Upcoming Events

As housing costs continue to rise throughout California, leaders from across the state are looking for ways to reduce both building costs and home prices. In Southern California, organizations like the Housing Innovation Collaborative are working to bring together diverse ideas in order to produce high-quality, but less expensive housing. One of their initiatives, the Essential Housing Campaign, acts as a catalyst to concentrate resources and stakeholders and streamline the process under which 130,000 new homes could be built for middle-income households in Los Angeles by 2030. Join us to learn how that initiative is addressing the housing crisis head on, and how it could be emulated here in the Bay Area.

Due to ongoing health and safety concerns, we've rescheduled this program for March 1. Flying cars, teleporters, robot butlers and geostationary metropolises are just a few of the tropes that have long been used as pop culture markers for cities of the future. But those imaginative notions rarely address some of the most pressing issues experienced by cities now, including a widening income gap, growing homelessness and global climate change. Can we surmount today’s pernicious challenges and realize a shared, ideal future? Will tomorrow’s cities be more reminiscent of the shiny utopia of Star Trek or the bleak dystopia of Blade Runner? Will future cities even be identifiable as such? Join some of the Bay Area’s biggest thinkers as they discuss what the future holds for our cities 50, 100 or even 500 years into the future.

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and has developed new preliminary policy proposals for its updated transit-oriented development (TOD) plan, drawing on rigorous analysis and years of research into best practices to determine how best to house thousands of jobs and residents in communities around existing transit throughout the Bay Area. Join us to learn what MTC is proposing, share your questions and concerns and help push the region towards more achievable transit-oriented development.

Across the country, government officials are beginning to address their role in decades of disinvestment in Black and Brown communities as community advocates demand action to close the racial wealth gap and address racial inequities. San Francisco is no exception in violating the civil and human rights of its most marginalized communities throughout history, but the city leaders are now heeding calls for a more equitable future for all. San Francisco’s new Dream Keeper Initiative takes a necessary step forward, providing pathways to homeownership, access to additional housing, medical, and financial resources and guaranteed income programs for the city’s most disenfranchised residents. But can this program repair generations of harm? Where does the city go from here? Join our panel as they imagine dynamic and innovative actions to radically shift social outcomes across San Francisco.

With 15 million parking spaces — enough to wrap around the planet more than twice — almost half of the region is devoted to driving or storing cars. Yet for decades, planners have operated blindly when they attempt to determine parking needs or assess the impacts of new parking policies. An unprecedented new SPUR and Arizona State University report quantifies the Bay Area’s glut of parking and details the negative effects that this exorbitant amount of space dedicated to vehicles has on the environment, marginalized communities and public health. Come learn more about the analysis and the strategies that cities should implement to help manage and convert our capacious supply of parking.

California is faced with such a multitude of land use and planning challenges — including climate change, wildfires and drought and a worsening housing crisis — that they span multiple state agencies. Thus, the California Strategic Growth Council was created to ensure that these myriad agencies align around a coordinated vision towards addressing these existential dilemmas. Join us for a conversation with the agency’s new executive director, Lynn Von Koch-Liebert, to hear the state’s plans for making California a more resilient and sustainable place for everyone.

California's “cash-out” law requires certain employers who provide free or subsidized commuter parking to give employees the option to receive money in lieu of their parking space. The law aims to reduce vehicle commute trips and research shows that it works, with many employees willing to take the cash and shift to transit, biking, walking or carpooling to get to work. However, many jurisdictions don't think the law applies to enough employees to make enforcement worthwhile. But expanding it into a more robust program could help the state reach its long-term climate goals while providing greater flexibility and benefit to employees. Come learn how lessons from Santa Monica and Washington D.C, two places that enforce "cash-out", could be applied here in the Bay Area to deliver the equity and sustainability benefits of parking cash-out across the region.

Accessory dwelling units (ADUs), sometimes known as in-law units or casitas, are a growing part of the housing landscape across Silicon Valley. Whether you’re considering building one in your own backyard or are simply curious to learn more, come peek into some of the products on the market in our communities right now. Join us for virtual tours of what firms like Abodu, Soup, Action ADU, Symbihom and Mayberry Workshop are building in backyards across the Bay Area. Presented by Catalyze SV and the San José Conservation Corps + Charter School.

