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Living West: Presentation and Book Signing with Sam Lubell

News /
Don't miss this presentation by Sam Lubell, editor of the California edition of The Architect's Newspaper and author of Living West: New Residential Architecture in Southern California, published this month by Random House. The details: Tuesday, October 27, 6 pm--presentation and book signing SPUR Urban Center, 654 Mission Street, SF Free for SPUR members; $5 general admission See below (or here) for…

This Week at SPUR: World Renowned Climate Scientist Ken Caldeira

News /
SPUR is thrilled to welcome Ken Caldeira, head of the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, to the Urban Center for a lunchtime forum. The details: Wednesday, October 28, 12:30 - 1:30 p.m. Free for SPUR members. General admission is $5. Location: SPUR Urban Center, 654 Mission St. (between New Montgomery & Third). Renowned for his groundbreaking research on…

SF Battles the Yogi Berra Parking Problem

News /
Yogi Berra once posited about a restaurant suffering a perceived decline, "Nobody goes there anymore -- it's too crowded." San Francisco parking faces the same dilemma: high parking occupancy and low turnover make parking in San Francisco a headache as drivers are forced waste upwards of 45 minutes orbiting for a space, adding to traffic and burning gasoline. To combat this problem, the SFMTA is…

Lawn Chairs in Times Square

News /
At a SPUR lunchtime forum yesterday, President of the Times Square Alliance (TSA) Tim Tompkins spoke about the evolution of Times Square over the past several decades. For decades, New York fought the uphill battle of making Times Square cleaner, safer, and more inviting, only to find themselves with a new set of challenges: the area has become so popular, particularly with tourists, that the…

Planning on the Edge: A Conversation with Six Planning Directors

News /
Join us on Wednesday, November 4 at City Hall for this special event, featuring planning directors from six cities, co-sponsored by SPUR and the San Francisco Planning Department. The evening's lineup includes: BILL ANDERSON from San Diego SUSAN ANDERSON from Portland AMANDA BURDEN from New York City JOHN RAHAIM from San Francisco DIANE SUGIMURA from Seattle BRENT TODERIAN from Vancouver This event starts at 6…

Planning Historians Unite! (This Weekend!)

News /
It's not too late to catch some sessions at the National Conference in Planning History taking place at the Oakland Marriott this weekend. Organized by the Society for American City and Regional Planning History, many of the panels and tours are focused on the Bay Area, as well as their Sunday tours, which include "Historical Development and Ethnic Change in Oakland," "Urban Renewal in San…

Invade the Armory

News /
SPUR members toured the Mission Armory, the 200,000 square foot Moorish Castle Reproduction completed in 1914. From it's completion until 1976, the Armory was used as a National Guard facility, and later joined the National Register of Historic Places. The drill court, spanning nearly an acre, served not only as a military training facility, but also as boxing arena, and hall for social events for…

Sea Level to Rise 5 Meters in 300 Years

News /
A climate conference in Oxford concluded last week that whatever we can do to slow carbon emissions, it won't be enough to stop accelerated sea level rise. In fact, a German scientist who's widely regarded as one of the world's foremost experts on sea level rise, said his best guess was 1 meter this century (a lowball figure compared to the latest projections for California)…

Urban Field Notes: Six Spots in the Mission to Track the Traces of Trains

Urbanist Article /
On numerous walks through San Francisco's Mission District, I'd noticed things that didn't seem to fit into the regular grid of the city's streets. There was that weird diagonal lot behind the lumber place on Harrison Street, the building with the angled facade next to the Taqueria San Jose, and a variety of smaller inconsistencies that never added up — at least until I looked at Juri Commons off of Guerrero Street and put it all together. There must have been a railroad here! But when was it there, and where did it go?

Making Good Government Better

Urbanist Article /
SPUR Executive Director Gabriel Metcalf sat down with Greg Wagner, the City's new budget director — and SPUR's former good government policy director — to discuss the looming budget crisis, the City's Capital Plan and the role of creative thinking in budget reform.

Growing on Our Buildings

News /
Some of the first calculations of the benefits of green roofs are coming back and they're even better than expected: replacing typical roofing materials with plants across a city the size of Detroit would be the equivalent of removing the pollution of 10,000 SUVs in a year. This study is the first to measure the amount of carbon that could be captured by the extensive…

Our Great Boulevard

News /
Today was the second day of the six-week Better Market Street Project trial number one, which diverts cars headed north off of Market Street at 8th and 6th avenues, in an attempt to reduce traffic on the oft-clogged street. What a transformation! The morning bicycle commute has become a breeze and we hope will encourage more workers to choose their two-wheeled vehicle. The Better Merket…

Burning Man Takes on the City

News /
Two weeks ago the great parade of cars covered in the white desert dust returned from Black Rock City, Nevada, Burning Man's annual week-long home. Along with the many tales, burners brought back news of next year's theme: Metropolis: the life of cities. Besides celebrating Black Rock City's own urban elements--a population of 40-50,000 people with (temporary) homes on lots within blocks; a system of…

Solar = 'Peaker' Power, without the EJ Issues

News /
This summer, somewhere in California, the state Energy Commission denied an application for a new urban natural gas-burning power plant, citing that urban solar (PV) might be a better alternative. The CEC said that new "peakers" were not obviously the most cost-effective or environmentally preferable option to close that city's energy reliability gap. For years, SPUR and a loose coalition of environmental advocates, led by…

Music, Dancing, Urbanists at 2009 PARK(ing) Day

News /
Last Friday, we teamed up with the San Francisco Great Streets Project and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition to participate in 2009 PARK(ing) Day, an event-cum-social movement started by Rebar in 2005. Before the big day, architect and SFBC volunteer Riyad Ghannam spent countless hours in the Urban Center's basement designing and building wooden platforms to create a seamless transition between the sidewalk and…

NY Times Columnist Allison Arieff Blogs about P2P (and Land-Lending in a Soft Economy)

News /
New York Times columnist Allison Arieff penned a piece yesterday on the temporary parks and open spaces sprouting up in San Francisco and New York City--and the opportunity for land owners (in this soft economy) to lend their empty lots to grassroots greeners. This image, from Arieff's column, shows the site of one of San Francisco's newest temporary plaza at the intersection of…

What GOOD Design can do for San Francisco

News /
Last month, AIA San Francisco, CEOs for Cities, GOOD Magazine and SPUR issued a "call for problems" to a handful of city leaders, and asked six up-and-coming designers to develop responses and present them at an evening forum later this month. The challenges we got ranged from improving public schools, to designing a more welcoming storefront for the Ferry Building, to coming up with…

November 2009 Voter Guide

Voter Guide /
Includes SPUR's analysis of 5 city propositions on the Nov. 3, 2009 ballot.