The SPUR Regional Strategy

The San Francisco Bay Area is one of the world’s most innovative and progressive regions, but we face enormous challenges, from the cost of housing to the threat of sea level rise. SPUR has launched a multi-year initiative to envision a more equitable, sustainable and prosperous Bay Area for all — and propose bold strategies to get there.

Lead staff: Benjamin Grant, bgrant@spur.org and Laura Tolkoff, ltolkoff@spur.org

Core Funders of the SPUR Regional Strategy

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation
Curtis Infrastructure Initiative
Dignity Health
Facebook
Genentech
George Miller
Hellman Foundation
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Marin Community Foundation
Sage Foundation
Silicon Valley Community Foundation
Stanford University

Additional funding provided by AECOM, Fund for the Environment and Urban Life, Microsoft, Seed Fund, Stripe, Uber Technologies and Wells Fargo.

Featured Publications

San Francisco Bay Shoreline Adaptation Atlas

Working with nature to plan for sea level rise

As the climate continues to change, communities will need to adapt the San Francisco Bay shoreline to rising sea levels. But the Bay’s varied landscapes and overlapping jurisdictions make a coordinated response challenging. The San Francisco Bay Shoreline Adaptation Atlas proposes a new regional planning framework by dividing the 400-mile Bay shoreline into 30 distinct geographic areas that share common physical characteristics and adaptation strategies.

Read the report »

Four Future Scenarios for the San Francisco Bay Area

Planning for the region in the year 2070

This report uses scenario planning to look at four uncertainties that the Bay Area will contend with over the next 50 years: the economy, housing, transportation and the physical form that growth takes. The resulting scenarios serve as “myths of the future,” stories that reveal the potential long-term outcomes of choices made today.

Read the report »

The Bay Area in Crisis: A Call to Action

To solve regional problems, we must think like a region.

Read the article »

Can We Achieve Regionalism?

Learning from past efforts at solving regional issues in the Bay Area

Read the article »

Updates and Events

How the Retirement Wave Will Impact Bay Area Jobs and Workers

News January 17, 2019

As part of our research for the SPUR Regional Strategy, we reviewed data projections to 2030 to see what types of jobs are growing and how the coming retirement wave will affect job openings.

Learning to Manage California’s Fire Problem

News December 11, 2018

Climate change is here today, and after the devastating fires of 2017 and 2018, Californians know it. In 2019, SPUR will be working on a new policy report on the multiple hazards wrought by climate change, including fires and flooding. We now know that land use, planning, building code, forest management and other recommendations may be needed to improve fire resiliency across the Bay Area.

Six Principles for Pricing Driving to Reduce Congestion, Pollution and Crashes

News November 29, 2018

Cities and states are proposing policies that would discourage driving by charging for some the costs it imposes on others — namely congestion, pollution, heart and respiratory disease, greenhouse gases and deaths from collisions. It won’t be easy to start pricing something that’s been free for so long. To get the benefits without a backlash, SPUR offers six principles for fair and effective transportation pricing.

SPUR Community Shares Its Vision for the Bay Area in 2070

News November 19, 2018

Earlier this year, SPUR began planning its first ever regional strategy for the Bay Area, an aspirational vision of what the region could be like in the year 2070 and a roadmap for getting there. Here’s what participants in three community workshops shared about their values and vision for the region for the next half century.

Four Future Scenarios for the San Francisco Bay Area

SPUR Report August 22, 2018

This report, the first product of the SPUR Regional Strategy, uses a scenario planning process to look at four uncertainties that the Bay Area will contend with over the next 50 years: the economy, housing, transportation and the physical form that growth takes. The resulting scenarios serve as “myths of the future,” stories that reveal the potential long-term outcomes of choices the region makes today.

Where Exactly Is “the Bay Area”?

News June 19, 2018

The San Francisco Bay Area has long been understood as the nine counties that touch the Bay — but this border doesn’t always hold. Addressing many of our current regional challenges — such as job access, housing affordability and congestion — will require working at many scales. Given this, is the traditional nine-county definition the correct scale for SPUR's Regional Strategy project?