The California Transportation Commission (CTC), the state agency formed to replace four other independent bodies, is responsible for distributing a significant portion of the state’s discretionary transportation funding, including the allocation of funds for highway construction, passenger rail and general transportations improvements throughout California. Where does the money go and how does the commission determine what to fund? Take part in a conversation with the executive director of the commission, Mitch Weiss, and learn how the CTC operates and how its critical role in achieving the state’s climate, public health and equity goals.

The Build Back Better Act has the potential to help the nation grow, as framed by the White House, “from the bottom and middle out" by providing families with funding for childcare, expanding access to affordable housing, education and health care and enforcing tax laws on the extremely wealthy. How will these changes affect the Bay Area, with its vast income inequality, one of the largest homeless populations in the United States and a high cost of living has taken a major toll on the area's lower and middle classes? In order to ensure that these investments reach those who need it most, we must carefully examine and rebuild the frameworks and systems that have historically excluded many communities from receiving critical support. Come learn how we can best leverage the once-in-a-generation opportunity provided by the Build Back Better Act to build a more equitable Bay Area.

San Francisco has been a leader in experimenting with remaking its streetscapes, but these innovative programs and their benefits are often unequally distributed. One such example is the Tenderloin, which had fewer public street amenities than most other neighborhoods before the pandemic and was one of the last to see these types of projects unfold since. And, despite being San Francisco’s most dense neighborhood, with the highest number of unhoused residents, it suffers from a prioritization of automobile expedience over safe neighborhood streets, resulting in the highest number of incidents of traffic violence in the city. However, the efforts of grassroots organizers, advocacy groups and social enterprises are creating new models of ground-up approaches to neighborhood safety, including community policing, block safety and resident corner captains. Examine the ways in which local leaders are shaping the Tenderloin and the initiatives that may provide solutions to our most difficult challenges.

As California continues the fight against climate change and the growing housing crisis, leaders across the state are looking at a number of ways to address both challenges. The California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) is a vital player in this undertaking, with a wide purview that includes land use, community development, climate resilience and economic development, and is tasked with studying future research and planning needs across the state. In the fall of 2021, the agency brought on a new director, Samuel Assefa, to lead OPR’s efforts towards planning for an affordable, equitable and sustainable California. Join him in conversation with SPUR’s Chief Policy Officer, Nick Josefowitz, to learn how California plans to address its monumental challenges in 2022, and beyond.

Three transit systems — BART, Muni and Caltrain — carried 73% of the region’s weekday transit trips before the onset of the pandemic, yet they currently face the greatest financial uncertainty. Though transit trips are not expected to return to pre-pandemic levels for many years, hundreds of thousands of residents continue to rely on these systems every day, and they serve a critical role in meeting the Bay Area’s sustainability, equity and mobility goals. However, despite these systems’ indispensability, there is no current plan for how they will continue to operate once the American Rescue Plan emergency grants supporting transit operations through the pandemic are exhausted — which may occur as soon as 2023. Join a discussion between BART, Muni and Caltrain board members as they discuss what’s at risk, the financial challenges and the potential solutions.

With 35% of the U.S.'s carbon footprint the result of energy use in buildings, decarbonization can play a massive role in drawing down the emissions and bringing cities closer to their sustainability goals. However, decarbonizing most buildings isn’t as simple as just turning off the gas. Luckily, the newly released Building Decarbonization Practice Guide provides a handbook from which to start. The guide provides clarity for the building design and construction community to advance building electrification and embodied carbon reduction. Hear from the guide’s authors and learn how you can have a role in redesigning the built environment to be part of a zero net carbon future

Flying cars, teleporters, robot butlers and geostationary metropolises are just a few of the tropes that have long been used as pop culture markers for cities of the future. But those imaginative notions rarely address some of the most pressing issues experienced by cities now, including a widening income gap, growing homelessness and global climate change. Can we surmount today’s pernicious challenges and realize a shared, ideal future? Will tomorrow’s cities be more reminiscent of the shiny utopia of Star Trek or the bleak dystopia of Blade Runner? Will future cities even be identifiable as such? Join some of the Bay Area’s biggest thinkers as they discuss what the future holds for our cities 50, 100 or even 500 years into the future.