SPUR Publications

2019 Silver SPUR Honoree Charles M. Collins is president and CEO of YMCA of San Francisco and serves on numerous commissions. With his leadership, the YMCA is a sustainable organization focused on human growth and potential, especially on empowering children in leadership. His extensive experience in law, city planning and real estate led to the Downtown Plan for San Francisco.

2019 Silver SPUR Honoree Nínive Calegari is an educator, nonprofit co-founder, award-winning film producer, and bestselling author. She advocated for the importance of teachers with her book, Teachers Have it Easy, and her film, American Teacher. The Teacher's Salary Project fights for wages to reflect the prestige of the profession. She engages community youth through Enterprise for Youth and 826 National.

California can address many of its issues at once by adding new jobs and housing around passenger rail stations. In September, SPUR partnered with Governor Newsom's Regions Rise Together initiative to hold a half-day workshop for California cities with rail stations. Together we asked: How can the state help cities spur compact growth and economic development near rail?

At this year's Silver SPUR Awards, Alicia John-Baptiste, SPUR’s new president and CEO, shared her approach for addressing the problems facing the Bay Area: Our challenges have divided us, she argued, but working on them collectively could bring us together.

San Jose — long known as the bedroom community for Silicon Valley — has struggled to grow its job base. But four new trends in downtown development may be about to change that. In 2014, SPUR made recommendations for how to encourage growth downtown. Five years later, we are seeing these ideas unfold — with positive indications for San Jose’s financial footing.

Oakland’s annual rent increase has slowed dramatically as the amount of new housing has skyrocketed. Some developers are even offering free rent to lure prospective tenants. This is welcome news for renters who can afford market-rate rents, but the benefits are not limited to them. New research demonstrates that construction of market-rate housing can have positive effects for those who already live in the neighborhood.

San Francisco and Oakland will spend a combined $29.5 million in soda taxes this year. Now that elected officials have passed budgets in both cities, we can answer two questions: How do both cities plan to spend the revenue? And have San Francisco and Oakland followed the recommendations of their respective soda tax advisory committees?

As Silicon Valley’s economy and population grow, the Peninsula is in dire need of transportation solutions. Caltrain has the potential to provide frequent, all-day transit service that could greatly reduce driving and serve more people. To deliver on this service vision, Caltrain must also develop a bigger organizational vision. One that enables it to meet the needs — and challenges — of the future.

Bus rapid transit has been delivering better transportation options in cities around the world for 20 years — but it’s still a work in progress in the Bay Area. O nly one BRT project has been built here, and others have encountered significant hurdles. What will it take to deliver BRT in the Bay Area?

Every four years, the City of San Jose reviews and updates selected elements of its general plan, Envision San Jose 2040. Since the last review in 2015, the city has seen incredible demand for development, which requires the community to think comprehensively when it comes to this year's update. SPUR supports the items the city proposes to focus on and suggests additional items to consider.

In 2016 the San Francisco Unified School District adopted the Good Food Purchasing Policy, setting criteria and goals for sourcing food ethically, providing healthy options and honoring fair labor practices. Recently , Student Nutrition Services Director Jennifer LeBarre came to SPUR to give an update on how the district is doing on meeting its goals.

Just before San Francisco’s 2018 mayoral election, SPUR released San Francisco’s Next Mayor: A Blueprint for Change, a policy agenda for the city's next leader. One year later, we took a look back at the progress that Mayor Breed and the Board of Supervisors have made toward those recommendations, specifically on housing and homelessness.

July marked the beginning of the new fiscal year for the City of Oakland, and with it the end of a rancorous two-month-long adoption process for a new two-year budget. Without a city controller to establish a common set of financial facts , the debate in Oakland is not only over which priorities to fund but whose numbers to believe.

Hidden beneath the buzz over new transportation technologies is a quiet revolution in the way cities manage their streets. In the face of rapid change, public agencies are increasingly relying on pilot programs to introduce new modes of transportation and new uses of streets. Yet pilots are too often focused on responding to technology trends. It’s time they evolved to focus on cities and people.

Earlier this month, controversial state zoning bill SB 50 was denied a committee hearing , meaning the state legislature won't pass it in 2019. But the push to increase housing supply goes on. Quite a number of other housing bills are still under consideration, and SPUR is supporting many of them.

The passage of Assembly Bill 2923 means Bay Area cities must change their zoning to accommodate development on land that BART owns around its stations. Long-term plans for building housing will take time. In the short term, u sing the methods of tactical urbanism could give development near stations a jump start while allowing them to grow and change over time.