We have known about the perils of climate change for more than two decades. But global efforts to slow it down by reducing greenhouse-gas emissions have largely failed. Although we must do everything in our power to stop climate change, some of its impacts are now inevitable. Climate change adaptation — preparing for heat waves, drought, and sea level rise — is now essential. In…

SPUR presents Local Code: Real Estates, an exhibition by Berkeley faculty Nicholas de Monchaux. His proposal uses geospatial analysis to identify thousands of publicly owned abandoned sites, imagining this distributed, vacant landscape as the basis for a new, green infrastructure. The exhibition includes more than two hundred models of proposed designs for leftover space in San Francisco, milled from abandoned lumber, each lasercut…

SPUR is leading an interagency master planning process for Ocean Beach to address issues of public access, environmental conservation and infrastructure in the face of erosion and climate-related sea-level rise. SPUR recently held the first of three public workshops for the Ocean Beach Master Plan, inviting feedback on initial research by the project team. This first look at the wide range of issues at…

Since the onset of the great recession in 2008, San Francisco, like many American cities, has struggled through a period of economic decline and drastically reduced public resources. Fortunately for San Francisco, a city with a long history of entrepreneurship and social activism, citizens have displayed great wherewithal and ingenuity in the face of budgetary stalemates—resulting in an outpouring of innovative “do-it-yourself” projects ranging from…

From addressing the most prevalent social and physical issues in our own backyard, to creating solutions for the world’s poor, students are tackling the most significant issues facing our world today. Drawn from a range of student work produced in Bay Area schools, this exhibit includes exemplary projects from the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, public policy, graphic design and entrepreneurship to highlight…

Richard Register, founder of Bay Area nonprofit Ecocity Builders, is one of the world's leading theorists and authors on the topic of ecological city design and planning. Ecocity Dreamin' is a retrospective of Register's ecocity illustrations complied over the last 30 years, covering everything from land use and mapping, transportation, architecture and ecocity design elements, to futuristic ecological cities based on principles of archaeology.