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Co-working studio [Photo by flickr user ahopsi] According to a piece in Sunday’s Chronicle, tech employment in San Francisco is approaching its dot-com peak: "The city had an estimated 32,180 tech jobs last year, compared with 34,116 in 2000, according to an analysis of state employment data by real estate consultant Jones Lang LaSalle. In 2004, the number of tech jobs had fallen to…

If the Fiscal Year 2011 budget debate in Washington has been dramatic, it has also unfolded utterly predictably. But though threats to HSR funding were foreseeable, their ultimate effect is still highly uncertain. The GOP-controlled House proposes cuts to HSR that do three things: 1. Eliminate all 2011 funding for high speed rail projects 2. Rescind unobligated funds for high speed rail appropriated in 2010…

Several weeks ago, I attended a briefing at the SFCTA on the progress of the Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit project. BRT along Van Ness is currently in the midst of final environmental studies and preliminary engineering. Public comment will be solicited this spring on the Environmental Impact Report, after which the project team will recommend a preferred alternative for adoption by the Authority and…

Untitled from SPUR on Vimeo. Early this year Governor Jerry Brown shocked state and local leaders with his proposal to eliminate all of California’s 425 redevelopment agencies. Since then, debate has raged in the press over the ramifications of shuttering these agencies. While the future of San Francisco’s own redevelopment areas is in question (Transbay, Treasure Island, Hunters Point), similar questions arise across the…

Largest Mall in the World is a Chinese Ghost Town The world's largest mall, located in Southern China, is a vast ghost land with occupancy rates that hover at 1%. The mall, built to serve what may someday become a Chinese mega-city, is a glimpse at what can occur when development precedes growth. http://i.gadling.com/2011/03/ 02/largest-mall-in-the-world- is-a-chinese-ghost-town/?ncid= &a_dgi=aolshare_twitter A Place-Based Approach to Food Access: Creating a…

The Association of Bay Area Governments and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission released their Initial Vision Scenario for growth in the Bay Area at a meeting in Oakland today. The scenario is the first major milestone in the development of the Bay Area’s Sustainable Communities Strategy, a plan designed to accommodate growth while reducing greenhouse gases from driving,

Call for Applicants SPUR, the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, is pleased to issue a call for applicants for a twelve-week fellowship in the summer of 2011. The Piero N. Patri Fellowship in Urban Design is a hands-on position for a graduate student or 2011 graduate in landscape architecture, urban design, or architecture. The fellowship provides the opportunity for the Fellow to gain…

The San Francisco County Transportation Authority is working on an update to the city’s Long Range Transportation Plan. As part of the update, the authority has been conducting analysis of transportation patterns in the city, and looking at projected growth, and its implications. Some of the results have already been released (pdf), and the findings should provide advocates and governments in the Bay Area some…

GOOD Design Bay Area: Challenge #6 from SPUR on Vimeo. In the spring of 2004, I was a grad student at UC Berkeley, and about half way toward a master's degree in architecture. I'd already been having doubts about the program, and my future as an architect, when I didn't get my first pick for a class and ended up in a blobitecture studio…

Plans for Treasure Island are moving forward to the Planning Commission in March. SPUR is a big supporter of this plan, which will create 8,000 units of housing, 30 percent of which will be affordable, and 450,000 square feet of retail space; rehabilitate historic structures; create 300 acres of open space; and add new ferry service. We especially like the way in which the proposed…

Beginning this month, Californians will have a new option for auto insurance. It’s called Pay As You Drive (PAYD), and it could save money and reduce our impact on the environment at the same time. Traditional auto insurance policies charge customers in a lump sum and do not price risk according to driving volume. There have been attempts by insurance companies to incorporate driving volume…

Click to enlarge A “word cloud” or “weighted list” is a way of portraying the text in a document so that the higher the incidence of a word or term, the larger its font will be. After SPUR interns Sarah Favrot & Javier del Castillo spent a great deal of time and effort transcribing the many responses and comments of the January 15 th…

The next several weeks in Washington promise to offer extremely important insights into the future of public transportation spending in this country. Watershed moments are ahead for most every item on the SPUR agenda. Here’s a quick primer of why and of what’s at stake for advocates of smart growth: In October 2010, we anticipated that infrastructure spending would anchor the legislative agenda for…

The Public Policy Institute of California has just released a new series of reports assessing how prepared California is to implement Senate Bill 375, a state mandate to reduce driving through better land use planning. One report focuses on the connection between transit and jobs. The other focuses on the tools planners can use to reduce driving and the willingness of local officials to…

San Francisco might be the cultural center of the region, but in the technology sector the city has generally played second fiddle to the Silicon Valley. That began to change during the dot-com boom and then again more recently, a new generation of startups is setting up in neighborhoods like SoMa and Potrero Hill. (SPUR discussed the trend in its “ year in urbanism…

New Exhibit at the SPUR Urban Center Gallery! Opening: Tuesday, February 15th, 6:00 p.m. On view at the SPUR Urban Center Gallery, 654 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94105 (through March 8th). Tuesday, February 15, 2011, 6-8 pmSPUR Urban Center654 Mission Street, San FranciscoAdmission: Free for members, $5 non-members About the ExhibitSPUR is leading an interagency master planning process for Ocean…

When I entered Stamen’s offices in the Mission district of San Francisco, I saw four people gathered around a computer screen. What were they doing? Nothing less than “mapping the world,” not as it appears in flat dimension, but how it reveals itself. And they weren’t joking. Stamen, a data visualization firm, has always kept the concept of “place” central to many of their…

At our open house and workshop on January 15th, we presented a series of presentation boards and invited your feedback. Below you can download the original boards, and high-resolution images of the boards annotated with your comments. Image + character Download the original board (PDF) Download board with comments (JPG) Uses + activities + program Download the original board (PDF) Download board with comments (JPG)…