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

Time to Rethink How Oakland Passes Budgets

News /
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.

Be Regionable: An Urbanist Poster Campaign

Urbanist Article /
One of the goals of the SPUR Regional Strategy is to help the citizens of the Bay Area to think regionally. So we partnered with TBD* at California College of the Arts, a student-run design studio, to create a series of posters that would inspire people to feel passionately about not just the city they live in but the region we’re all a part of.

Giving Old Infrastructure New Life

Urbanist Article /
A fast, frequent megaregional rail network could be transformative for the Bay Area and Northern California. As part of the SPUR Regional Strategy, we are working to identify some of the major changes needed to implement this vision.

Scooters, Bikes and Buses: Reclaiming Pilot Projects for the Public Good

News /
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.

SPUR 2019 Annual Report

SPUR 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.