How Has San Francisco Done on Addressing Housing and Homelessness?
August 15, 2019Just before San Francisco’s 2018 mayoral election, SPUR released San Francisco’s Next Mayor: A Blueprint for Change, a policy agenda for the city's next leader. One year later, we took a look back at the progress that Mayor Breed and the Board of Supervisors have made toward those recommendations, specifically on housing and homelessness.
Time to Rethink How Oakland Passes Budgets
July 30, 2019July marks the beginning of the new fiscal year for the City of Oakland, and with it the end of a rancorous two-month-long adoption process for a new two-year budget. Without a city controller to establish a common set of financial facts, the debate in Oakland is not only over which priorities to fund but whose numbers to believe.
Be Regionable: An Urbanist Poster Campaign
July 29, 2019One of the goals of the SPUR Regional Strategy is to help the citizens of the Bay Area to think regionally. So we partnered with TBD* at California College of the Arts, a student-run design studio, to create a series of posters that would inspire people to feel passionately about not just the city they live in but the region we’re all a part of.
Giving Old Infrastructure New Life
July 29, 2019A fast, frequent megaregional rail network could be transformative for the Bay Area and Northern California. As part of the SPUR Regional Strategy, we are working to identify some of the major changes needed to implement this vision.
Scooters, Bikes and Buses: Reclaiming Pilot Projects for the Public Good
July 19, 2019Hidden beneath the buzz over new transportation technologies is a quiet revolution in the way cities manage their streets. In the face of rapid change, public agencies are increasingly relying on pilot programs to introduce new modes of transportation and new uses of streets. Yet pilots are too often focused on responding to technology trends. It’s time they evolved to focus on cities and people.