Facing the prospect of extraordinary population and job growth, San Jose planners have a choice: to let the city grow out, or up. How will they retrofit San Jose's car-oriented development pattern into thriving, walkable communities?

Why has the involvement of designers in urban planning dwindled over the last century? What can planners learn from the recent movement in "design thinking"—and how can these lessons lead to more visionary planning and the design of more humanist places?

Last fall, SPUR and AIA San Francisco hosted GOOD and CEOs for Cities to explore design solutions for some of San Francisco's most pressing urban problems. The program has been successful in other cities, where it has prompted some badly needed out-of-the-box thinking.

No other city or county in the nation has made and delivered on a promise of affordable health care for all.

The success of downtown San Francisco is one part accident and one part good planning.

In contrast to the traditional processes of official bureaucratic urbanization, there is an approach to urban processes that is characterized by temporary, participatory, flexible solutions that can adapt, evolve and change to meet a range of dynamic urban conditions.

Because almost all of the city's neighborhood retail districts developed along streetcar routes, today they retain the essential physical bones of commercial districts perfect for strolling, shopping and supporting the basic needs of neighborhood residents getting about on foot. This is the local flavor of neighborhood shopping that San Francisco is known for.

There is a cliché that city planning is simply fixing the mistakes of past planners. And yet, we cannot just sit on the sidelines. We have to learn from past mistakes and approach our activism with a sense of humility about all that we can’t know. But still we must act.<br /> <span class="publication_10pt_uppercase_bold"><br /> </span><br /> <span class="publication_10pt_uppercase_bold"><br /> </span>

Since the recession has lowered the pressure on both sides of the development/preservation equation, this time of inactivity could be devoted to the kind of even-handed planning that would mitigate future battles by evaluating the benefits of both.

The question of how we hold on to the best of a city — architecturally, historically, as a matter of quality of the urban experience and quality of life — is deeply bound to the question of how cities change,and in particular the tension between "preservation" and "development."

Telesis' 1942 exhibit, &quot;A Space for Living,&quot; inspired the San Francisco Housing Association to expand from housing reform advocacy to a group concerned with city planning overall, renaming itself the San Francisco Planning and Housing Association, which in turn, became SPUR.

Dozens of office buildings in San Francisco include privately-owned public open spaces -- or &quot;POPOS.&quot; Some are merely provisional, while others are hidden gems.

One of San Francisco's most important water bodies, Islais Creek comprises most of the southeastern sector of the city. Over the last decade, the area has fallen into a state of disrepair. Sara Jensen, SPUR's 2008 Piero N. Patro Fellow, proposes a concept plan for a food center to enliven this area of the city's eastern waterfront.

Now that the first Better Neighborhoods Plan has been formally adopted by the Board of Supervisors, the time has come for us to ask what we can learn from this seemingly epic process.

Writer Andrew Blum ponders the relevance of purely local concerns, in this era of global climate change, as a driving force for neighborhood planning.

San Francisco needs architecture that fosters a healthy sidewalk life, with ground level doors, porches, patios that cater to the pedestrian, not the car, says Gabriel Metcalf.

A comparison of San Francisco's typical street pattern to classic &quot;rowhouse&quot; residential streets reveals the complex interplay of buildings and streets, and its impact on the public realm.

Gabriel Metcalf argues for a reinvestment in and a rethinking of our infrastructure to solve environmental and sprawl problems--not exacerbate them. We cannot forever widen, enlarge, lengthen.

Civic and infrastructural change takes a long time--sometimes generations. SPUR's neutral position in the city allows the organization to work ceaselessly on an issue until a project is complete.

SPUR talks to three new department heads -- Fred Blackwell, Michael Cohen and John Rahaim of the Planning Department -- about their priorities for shaping San Francisco's future.

Nestled on the Central Waterfront between China Basin and Candlestick Point, Warmwater Cove lies in disrepair. How can we populate and enliven this forgotten nook of the southeastern waterfront?