SPUR Publications

The Levi's Workshop on Valencia Street [Photo Credit: flickr user thepostfamily] Nestled among artisan manufacturers and freshly ground coffee, the Levi's Workshop at 580 Valencia Street continues the Mission's tradition of craft through a community print shop. This bold artistic enclave merges the pop appeal of the storefront with the patience of the printmaker. The wide windows and old signs from a past laundromat…

Hayes Valley Farm extends to the very edge of a more traditional urban scene [Photo Credit: Fabiana Meacham] Spend a few hours walking through any sector of the city and you will inevitably stumble upon a small patch of toiled earth, usually surrounded by chain-link fencing and accompanied by the all too familiar odor of manure. Urban farms have surfaced throughout the country in…

Flint Hahn's Burning Man infographic. (Click to view larger.) For some it is a yearly spiritual revival providing an emotionally charged respite from reality; for others it simply means they are able to eat brunch without standing in line. The mark left by Burning Man on San Franciscans and this city is undoubtedly immense, but is hard to truly measure. The same can be said…

Sprawl, conformity, car culture, ennui, decay. These are a few of the themes Arcade Fire tackles in its third album, The Suburbs, released last week. At times nostalgic and at times cautionary, The Suburbs may be most notable (certainly in the realm of SPUR's blog) as an example of city planning commentary in pop culture. As an NPR review put it, "the members of…

[Photo Credit: flickr user notaboutwill] The US Department of Energy released their 2009 Wind Technologies Market Report outlining the current state of wind technology in the United States. The report is an exhaustive study of what is generally seen as solar power's less glamorous and less popular cousin. Some interesting facts from the report include: Wind power made up 39% of all new generating…

[Photo Credit: Colleen McHugh] Through an interactive market system of live music, produce booths and youth art projects, the Mission Community Market (MCM) activates an underutilized block at the intersection of 22nd and Bartlett Streets. It also brings diverse walks of life together on one block every Thursday from 4 to 7p.m. Chance encounters with fellow pedestrians carrying sunflowers or succulent produce are the…

[Photo Credit: flickr user Troy Holden] In 2011, America's estimated 78.2 million baby boomers will begin to reach retirement age, officially ushering in the "silver tsunami" - a term used to describe the impending onslaught of retirees into a society that is currently ill-prepared to handle the needs of an aging population. Most boomers currently live in suburbs, having ridden the wave of suburban…

Plug-in cars in San Francisco [Photo Credit: flickr user felixkramer] PG&E's clean energy blog, Next 100, recently explored the idea of the rise of electric vehicles in the Bay Area. At the recent Plug-In 2010 conference, PG&E President Chris Johns predicted that the Bay Area will see around 500,000 electric vehicles (EVs) "plugging in" over the next decade. From a sustainability perspective…

Reflected Loop [Image via San Francisco Arts Commission] We are visual creatures. As such, we derive our orientation of our relative location according to the landmarks and visual reminders around us. This is especially evident in how we navigate urban areas, by remembering a block near a notable statue or fountain in an otherwise crowded arrangement of buildings. It's a common situation - getting…

The California High Speed Rail Authority met yesterday in San Francisco. The agenda was packed with many interesting things including a new station area development policy. But the real controversy was about the section between San Jose and San Francisco. I joined hundreds of people during public comment to weigh in on this one small segment. Over the past few years, a group…

SFpark has released a video demonstrating how the new and improved parking system can help reduce traffic, carbon emissions -- and road rage -- while driving on San Francisco streets. Find out more about the program in this blog post. SFpark Overview from SFpark on Vimeo.

With just under a year in operation, San Francisco's "data liberation" website, DataSF, has inspired some compelling visualizations. One person who has actively taken advantage of this website is flickr user Eric Fischer. This past week he introduced an animated graphic that caught my eye. While it may take a few views to deduce, this animation shows a full day, starting and ending at…

As a budding apiarist, I was devastated to hear about the Hayes Valley Farm incident last week. An unknown person sprayed two beehives with household pesticides - destroying the hives and killing thousands of bees. Hayes Valley, the community farm in San Francisco, used the San Francisco Bee-Cause beehives in to help educate Bay Area residents about beekeeping and urban farming. Dead bees at Hayes…

Taking the guess work out of parking. That's what SFMTA's innovative new parking program, SFpark, aims to accomplish. When implemented, the program will dramatically change how drivers locate and pay for parking. A new SFpark "smart meter" [Photo Credit: flickr user SFMTA_sfpark] Here's a quick breakdown of how SFpark works: Sensors located in parking spaces and City-owned garages will track real-time parking…

[Photo Credit: flickr user Snapsi42] Next 10, an independent, nonpartisan organization that studies the intersection between the economy, the environment, and quality of life in California, has just released a new report on the untapped energy efficiency potential associated with existing commercial buildings. The paper outlines the energy efficiency benefits associated with making improvements to commercial buildings and analyzes the market barriers which…

As California lays the high-speed rail groundwork, SPUR continues its series on international precedents. While France built high-speed rail two decades after Japan and within a different state apparatus, the system had remarkably similar results: growth and concentration. France teaches us that a state investment in high-speed rail (HSR) can have major impacts on places that are isolated and suffering from lagging economic performance…

Geary Boulevard runs almost the entire width of San Francisco, from Market to the ocean. The name of the street hides a lot of history — John White Geary was the first mayor of San Francisco post-statehood, and he would go on to govern Kansas during its "Bloody Kansas" period in the buildup to the Civil War. But that's a matter for another post though…

The power of data to destroy preconceived notions seems to drive Hans Rosling, co-founder of Gapminder. My first experience with the website was in the spring of 2009 when H1N1 hysteria reached its apex. When a friend sent over the link, I thought I was looking at a simple scatter plot. I had neglected to notice the play button at the bottom of the…

5.5 Designers' wallpaper maze [Photo Credit: Switched on Set] You don't have to know what a fabber (digital fabricator) or modder (person who modifies) is to enjoy TechnoCRAFT, the latest show at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Like the word itself, the exhibit offers projects that blur any distinction there may still be between technology and art, designer and user…