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

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

photo looking down San Francisco's Market Street toward downtown

Reinventing Downtown

A new model to revitalize San Francisco’s urban center

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

Shared Risk, Shared Resilience

New governance structures for community wildfire resilience

Building storefronts in downtown San Jose

Getting In on the Ground Floor

Activation strategies for downtown San José

photo of San Francisco City Hall with a construction crane in the foreground

Charter for Change

Empowering San Francisco’s government through charter reform

Forecasting San Francisco’s Economic Fortunes

News /
Earlier this month, San Francisco’s leading economists met to predict the future. Each year, SPUR’s Municipal Fiscal Advisory Committee brings together city staff and independent economic experts from sectors including real estate, hospitality and retail. This year’s Annual Economic Briefing illuminated several key economic trends impacting the city this year.

Tech Campuses as Cities: The Solution to the Housing Crisis?

News /
Why not address the Bay Area’s housing crisis — caused by a surge of new jobs without an equivalent increase in new housing — at its source? Alfred Twu’s fantastical renderings imagine Silicon Valley corporate campuses like Google, Apple and Facebook as complete cities, their parking lots packed with enough housing to accommodate their entire workforces.

Can SF Take Down I-280? The City Studies the Feasibility of a Bold Idea

News /
A few billion dollars of transportation projects are converging in San Francisco: the electrification of Caltrain, the extension of Caltrain’s route to the Transbay Transit Center and the arrival of high-speed rail. How can we make sure these transportation investments improve San Francisco's urban environment rather than disrupt it? To find out, the city is launching a major study.

SPUR Comments on the Diridon Station Area Plan Draft

Advocacy Letter /
SPUR supports the broad outlines of the City of San Jose's draft Diridon Station Area Plan. We do, however, think that the Draft Program Environmental Impact Report does not provide sufficient analysis of some of the project impacts and recommend specific areas that should be corrected, modified or further studied.

How to Make San Francisco Affordable Again

Urbanist Article /
San Francisco is in the midst of a housing affordability crisis. This issue of The Urbanist takes a look at practical solutions we can begin to implement now. Excerpted from a policy proposal, these are SPUR’s best ideas for tackling this problem together, as a city, through far-reaching changes to housing policies.