Digital tools are transforming building planning and permitting — and offering an opportunity to address California’s housing crisis. Remote virtual inspections using video and other digital technologies can lower costs and reduce inspection backlogs for many simple home projects without compromising code compliance. By accelerating resilience-focused retrofits, clean energy permitting, and accessory dwelling unit construction, such inspections could reshape California’s housing landscape.

The City of San Francisco is currently examining its affordable housing policies and their impact on the market for building new housing. SPUR asked Leigh Lutenski, the city’s director of Joint Development, about her division’s work supporting the city on its affordable housing obligations. She emphasized the need for policies that balance affordability goals with economic feasibility, in part by providing greater certainty to housing developers about affordability requirements.

As downtown San Francisco grapples with an oversupply of commercial space and anemic street activity, the city’s leaders have an opportunity to reimagine the area to create more housing, boost entrepreneurship, and nurture the arts. In a new brief, SPUR proposes establishing a quasi-public entity to plan and deliver capital projects, negotiate real estate deals, and provide public financing. We asked SPUR’s Sujata Srivastava how the envisioned authority could tackle downtown’s challenges.

In October, Shola Olatoye became the first CEO of the San Francisco Downtown Development Corporation (DDC), a nonprofit organization formed in early 2025 to raise and deploy private investment to transform downtown San Francisco. The DDC is evaluating options to create a long-term entity with regulatory and financing capacity to play a greater role in downtown’s economic vitality. On the heels of our policy brief Reinventing Downtown, we spoke with Olatoye about the DDC’s vision, partnerships, and priorities for downtown.