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Safety First: Improving Hazard Resilience in the Bay Area
The Bay Area is both a treasured place and a hazardous environment where flooding, wildfires and earthquakes are common today. These hazards are likely to become more frequent, larger and more damaging as climate change puts the region’s people, built environment and natural habitats at risk. As a region exposed to multiple hazards, how can we manage for all of them at the same time?
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What It Will Really Take to Create an Affordable Bay Area
How much housing does the region need to build to prevent income inequality from getting worse?
Housing pressures are remaking the Bay Area's diversity, culture, economy and environment. As part of the SPUR Regional Strategy, we are delving into the causes, nature and sheer size of the housing crisis to make sure the solutions we propose are far-reaching enough to address the scale of the problem. This paper shares our research so far, in advance of our Regional Strategy recommendations.
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Driving Change
Policies to expand on employer-based Mobility on Demand pilot programs and reduce drive-alone commuting in the Bay Area.
The Fair Value Commuting Demonstration project addresses a challenge that has plagued cities for decades: Too many people drive alone to work, creating traffic, wasting time and productivity, and degrading air quality and safety. Four Silicon Valley cities tested a package of strategies and technologies to tackle the issue. SPUR provided independent research to help assess the results and determine next steps.
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It Takes a Village
Strategies for successful implementation of San Jose’s urban village vision
San Jose’s 2040 general plan proposed “urban villages” as a key strategy for sustainable growth. These higher-density, mixed-use urban places would concentrate new offices, stores and housing in locations accessible by transit, foot or bike. But only a handful of the 60 designated urban villages have projects underway. SPUR recommends strategies to remove barriers and successfully implement San Jose’s urban village vision.
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SPUR 2019 Annual Report
Since 1910, SPUR has been facilitating a conversation about the future of cities. This year, with the launch of the SPUR Regional Strategy, we are starting a conversation about the Bay Area of 2070. Our annual report takes a look at everything we got done in the last year — and what we hope to make happen over the next 50.
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Solving the Bay Area’s Fare Policy Problem
How streamlined, integrated fares can help the region realize the promise of transit.
Each of the Bay Area’s transit operators sets its own policy for determining the fares it will charge. This creates customer confusion, inhibits people from using more than one transit service and undermines the investments the region is making in new infrastructure and technology. SPUR offers recommendations for how operators can streamline and integrate their fares to help the region realize the promise of transit.
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San Francisco Bay Shoreline Adaptation Atlas
Working with nature to plan for sea level rise
As the climate continues to change, communities will need to adapt the San Francisco Bay shoreline to rising sea levels. But the Bay’s varied landscapes and overlapping jurisdictions make a coordinated response challenging. The San Francisco Bay Shoreline Adaptation Atlas proposes a new regional planning framework by dividing the 400-mile Bay shoreline into 30 distinct geographic areas that share common physical characteristics and adaptation strategies.
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Re-Envisioning the Guadalupe River Park
How San Jose can transform its greatest natural resource into a community gathering place for all
From New York City’s High Line to Atlanta’s BeltLine, communities across the country are transforming underutilized infrastructure into engaging public spaces. Building on this national momentum, SPUR has launched a project to reconsider the Guadalupe River Park, an underappreciated gem in downtown San Jose.
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Finding Transit
How better maps can make the Bay Area transit system easier to understand and navigate
Navigating transit in the Bay Area is complicated: Each of the region's 27 transit operators develops its own maps, using a wide range of styles, symbols, graphics and language. Research shows that well-designed transit maps can increase ridership and improve passengers’ understanding of the transit system. SPUR offers recommendations for creating better maps that can make Bay Area transit easier to understand and navigate.
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Four Future Scenarios for the San Francisco Bay Area
Planning for the region in the year 2070
This report, the first product of the SPUR Regional Strategy, uses a scenario planning process to look at four uncertainties that the Bay Area will contend with over the next 50 years: the economy, housing, transportation and the physical form that growth takes. The resulting scenarios serve as “myths of the future,” stories that reveal the potential long-term outcomes of choices the region makes today.
