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NEWSWIRE
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5/7/2008 -
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How California schools spend their money
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The California Budget Project looks at expenditure patterns in the wake of massive cuts to k-12 funding in California. With relatively high teacher salaries and relatively low per-pupil funding, California has more kids per teacher than other states. Large urban districts spend a much larger percent of their money on special education than the average. But overall, the state needs to boost spending 40% - 70%.
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5/5/2008 -
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New London Mayor on Transportation
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Here's an interview from last year with London Mayor Boris Johnson, who ousted Ken Livingstone last week, where he spends the first eight minutes talking about buses and bikes.
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5/2/2008 -
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Los Angeles gets the rest of NYC's money
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Last Friday, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) was awarded a $214 million to implement congestion pricing on the County's freeways. The federal money is part of the $354 million Urban Partnership Program grant that New York's state legislature forfeited.
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5/1/2008 -
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The history and design of a SF icon
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This just in from our fifth-floor neighbors at the Book Club of California: Donald MacDonald, the first architect to work on the Golden Gate Bridge since the original consulting architects, will give an illustrated talk on Monday, May 12. MacDonald and Ira Nadel wrote the text for The Golden Gate Bridge: History and Design of an Icon, published by Chronicle Books. MacDonald who illustrated the book will sign copies at the event. Bring your friends and fellow bibliophiles!
Here are the details:
Monday, May 12, 2008
Reception: 5 to 6 p.m.
Lecture: 6 to 7 p.m.
The Book Club of California
312 Sutter Street, Suite 510, San Francisco CA 94108
415 781-7532
www.bccbooks.org
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5/1/2008 -
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Chicago gets NYC's congestion pricing dollars
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In a post dripping with disappointment, this New Yorker notes Chicago's plans to speed up the buses and conduct variable parking pricing with some of the money New York said "no" to when they rejected congestion pricing. Chicago's plans sound much like our own here in San Francisco!
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4/21/2008 -
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Mayors address urban issues - but will the candidates?
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We've heard little from the Presidential candidates about the importance of cities. But this innovative new project by weekly magazine The Nation and think tank Drum Major Institute brings the voices of urban mayors to the fore. Check out their interviews with mayors from LA, Denver, Miami, Atlanta and many others. In preparation for the Pennsylvania primary, they have just posted an interview with the mayor of Scranton.
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4/16/2008 -
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Solving climate change could save billions
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Amidst increasingly dire news about the economy and climate change, Architecture 2030 released a seminal study at the Eileen Rockefeller Growald Symposium on Collaborative Philanthropy today, showing how a small investment of only $21.6 billion in the Building Sector would produce 216,000 permanent jobs and save 86.7 Million Metric Tons (MMT) of CO2 in a single year.
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4/11/2008 -
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A new look at affordability
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These maps allow you to look at housing and transportation costs combined -- as a percentage of income -- to see if people who live in the cheap houses far from transit are really saving money. Critical info, considering the MTC's attention to this subject in the renewal of our regional transportation plan.
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4/9/2008 -
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Is it possible to measure the carbon impact of anything?
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The New Yorker ran a great piece on Tesco's attempt to calculate the carbon footprint of all of its products. Now, Sightline tries to think through the implications: It is impossible to accurately count the carbon of most things; slight variations in the assumptions can give wildly different results. And yet, in the absence of carbon taxes at the "point of extraction" we have no choice but to try to guess at what policies to enact, based on what will be inherently flawed cost-benefit calculations. This is our dilemma.
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4/4/2008 -
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The Politics of Optimism
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Our friends at worldchanging.com talk about what it takes to remain optimistic in a time when so much is going wrong with the planet. The common assumption in most public discourse is that truly bold solutions to our problems involve unacceptable costs. Instead, worldchanging asserts: "it is possible to act in such a way that the prospects of most people on the planet are improved. While certain costs will be incurred, the returns on those investments will be quite attractive, not only in ecological stability, international security and human well-being, but in terms of plain old economic prosperity. These solutions will make the future better than the present for the almost everyone, and greatly improve the lots of our children and grandchildren."
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4/3/2008 -
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Old Montreal goes car-free
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To accommodate the 10 million-plus visitors to Montreal in the summer months, the city administration is converting some streets in old Montreal into pedestrian malls for most of the day. The effort to “reinvent old Montreal” is matched by a similar effort to enjoy car-free fun in the city’s gay district, where several blocks of a Ste-Catherine Street will be closed to cars during the summer months.
