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August 23, 2012Recycled Water Study Shows SF Will Still Need Hetch Hetchy By Laura Tam, Sustainable Development Policy DirectorThis November, San Francisco’s Prop. F asks voters to approve an $8 million planning process to find a way to drain Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, the city’s most important water system asset. SPUR believes that this is a bad idea for many reasons, and we strongly oppose Prop F (stay tuned at www.spur.org/voterguide for our full ballot analysis in early October).The measure also calls for a task force to develop a long-term plan to improve water quality and reliability, and to...
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August 22, 2012Realizing the Potential of Bay Area Boulevards By Tony ViLos Angeles is in the midst of discarding its stereotype of exclusive auto-mobility and reshaping itself as a transit metropolis. (See the August/September issue of The Urbanist for more on the expansion of transit in L.A.). Pedestrian plazas, food trucks, CicLAvia (L.A.’s version of Sunday Streets), planned bike sharing, 1,600 miles of planned new bike lanes, and $40 billion for transit over the next 30 years all indicate this change. Metro, the region’s transit agency, has an...
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August 21, 2012A Farmers’ Market in the Heart of the City by Eli Zigas, Food Systems and Urban Agriculture Program ManagerFor more than three decades, San Francisco's Heart of the City Farmers’ Market has been operating at UN Plaza, along Market Street and within sight of City Hall. The market is unique not only for its central location but also for its dedication to offering fresh produce to low-income customers living in the nearby Tenderloin neighborhood while also supporting the livelihood of California farmers. Since its start in 1981 as a joint project of the American Friends Service Committee...
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August 9, 2012New Challenges to Funding Affordable Housing in San Jose By Leah Toeniskoetter, SPUR San Jose DirectorIn January 2010, San Jose passed an inclusionary housing law to help do three things: address the city’s affordable housing needs, meet the state’s requirement for regional fair share housing and promote economic integration. But now a successful legal suit has thrown the future of this law into question. To understand what’s at stake, this post takes a look at how the 2010 ordinance was designed to work and what the lawsuit could mean for San Jose and other California cities....
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August 2, 2012A New Season for San Francisco’s Support of Urban Agriculture by Eli Zigas, Food Systems and Urban Agriculture Program ManagerSan Francisco will soon have a new urban agriculture program. On July 17, the Board of Supervisors passed legislation — introduced by Supervisor David Chiu and co-sponsored by Supervisors Avalos, Cohen, Mar and Olague — that sets clear goals and timelines for how the city government can better support urban farmers and gardeners.The following week, the board put funding behind the program when it included $120,000 for the initiative in the 2012-2013 city budget. The supervisors...
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August 1, 2012Status Report: Bus Rapid Transit Around the Bay By Tony ViOakland and San Leandro have voted to approve a 9.5-mile bus rapid transit (BRT) line in the East Bay. The $150 to $175 million project will include dedicated center lanes for rapid buses on International Boulevard between downtown Oakland and San Leandro. Although the project will only have dedicated lanes for two blocks in San Leandro and excludes a direct rapid connection to Berkeley, the project is now closer to final approval from AC Transit’s board of directors. With this approval,...
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July 26, 2012$195 Million Parks Bond Goes to November 2012 Ballot Following extensive community outreach and planning — and months of negotiations over specific projects — the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has placed the $195 million 2012 Neighborhood Parks Bond on the November ballot. That's nearly $200 million that will help repair and upgrade facilities throughout San Francisco. The bond follows others in 2000 and 2008 to maintain and rebuild a parks system that makes up 12 percent of land in the city.So what do we get for $195 million...
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July 26, 2012Housing Trust Fund Heads to Voters in November By Sarah Karlinsky, Deputy Director After many months of work by SPUR and other housing advocates, the Housing Trust Fund, has made its way through San Francisco’s legislative process and been placed on the November ballot. We were very involved in crafting this measure, which would provide a permanent source of funding for affordable housing, encourage the creation of moderate-income housing and stimulate the production of market-rate housing.This measure is a very big deal for San Francisco, especially now that the State...
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July 25, 2012From Doyle Drive to Presidio Parkway: How a Landscape Architect Reinvented a Road By Michael Alexander*On the last weekend of April, as thousands watched, 40 giant pneumatic hammers pounded much of San Francisco’s Doyle Drive into recycled concrete and rebar. The following Monday morning, cars streamed across an elegant new viaduct over the Presidio’s Cavalry Valley and cruised through a new tunnel cut into the bluff between the San Francisco National Cemetery and the historic batteries that once guarded the Golden Gate from invasion.After 22 years, a vision SPUR fought hard for was...
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July 17, 2012Historic Vote Kicks off the Real Journey for High-Speed Rail By Stuart Cohen, Executive Director, TransForm An epic battle over the California high-speed rail project ended with a nail-biter on July 6, when the state senate got exactly the 21 votes needed to move ahead with funding the first segment of the project. The California Assembly had already passed the bill authorizing $2.6 billion in state bonds for the first segment, and Governor Brown’s signature is assured. [Update: Governor Brown signed the bill on July 18.] “Californians have always embraced bold visions and delivered...
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