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San Francisco's Next Mayor
A Blueprint for Change
By any measure, the previous decade has been a period of dramatic change and growth for San Francisco. But for many, this unprecedented prosperity has failed to address — and has even contributed to — the many challenges the city still faces. SPUR offer a platform of specific policy goals and practical solutions for the next mayor and the city for the years ahead.
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Harnessing High-Speed Rail
How California and its cities can use rail to reshape their growth
In connecting the Bay Area to Los Angeles, high-speed rail will run through cities such as Fresno and Bakersfield that were bypassed when Interstate 5 was built. High-speed rail can reconnect these cities with each other and the coast, which has the potential to improve their economies. It can also change California’s sprawling growth pattern by revitalizing downtowns and shifting growth back toward urban centers.
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Room for More
SPUR’s Housing Agenda for San Jose
The Silicon Valley economic miracle has become a housing nightmare. As rents and home prices continue to rise, the region’s economic growth, diversity and climate are threatened. As the largest city in the Bay Area, San Jose has a special responsibility to lead on innovative housing solutions. SPUR lays out 20 concrete steps that San Jose can take to address the chronic housing shortage.
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Rethinking the Corporate Campus
The next Bay Area workplace
Technology has become the lifeblood of the San Francisco Bay Area economy, but the office environments where this work takes place do not reflect the innovation occurring within. The traditional suburban corporate campus reinforces dependence on cars and pushes sprawl development into open spaces and farmland. How do we create a more efficient, sustainable and high-performing model for the Bay Area workplace?
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The Caltrain Corridor Vision Plan
How to keep the Bay Area’s innovation economy moving
The Caltrain Corridor, home of the Silicon Valley innovation economy, holds much of the Bay Area’s promise and opportunity, but its transportation system is breaking down. We propose a transformative vision for the corridor, along with recommendations for how to fund and implement it.
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Mission Creek Sea Level Rise Adaptation Study
Waterfront strategies for long-term urban resiliency
Located on San Francisco’s eastern waterfront, Mission Creek is one of the city’s lowest lying areas. That means it's potentially vulnerable to storm surges, flooding and future sea level rise. This study considers different design concepts for how to “hold the line” on sea level rise at Mission Creek and weighs the pros and cons of each.
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Fossil-Free Bay Area
A cleaner future for the region's energy
Fossil fuel use is causing runaway global climate change, but we still have time to reverse course if the world can transition to renewable sources for almost all energy uses. The Bay Area is uniquely positioned to prototype ways to become fossil-free and model them for urban areas around the world. We propose three big ideas for how to end our dependence on fossil fuels.
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Future-Proof Water for Silicon Valley
A landscape analysis of water supply and opportunities for resilience
Silicon Valley’s historically reliable water supply has been essential to its growth. But the last four years of severe drought have revealed the region’s dependence on statewide water availability. Local leaders see sustained conservation and water recycling as the best solution. To assist these efforts, this paper updates the South Bay data in our 2013 report Future-Proof Water and highlights areas for research and partnerships.
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Back in the Black
A fiscal strategy for investing in San Jose's future
San Jose needs more money. Although the “capital of Silicon Valley” has the highest median household income of any major city in the country, years of budget cuts and staffing reductions have left the city in a precarious position. This report, a collaboration between SPUR and Working Partnerships USA, explores how San Jose can bolster its resources and deliver high-quality public services.
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Designing the Bay Area's Second Transbay Rail Crossing
How to ensure reliable transit and a connected region
Since the BART Transbay Tube opened in 1974, the Bay Area has grown from 4.3 million to 7.6 million people, yet we have added no new capacity for crossing the Bay. Our overburdened system threatens the region’s quality of life and its ability to grow. It's time to start planning a second transbay rail crossing. We offer seven recommendations for how to get started now.
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