Thousands of people in Santa Clara County have been earning and redeeming Double Up Food Bucks for fruits and vegetables at participating grocery stores. Our program has been working well, but because Double Up Food Bucks are distributed on paper coupons, they can be cumbersome. A new bill would address the issue and pave the way to scale programs like Double Up statewide.

Many have asked how Oakland’s publicly owned land might be put to use to create affordable housing. The city is now working with a community coalition to develop a new policy for how public land is used. At issue is whether prioritizing affordable housing on public land would pit affordability against other important imperatives like generating funding for city services and creating well-paying local jobs.

Nuclear power and the future of California’s electricity grid made the news last week with the announcement that the California Public Utilities Commission unanimously approved closing Diablo Canyon, the state’s last operating nuclear power plant. SPUR wrote about this promising idea in our 2016 report Fossil-Free Bay Area.

The remaking of Diridon Station is the most important city-building opportunity San Jose will get for a long time. But the amount of growth planned for the area is limited by the station’s proximity to the Mineta San Jose Airport and its flight paths. Can San Jose get more space near the station for jobs and housing? Preliminary analysis by SPUR and SOM says yes.

Like San Jose’s South First Area, Miami’s Wynwood District leveraged the arts to transform an underutilized neighborhood into a successful mix of galleries, nightclubs and restaurants. Today rising rents risk driving away the very artists that made Wynwood such a unique and attractive place. As large-scale development comes to downtown San Jose and SoFA, what lessons can the city learn from Wynwood’s story?

From Copenhagen to Los Angeles, cities are finding new ways to address their interconnected health, climate, congestion, equity and economic challenges through innovative thinking about public spaces. At November’s San Jose Public Life Summit, urbanist and public design advocate Gil Peñalosa challenged leaders and residents in San Jose to move forward with ambitious projects that support sustainable mobility, vibrant public spaces and civic engagement.

The Bay Area has become a central player in the story of our country. First because we are coming up with the innovations that are disrupting the economy and people’s lives. Second because we represent an alternative path, a model of progressive urbanism. Our task is to make that model really work — and we're not as far away as we might think.