photo looking down San Francisco's Market Street toward downtown

Reinventing Downtown

A new model to revitalize San Francisco’s urban center

photo of San Francisco with orange skies from wildfire smoke in September 2020

Shared Risk, Shared Resilience

New governance structures for community wildfire resilience

Transit funding rally at San Francisco City Hall

The SPUR Impact Report

What we got done in 2025

Building storefronts in downtown San Jose

Getting In on the Ground Floor

Activation strategies for downtown San José

photo of San Francisco City Hall with a construction crane in the foreground

Charter for Change

Empowering San Francisco’s government through charter reform

Illustration of a crane stacking cargo containers that say "sound fiscal policy," "structural change" and "economic growth"

Balancing Oakland's Budget

Closing the city’s structural deficit to move toward fiscal solvency and economic growth

There Are No Cars in Wakanda

News /
In an essay for the exhibition Cars: Accelerating the Modern World, SPUR’s Allison Arieff asks: What would happen if we didn’t let the car determine the design of our cities and the pattern of our daily lives? Cities, she argues, might end up looking a lot like the fictional world at the center of the film Black Panther.

Transit Fare Integration Wins Transformative Projects Competition

News /
The results of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission first-ever Transformative Transportation Projects competition are in: We are thrilled to share that integrated transit fares — a proposal from SPUR, Seamless Bay Area and others — rose to the top as not only the most transformative of the 11 finalists but one of the highest-performing projects overall.

Leading With Public Space: The Case for Guadalupe River Park

News /
We are excited to announce that, through investment made by the Knight Foundation and in partnership with the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy, SPUR will embark on a three-year research and planning project for Guadalupe River Park. Our work will focus on understanding the park’s current challenges, investigating what is possible, raising community understanding and awareness, and inspiring a conversation around the power of place.

Act Locally (and Regionally): A New Leader for Muni

Urbanist Article /
Last month, SPUR board member Jeffrey Tumlin stepped into a new role as director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. The former director of strategy at Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates had a brief stint as interim director of the Oakland Department of Transportation, but this is his first time managing a public agency. SPUR asked him some questions about the opportunities (and challenges) ahead.

To Achieve Seamless Transit, We Must Change What and How We Build

News /
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission has made some big improvements to its methodology for assessing transportation proposals and deciding which ones to recommend for funding. What’s more, the improved tool provides a useful diagnostic for how project funding and planning in the Bay Area needs to change. SPUR offers three key observations on what this new perspective means for the next generation of transportation investments.