The success of San José and the well-being of its residents depend on a fully-staffed and functioning planning department that guides how and where San José's community grows and evolves and expedites projects that conform to the City Council-adopted vision. This is how good government works and must be a top priority for our elected leaders.

The devastating earthquakes that shook Turkey and Syria last Monday have taken the lives of over 23,000 people. Such a staggering death toll is hard to wrap the mind around and may seem like an impossibility here in California. Yet, the reality is that a similar magnitude earthquake near Los Angeles or San Francisco could lead to thousands of residents injured or killed and many more displaced, temporarily or permanently, from their damaged or destroyed homes.

Over 40% of California’s greenhouse gas emissions come from the transportation sector, mostly from people driving alone. Our roads, planet and health can’t take much more. As our population continues to grow, we need to create more sustainable ways to get around.

California needs a lot more housing in its temperate cities. Enough to bring down rents, to house the homeless and to accommodate the climate refugees of the future — people who will have been driven from their homes by wildfire, flooding or intolerable heat. This means neighborhoods have to change, too. Not drastically or overnight, but persistently: more duplexes and fourplex intermixed with single-family homes, more apartments in commercial corridors and larger buildings in high-demand locations near transit.

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Bay Area transit agencies are on the cusp of establishing the region’s first network manager. What does this development mean for regional transit and what happens next? SPUR has three ideas for getting the new organization off to a good start.