City planner, former SPUR Board member and long-time SPUR volunteer George Williams passed away on November 7. The deputy director of San Francisco’s Department of City Planning for 20 years, he was instrumental in creating San Francisco’s 1985 Downtown Plan. We will greatly miss George, and we’re grateful for his years of service to SPUR and to the City of San Francisco.

Experts agree that the Bay Area is due for a major earthquake by the year 2050. In the event of such a disaster, Oakland and other cities will need to respond to both immediate and long-term challenges. At a recent SPUR forum, panelists talked about their work addressing uncertainty and mitigating seismic hazards in Oakland.

This summer, SPUR and the Knight Foundation took a delegation of South Bay elected officials and transit agency leaders to visit high-speed rail stations in the Netherlands and France. The trip was a quest for precedents as San Jose prepares to remake Diridon Station into one of the nation’s first high-speed rail hubs. Nine takeaways emerged from the trip as critical considerations for San Jose.

The scale of the devastating fires unfolding in the North Bay is a painful reminder of the earthquake disasters SPUR has studied over the years. As first responders valiantly work to contain the damage and save lives, government officials will soon need to shift their attention to the daunting task of rebuilding the northern part of our region. How should they proceed?