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4/1/2008 -
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Preparing for China's one billion city residents
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McKinsey Global Institute takes a comprehensive look at the impact of China having 350 million new urban residents by 2025. They project that China will build 50,000 skyscrapers, 5 billion miles of paved roads and 170 mass-transit systems. By 2025, there will be 221 cities in China with more than 1 million people in them. Europe today has only 35 and the United States fewer. Eight cities will have over 10 million people (compared with only two in China today). The report explores the differential impact of distributing these new urban dwellers in different sized cities- from a fiscal and environmental perspective.
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4/1/2008 -
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City of SF 3-year budget projections
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The City produces its 3-year budget report. This report, produced annually by the Controller, the Mayor's Budget
Director, and the Budget Analyst for the Board of Supervisors projects budgetary sources and uses for General Fund Supported operations for FY 2008-09 through FY 2010-11. The gist: we have a $338 million deficit.
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4/1/2008 -
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John King on the Urban Center
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John King, the San Francisco Chronicle's urban design critic, talks to Urban Center architect Peter Pfau about the transparency that SPUR's new building -- now under construction at 654 Mission Street -- is meant to inspire among local government, policy makers and citizens.
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3/31/2008 -
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Envision 2050 Poster Competition
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Is the future nature? That's the question posed by Re:Vision to all 6th through 12th graders nationwide. The San Francisco-based organization is sponsoring a poster competition to encourage students to imagine how cities will change, grow and become more sustainable.
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3/28/2008 -
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In London, supermarkets shun bicyclists
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The borough of Hackney, London loosens regulations that have restricted the size of retailers' parking lots, despite the fact that nearly 70 percent of shopping trips are made on foot (or by bike). Why? Richard George argues such a move is based on the tenuous assumption that driving customers buy more items when, in fact, people who bike or walk may buy fewer items per trip, but probably shop more frequently.
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3/28/2008 -
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Plan for Hudson Rail Yards selected
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This is New York so everything's bigger, but... San Francisco also has rail yards with nothing on top of them. In a city with such scarce land resources, these provide an incredible opportunity for us. The Hudson Yards project grows out of a proposal from the Regional Plan Association, a New York civic group similar to SPUR (www.rpa.org/pdf/hudsonyardsalternatives.pdf). For SPUR's proposal to create a version of this idea on top of the Caltrain yards at 4th and King, click here: http://www.spur.org/documents/070701_article_01.shtm
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3/27/2008 -
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Policy Link debuts infrastructure equity
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Our infrastructure might represent our society's biggest legacy to future generations. PolicyLink debuts the Center for Infrastructure Equity to help ensure that public investments in infrastructure create economic opportunity and health in all communities.
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3/26/2008 -
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Suburbia's Mid-Life Crisis
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"No longer young, no longer trendy, no longer the place to be, no longer without apparent limitations or constraints," writes Michael Gecan of the Boston Review, "These places, like people, have developed ways of avoiding reality." Wow. This is a broad, hard-hitting take on the last 40 years of suburbanization in America which, for many reasons, is easing into a period of urban revitalization.
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3/26/2008 -
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Design and Density Key for Affordable Housing
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A new study by the Center for Housing Policy focuses on the effects of inclusionary zoning requirements -- which tie a city's affordable housing stock to the production of market-rate housing -- on local housing markets in San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and the Boston suburbs.
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3/17/2008 -
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Washington, D.C. gets bike-sharing system
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It's not Paris's Velib system, but it's the first in the United States: Employees of the House of Representatives will have access to hundreds of shared bikes for use to and from transit and around Capitol Hill.
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3/14/2008 -
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KALW reprises SPUR's TEP article
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KALW's current affairs show called Crosscurrents recently interviewed SPUR's Transportation Policy Director on the 14-Mission Muni bus. They talked about Muni's plans to restructure the system to speed service for most passengers.
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3/13/2008 -
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Muni ridership declines again
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Municipal Railway downward spiral continues
SPUR predicted it in 2005 and the American Public Transit
Muni posted its third consecutive year of ridership losses, carrying 1.7% fewer passengers in 2007 than it did in 2006, while nationally ridership increased by 2.1%.
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