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October 14, 2009Laura Tam! BY MARY 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.
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October 8, 2009Sea Level to Rise 5 Meters in 300 Years BY LAURA TAM, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT POLICY DIRECTOR A climate conference in Oxford concluded last week that whatever we can do to slow carbon emissions, it won't be enough to stop accelerated sea level rise. In fact, a German scientist who's widely regarded as one of the world's foremost experts on sea level rise, said his best guess was 1 meter this century (a lowball figure compared to the latest projections for California), and 5 meters in 300 years. Expect a lot of bleak climate news to be revealed over the next few months, as...
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October 8, 2009Invade the Armory 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...
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October 1, 2009Growing on Our Buildings BY MARY Some of the first calculations of the benefits of green roofs are coming back and they're even better than expected: replacing typical roofing materials with plants across a city the size of Detroit would be the equivalent of removing the pollution of 10,000 SUVs in a year. This study is the first to measure the amount of carbon that could be captured by the extensive use of green roofs.Meanwhile, The New York Times is reporting the trend in real estate to use green roofs to lure potential...
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September 30, 2009Our Great Boulevard BY MARY 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...
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September 28, 2009Burning Man Takes on the City BY MARY Two weeks ago the great parade of cars covered in the white desert dust returned from Black Rock City, Nevada, Burning Man's annual week-long home. Along with the many tales, burners brought back news of next year's theme: Metropolis: the life of cities. Besides celebrating Black Rock City's own urban elements--a population of 40-50,000 people with (temporary) homes on lots within blocks; a system of streets with a main car-less promenade and plazas; a non-commercial economy; and...
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September 28, 2009Solar = 'Peaker' Power, without the EJ Issues BY LAURA TAM, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT POLICY DIRECTOR 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...
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September 23, 2009NY Times Columnist Allison Arieff Blogs about P2P (and Land-Lending in a Soft Economy) BY JULIE KIM New York Times columnist Allison Arieff penned a piece yesterday on the temporary parks and open spaces sprouting up in San Francisco and New York City--and the opportunity for land owners (in this soft economy) to lend their empty lots to grassroots greeners. This image, from Arieff's column, shows the site of one of San Francisco's newest temporary plaza at the intersection of San Jose Avenue and Guerrero Streets: The San Jose/Guerrero parks use simple materials--many of them...
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September 23, 2009Music, Dancing, Urbanists at 2009 PARK(ing) Day BY JULIE KIM Last Friday, we teamed up with the San Francisco Great Streets Project and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition to participate in 2009 PARK(ing) Day, an event-cum-social movement started by Rebar in 2005. Before the big day, architect and SFBC volunteer Riyad Ghannam spent countless hours in the Urban Center's basement designing and building wooden platforms to create a seamless transition between the sidewalk and PARK: We're hoping the installation can be a model for restaurants and...
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September 22, 2009What GOOD Design can do for San Francisco BY JULIE KIM Last month, AIA San Francisco, CEOs for Cities, GOOD Magazine and SPUR issued a "call for problems" to a handful of city leaders, and asked six up-and-coming designers to develop responses and present them at an evening forum later this month. The challenges we got ranged from improving public schools, to designing a more welcoming storefront for the Ferry Building, to coming up with a better, i.e. less cumbersome, way for homeowners to store recycling bins. Six local design...
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