The Bay Area’s Housing Market: Where Will It Go Next?
News / As rents and home values in San Francisco continue to explode, residents and policy makers are trying to make sense of what this means for the city. Is San Francisco an anomaly within the region or a prophecy of things to come? SPUR will co-host two forums on the housing market to explore some of this question and more.
Fight or Flight: Sea Level Rise Leads to Increased Consideration of Managed Retreat
News / Under the threat of sea level rise, a number of coastal communities around the world will have to decide between protecting coastal homes and structures or giving way to the persistent impacts of coastal erosion by retreating from the coastline. A recent FEMA-funded study warned that each year, on average 1500 homes and the land on which they are built could erode into the…
Green Infrastructure for San Francisco's Western Neighborhoods
News / As a city with a combined sewer system —meaning that stormwater enters the wastewater treatment system—the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) is undertaking projects around the city to divert stormwater into landscaping, in order to reduce demand on the aging sewer system. One of the eight green infrastructure projects in the SFPUC’s 20 year, multi-billion dollar Sewer System Improvement Program is the Sunset Boulevard …
Connecting San Francisco's Northeast Neighborhoods
Research The northeast neighborhoods of San Francisco — North Beach, Telegraph Hill, Russian Hill, Fisherman’s Wharf and the edges of Chinatown — have some of the city’s highest densities of residents, workers and tourist activities. Yet there are currently no major plans to increase transit capacity serving the area. SPUR convened a community workshop to assess transit needs in these neighborhoods.
Ocean Beach Implementation Studies: Multimodal Transportation Analysis
News / SPUR and its partners kicked off the Multimodal Transportation Analysis on July 26th, making it the second in a series of three implementation studies that will help agencies analyze and move forward with recommendations made in the Ocean Beach Master Plan (OBMP). The OBMP presents a number of recommendations that would have significant transportation implications, most notably the closure of the Great Highway south of…
8 Shades of Green Infrastructure
News / This article is an exploration into the many urban water management challenges and solutions.
A City Within the City: Exploring the San Jose Flea Market
News / The San Jose Flea Market hosts one of the country’s most extensive collections of items for sale, building upon San Jose’s legacy as a city of many people and cultures. The flea market opened in 1960 with 20 vendors brought together by George Bumb, a man with a vision to sell usable items that he saw being sent to landfills. Since then it has grown…
Learning from Hurricane Sandy: Preparing for El Niño Events & Sea Level Rise
News / Six months after Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on the northern Atlantic Coast, New York City released its plan to protect the city in what may be the most extensive climate adaptation plan to date. ‘ A Stronger, More Resilient New York ’ matches coastal protection strategies with the needs of New York's varied waterfront land uses. As SPUR and its partners move forward with the…
Green Light for San Francisco’s New Urban Agriculture Program
News / The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has given the green light for the Recreation and Parks Department (RPD) to take the lead coordinating the city’s support of urban agriculture. Among SPUR's recommended priorities for this program are developing a strategy to reduce community garden waiting lists and operating as a "one-stop-shop" for the people seeking assistance with urban agriculture projects.
Historic Preservation in San Francisco
SPUR Report San Francisco is a city celebrated for its progressive history, distinctive architecture and phenomenal geography. We believe it is critical to protect the historic fabric of the city, while supporting growth and change in the right locations. In this report, we describe how to fully integrate preservation into the city's processes for land use planning.
What the BART Strike Means for the Regional Transit Agenda
News / For a group like SPUR — one that works to promote transit, walking and biking as primary forms of mobility — there’s no question that a transit strike is a major setback. It instills in people the sense, consciously or unconsciously, that they cannot count on transit being there when they need it. People who don’t have the flexibility in their jobs to work from…
Focusing San Francisco’s Food Access Efforts
News / While many parts of San Francisco are full of fresh food retailers, other neighborhoods lack greengrocers of any size. According to the SF Health Department , some areas of the city — including Treasure Island, the Tenderloin, Hunters Point and Visitacion Valley, among others — have limited to no fresh food retail options. On June 18, Supervisor Eric Mar introduced an amended version of his…
Re-Envisioning the San Francisco Housing Authority
Policy Brief The San Francisco Housing Authority is in crisis. As a recent San Francisco legislative analyst and budget report notes, the agency had a budget short fall of $4 million in fiscal year 2011 and $2.6 million in 2012. Meanwhile, it does not have nearly enough funding to meet its capital needs. SPUR offers recommendations to help the agency become financially sustainable over the long term.
Summer Reading: SPUR’s Favorite Books on Urbanism
News / We’re often asked for recommended reading on urban planning and policy. It’s the sort of request we love, but it’s hard to commit to a manageable number of titles. A recent brainstorm of essential reading produced a lengthy list that covered everything from William Fulton’s Guide to California Planning (“The best academic textbook on the topic,” says SPUR Deputy Director Sarah Karlinsky) to The Submission …
How Do We Rebuild the Bay Area's Middle Class?
News / In the past few years, there's been a lot of attention on income inequality and the shrinking middle class, particularly as job growth nationally has remained sluggish. Despite an economic boom in the Bay Area, many workers are still struggling. SPUR is part of a new initiative to identify ways we can increase economic opportunity at the local and regional level.
Bus Rapid Transit: Worth Fighting For
News / Bus rapid transit (BRT) projects can be transformative, as we have learned from cities like Cleveland in the U.S. and global examples like Mexico City. But making space on streets for travel modes other than the car is a challenge for cities and transit operators around the world. The Bay Area has five BRT projects in development today, and each has met with difficulty and…
What's Going On? Windblown Sand Snarls Sloat Area
News / The Problem The placement of 73,000 cubic yards of sand by SFPUC and the GGNRA -- a softer approach to coastal protection that SPUR supports -- has resulted in a significant unintended consequence: windblown sand that has closed the parking lot, restroom, and Great Highway at Sloat Boulevard. Large amounts of sand (where once there was next to none) combined with its relatively fine grain…