The project envisions Market Street as a grand boulevard similar to La Rambla in Barcelona, the Champs-Élysées in Paris, or the more recently reconfigured public space in New York’s Times Square. As Sarah Karlinsky explains in the film, “[these cities] are really thinking...
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