multifamily housing in downtown Oakland

SPUR's Guide to California Housing Laws

A comprehensive analysis for planners, housing advocates, project sponsors, and community stakeholders

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People walking in San Jose's San Pedro Square

The SPUR Annual Report

Learn about our impact

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new multifamily housing under construction

Permitting Progress

How charter reform can help San Francisco speed delivery of housing, transit, new businesses, and more

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Photo of Muni bus driving down Geary in SF

Taking Muni's Vitals

Data show the agency performs well compared with peers across the country

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Illustration of a crane stacking cargo containers that say "sound fiscal policy," "structural change" and "economic growth"

Balancing Oakland's Budget

Closing the city’s structural deficit to move toward fiscal solvency and economic growth

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photo of San Francisco with orange skies from wildfire smoke in September 2020

Shared Risk, Shared Resilience

New governance structures for community wildfire resilience

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Building storefronts in downtown San Jose

Getting In on the Ground Floor

Activation strategies for downtown San José

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Why Central SoMa Needs to Focus on Jobs, Even in a Housing Shortage

News /
San Francisco will soon adopt the Central SoMa Plan, the city’s only current major neighborhood plan. In the 230-acre area, the plan changes the zoning to allow 45,000 jobs and 7,500 housing units. Considering the housing shortage, shouldn’t there be more focus on housing in the city’s only active neighborhood plan? Not necessarily. Here are five reasons we think the plan gets the mix right.

Rethinking the Corporate Campus

SPUR Report /
Technology has become the lifeblood of the San Francisco Bay Area economy, but the office environments where this work takes place do not reflect the innovation occurring within. The traditional suburban corporate campus reinforces dependence on cars and pushes sprawl development into open spaces and farmland. How do we create a more efficient, sustainable and high-performing model for the Bay Area workplace?

Lessons for Diridon: Denver’s Success Story That Almost Didn’t Happen

News /
Since Denver Union Station reopened in 2014, it has become one of the nation’s best examples of a modern intermodal train station embedded in a transit-friendly urban neighborhood. The project has a number of important lessons for the team that’s planning the transformation of San Jose’s Diridon Station into a major transportation hub with the country’s first high-speed rail station.

Who Benefits From Oakland’s “Community Benefits” Negotiations?

News /
With new construction heating up in Oakland, local groups are asking developers to pay for “community benefits” beyond what the city requires. But as Uber backs away from its plans for downtown, Oaklanders should beware that pushing too hard may lose the city the most important community benefit of all: the long-term increase in tax rolls that the city desperately needs.

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