Balancing Oakland's Budget
Closing the city’s structural deficit to move toward fiscal solvency and economic growth
To Achieve Seamless Transit, We Must Change What and How We Build
News / The Metropolitan Transportation Commission has made some big improvements to its methodology for assessing transportation proposals and deciding which ones to recommend for funding. What’s more, the improved tool provides a useful diagnostic for how project funding and planning in the Bay Area needs to change. SPUR offers three key observations on what this new perspective means for the next generation of transportation investments.
Driving Change
Policy Brief / The Fair Value Commuting Demonstration project addresses a challenge that has plagued cities for decades: Too many people drive alone to work, creating traffic, wasting time and productivity, and degrading air quality and safety. Four Silicon Valley cities tested a package of strategies and technologies to tackle the issue. SPUR provided independent research to help assess the results and determine next steps.
A Bolder Vision for Downtown Oakland
News / After years of work, the City of Oakland is close to completing a specific plan for downtown Oakland. While the current draft is a great improvement over earlier drafts, SPUR believes that the plan needs to be more visionary and that it should encourage both jobs and housing — and put them in the right places.
Bringing Big Ideas to Life in San José
News / For San José, 2019 was a year of planning for the big ideas launched in 2018. The city made major progress on the policy analysis, planning processes and community dialogue needed to realize those visions, with some notable milestones.
We Are the Bay
Urbanist Article / As part of the SPUR Regional Strategy, we sent photographer Ryan Young out to meet his neighbors. Over the course of a week, Young traveled 2,000 miles north, south, east and west to capture images of residents in the Bay Area's many and varied communities.