SPUR Planning Policy Area

Planning

We believe: Growth can be good and should be directed to areas
that will support equitable development and sustainability.

Our Goals

• Leverage growth to create great neighborhoods and public spaces.

• Protect and expand open space.

• Concentrate new jobs and housing in downtowns and near major transit hubs.

• Grow up, not out.

Photo of a locally owned bakery storefront in downtown San Francisco

Policy Brief

Small and Mighty

San Francisco’s small businesses face complex regulations, rising costs, and slow economic recovery after the pandemic. SPUR identifies seven interventions to support the city's small business sector.
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Photo of high rise buildings in downtown San Francisco

SPUR Report

From Workspace to Homebase

Converting empty offices into apartments could both reanimate downtown San Francisco and provide housing for more people near transit, jobs, and culture. SPUR explores the suitability of converting office buildings to housing and tests the financial feasibility.
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illustration of a mixed-used downtown with offices, restaurants, childcare, retail, greenspace and transit

Urbanist Article

What If We Get Downtown Right?

SPUR asked community leaders: “What would it look like if cities were to get downtown right?” We invited them to picture a future in which today’s ideas and policy proposals for downtown revitalization are put into place ... and they work.
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photo of a pedestrian bridge and tree cover over the Guadalupe River

Virtual Exhibition

Re-Envisioning the Guadalupe River Park

The Guadalupe River Park is downtown San José’s most important urban green space, but it faces serious challenges. SPUR's virtual exhibition celebrates the promise of the river park and brings together three years of research and conversation about its future.
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Updates and Events

Why the MTC's Toll Lane Plan Won't Meet the Goals of Road Pricing

News /
The Bay Area has a lot to gain from pricing its freeways. Two of the major benefits are money for transit and less highway congestion. High-Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes are a miniature form of road pricing, offering solo drivers the option to buy their way into High-Occupancy Vehicle lanes and bypass the congested, more heavily-subsidized highway lanes. In 2008, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) proposed…

A Vision for New Greenspace in Southeastern SF

News /
SPUR’s 2011 Piero N. Patri Fellow, Sarah Moos, spent this summer studying San Francisco's unmaintained and underused rights-of-way. The resulting project, Unaccepted Streets: From Paper to Reality, proposes to transform some of San Francisco's overlooked spaces into a network of public pathways that would better link local communities to open spaces and to each other.

How Can We Reclaim Market Street?

News /
San Francisco’s Market Street has a long and fascinating history: from its ambitious beginnings as an over-scaled boulevard, laid out by Jasper O’Farrell in 1847, to its heyday as the city’s vibrant theater district in the early twentieth century. Market Street rose to prominence after the 1906 Earthquake, survived a series of urban planning experiments in the mid-twentieth century, and absorbed the important yet disruptive…

How Will 1.7 Million More People Cross the SF Bay?

News /
The San Francisco Bay Area is expected to grow by 1.7 million people in the next 25 years. SPUR has a few ideas. Our short animated film illustrates a few simple things we can do today, as well as one big idea for the future. SPUR's first forray into video animation enjoyed coverage from Fast Company and Streetsblog.

Shanghai Municipality and the Bay Area

Urbanist Article
The Shanghai Municipality includes 17 districts as well as the city center. At 23 million people and 2,450 square miles, it is more comparable to the Bay Area than to San Francisco.
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