SPUR is leading an interagency master planning process for Ocean Beach to address issues of public access, environmental conservation and infrastructure in the face of erosion and climate-related sea-level rise. SPUR recently held the first of three public workshops for the Ocean Beach Master Plan , inviting feedback on initial research by the project team. This first look at the wide range of issues at…

Since the onset of the great recession in 2008, San Francisco, like many American cities, has struggled through a period of economic decline and drastically reduced public resources. Fortunately for San Francisco, a city with a long history of entrepreneurship and social activism, citizens have displayed great wherewithal and ingenuity in the face of budgetary stalemates—resulting in an outpouring of innovative “do-it-yourself” projects ranging from…

From addressing the most prevalent social and physical issues in our own backyard, to creating solutions for the world’s poor, students are tackling the most significant issues facing our world today. Drawn from a range of student work produced in Bay Area schools, this exhibit includes exemplary projects from the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, public policy, graphic design and entrepreneurship to highlight…

Richard Register, founder of Bay Area nonprofit Ecocity Builders , is one of the world's leading theorists and authors on the topic of ecological city design and planning. Ecocity Dreamin' is a retrospective of Register's ecocity illustrations complied over the last 30 years, covering everything from land use and mapping, transportation, architecture and ecocity design elements, to futuristic ecological cities based on principles of archaeology.

49 Cities sets out to crunch the numbers of several centuries of unrealized urbanism, all the way from the Roman city to the great utopian projects of the 20th century. Through plans, sections, diagrams, charts and scale drawings, 49 cities are observed statistically and presented in an unprecedented comparative study, the result of a research project conducted over several years. Despite the fact that many…

According to the World Bank, educating all children worldwide will require the construction of 10 million new classrooms in more than 100 countries by 2015. At the same time, millions of existing classrooms are in serious need of repair and refurbishment. Architecture for Humanity’s 2009 Open Architecture Challenge invited the global design and construction community to collaborate with teachers and students to create smarter, safer…