SPUR Publications

We're nearly done installing SPUR's first exhibition, Agents of Change: Civic Idealism and the Making of San Francisco. Here's a sneak peak of how it's shaping up—thanks to an amazing cadre of volunteers who have been working around the clock to get the show installed before it opens this Friday. I have learned so much from working on this show with our brilliant and…

We're nearly done installing SPUR's first exhibition, Agents of Change: Civic Idealism and the Making of San Francisco. Here's a sneak peak of how it's shaping up—thanks to an amazing cadre of volunteers who have been working around the clock to get the show installed before it opens this Friday. I have learned so much from working on this show with our brilliant and…

Only five members of the Board of Supervisors today voted to reject the SFMTA budget, two short of the supermajority of seven needed to reject it. The supermajority requirement was put in the City Charter by Proposition A and Proposition E (both in part crafted by SPUR) to create a balance between the need to defend the SFMTA from political influence and give the city's…

Yesterday we staged a dress rehearsal for our big day next Thursday—when we'll unveil the Urban Center to over 1,000 people at our grand opening celebration. The scene caused quite a stir on this once-sleepy 600-block of Mission. Cars slowed; sidewalks filled; the Peet's patron paused. Sudden gusts of wind caused only minor complications, and leant a certain drama to the occasional glimpse of…

The Alliance for Biking & Walking, a national coalition of advocacy organizations, is working the Congressional Bike Caucus. The Caucus represents a majority of members who support an increased federal role in promoting bicycling as a solution to our nation's transportation crisis, not to mention our health and environmental crises. In the attached letter from the Bike Caucus Chair, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Portland, OR), you'll…

Just wanted to point your attention to the Bay Conservation Development Commission's upcoming design competition. The jury is seeking ideas inspired by "the common characteristics of estuaries" to prepare and adapt shoreline cities to the challenges of sea level rise. Entries will be displayed in the Ferry Building on July 14-19. Designers: still time to enter your proposal! Here's an excerpt from the competition…

We've been stealthily—until today—working away in our new building at 654 Mission Street to get ready for the grand opening of the Urban Center next week. Now there's no mistaking where we've been hiding out!

The Transportation Authority today released the draft Strategic Analysis Report on " Transportation Options for a Better Market Street." SPUR has long considered potential improvements to Market Street, and advised the Transportation Authority on the scope of this SAR. We urged the agency to be bold, but positive. That is, we emphasized that a study of Market Street ought to focus on the goals…

Accessibility for persons with disabilities, New Urbanist planners and architects will tell you, is an important principle. Still, other New Urbanist principles can come into conflict with accessibility; or, at least, they often clash with interpretations of the Americans With Disabilities Act, or with accessibility as defined by disability-rights advocates. Take February’s “Lifelong Communities” charette in Atlanta, at which Congress for the New Urbanism…

What did modernist planning and architecture look like from the perspective of the modernist? It was progressive, forward-thinking—and may have had more in common with contemporary planning than we'd care to admit. A 1959 time capsule recently unearthed in Burbank included these predictions by a local city planner: in 50 years, seven of every eight residents would be living in garden apartments made of plastic…

Since the Madrid-Barcelona leg of Spain’s AVE high-speed rail system opened last year, air travel in the corridor has been cut by half. But bullet trains aren’t just changing the ways Spaniards get around: according to an article in the Wall Street Journal, they are literally uniting the country, and revitalizing rural areas. Spaniards historically have been reluctant to travel, but “the AVE has…

To the litany of statistics bearing out the severity of this recession, add one more: the number of Americans who moved between March 2008 and March 2009 was just 35.2 million, the lowest total in 47 years – and back in 1962, there were 120 million fewer Americans. Such relative stability might be viewed as a good thing for neighborhoods besieged by foreclosures, or…

Toronto, Ontario, is, by any measure, one of North America’s greenest and most sustainable cities. It is also, by some accounts, the continent’s densest metropolis – but this is due in large part to the hundreds upon hundreds of “slab” highrises that sprouted across its outer neighborhoods in the postwar era. While Toronto’s “commie blocs,” as they’ve been derisively dubbed, provide the sort of residential…

SPUR's Transportation Policy Director today will tell the Board of Supervisors that the SFMTA budget approved by the SFMTA Board last week does not do enough to maintain quality transit service in these tight budget times. The SFMTA is leaving too much on the table in the form of new revenue and cost savings, at least $20 million of budget space that could be used…

National Geographic recently featured a photo essay of green roofs around the world. Featured projects included the Academy of Sciences (of course!), but also a Civic Center bus shelter that SPUR's green roofs task force worked hard to design and build. Diane Loviglio, a task force leader, came up with the idea that was later funded by the Academy as a way to bring green…

A delightful performance in Antwerp's Centration, nicknamed the "Railway Cathedral," and one of the city's most famous landmarks.

New York Times "Streetscapes" columnist Christopher Gray highlights a few of Manhattan's ghost buildings—grand architectural plans shelved after the 1929 stock market crash. However easy it may be to compare then and now, let's hope that some of San Francisco's own grand plans—the Transbay Terminal, for instance—don't get stored away in a flat file somewhere, only to resurface decades after the fact.

A new report by the Pacific Institute reveals that a 1.4 meter sea level rise will inundate thousands of acres in California and impact almost half a million people by 2100. Hardest hit will be low income people and communities of color, the Bay Area in general, and critical infrastructure like ports, railways, and water treatment facilities. Property damage alone could cost $100 billion. The…