2011 Silver SPUR Awards: How Natalie Berg Shaped the City and Its Young People
News / Natalie Berg , Ed.D., has influenced San Francisco as an educator, civic leader and land use consultant. In her 30 plus years at City College of San Francisco she has served as a professor, dean and most recently as an elected member and president of the Board of Trustees. Natalie recently retired from 12 years of service at Forest City Development, where she was responsible…
To Fix Central Market, Start With a Strategy
News / What’s the best way to revitalize Central Market? There isn’t one way, but many — and they all need to be coordinated with one another. While this sounds like an answer that Yoda might offer, we hope that the folks at the Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OWED) don’t have to rely on the Force alone to help finalize the Central Market Economic Strategy. The strategy is full of good ideas — and all will need substantial political support in order to be realized.
How to Negotiate a Greener Office
News / Last week, the Bay Area's Business Council on Climate Change — which SPUR is a part of — released the Green Tenant Toolkit , an online resource for improving the sustainable performance of existing commercial buildings in San Francisco. The toolkit is designed to help commercial tenants, building owners and property managers collaborate to improve the energy efficiency and other sustainability metrics of their buildings…
San Francisco Gets Serious About Earthquakes
News / Many of us in the Bay Area felt a series of sharp tremors on October 20 and 21 — coincidentally the same day that Christian radio broadcaster Harold Camping predicted would bring the Apocalypse. It might not be time for the Rapture just yet, but we do know the Big One is coming, and we want our buildings to be prepared. Fortunately, Mayor Ed Lee has released the first draft of San Francisco's Earthquake Safety Implementation Program.
Hidden Hub of the SF Food System: the Wholesale Produce Market
News / At three in the morning, a four-block stretch of Jerrold Avenue in the Bayview neighborhood is abuzz with business. The San Francisco Wholesale Produce Market , which is busiest during the graveyard shift, is a hidden hub of San Francisco’s fresh food system. On a recent Friday, fifteen early-rising SPUR members gathered for a walking tour at 8 a.m. — the end of the day…
SPUR's 2011 Voter Guide Now Online
News / Absentee ballots will start to arrive this week, which means it's time for the annual SPUR Voter Guide, our in-depth analysis of all local San Francisco ballot propositions. With only eight measures on the docket, this is a short ballot for our fine city — but it's certainly not short on substance. Voters will weigh in on dueling pension reform plans, bonds for schools and…
Why the MTC's Toll Lane Plan Won't Meet the Goals of Road Pricing
News / The Bay Area has a lot to gain from pricing its freeways. Two of the major benefits are money for transit and less highway congestion. High-Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes are a miniature form of road pricing, offering solo drivers the option to buy their way into High-Occupancy Vehicle lanes and bypass the congested, more heavily-subsidized highway lanes. In 2008, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) proposed…
Ocean Beach Master Plan Public Workshop #3
News / Join us Saturday, October 29 at our next public workshop for the Ocean Beach Master Plan. We will be presenting draft recommendations that sketch out an ambitious vision to improve access, restore ecological resources, and protect critical infrastructure at Ocean Beach as sea level rise worsens erosion in the coming decades. The public will be invited to provide feedback on the recommendations, which will be refined in the coming months.
Public Feedback Summary to Date
News / As the Ocean Beach Master Plan Team develops Draft Recommendations to be presented at the next Public Workshop (Oct 29th!) , we are working hard to absorb and incorporate the diverse voices of the Ocean Beach Community. The presentation below provides additional distillation of what we have heard to date in our public workshops, neighborhood meetings, and online commentary. In particular, it shows which of the…
A Vision for New Greenspace in Southeastern SF
News / SPUR’s 2011 Piero N. Patri Fellow, Sarah Moos, spent this summer studying San Francisco's unmaintained and underused rights-of-way. The resulting project, Unaccepted Streets: From Paper to Reality, proposes to transform some of San Francisco's overlooked spaces into a network of public pathways that would better link local communities to open spaces and to each other.
Is City Soil Really More Toxic Than Rural Soil?
News / As someone who works on urban agricultural policy, I'm often asked, "Is city-grown food safe?" The question comes from aspiring urban gardeners and concerned eaters alike. And it seems to stem from both a fear of the known and a fear of the unknown. First, the fear of the known: Common urban contaminants include lead, arsenic and other heavy metals leaked into soil from old…
Why a Gas Tax Extension Is No Longer Enough to Save Our Roads, Jobs — or Economy
News / On Tuesday, Congress returned to Washington with only 11 days to pass essential legislation: the reauthorization of all major national transit and highway projects and the gas tax that funds them. Stalemate or delay will cost billions of dollars and millions of jobs , shutting down highway and transit construction projects nationwide and putting hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work in the midst…
How to Solve San Francisco’s Parks Funding Crisis
News / Our latest SPUR Report, Seeking Green , takes a hard look at the many factors that make funding San Francisco’s parks so difficult: diminishing public funds, political forces that prevent raising new revenues and, more recently, a recession of historic proportions. How can the Recreation and Parks Department navigate these competing pressures to maintain services and care for our parks? Our task force found 11 ways to save San Francisco’s parks, from stabilizing public financing to strengthening philanthropy to expanding revenue opportunities.
Seeking Green
SPUR Report Image courtesy Flickr user ShawnaScottPhoto San Francisco’s parks are among the city’s most treasured assets — but they’re also in serious financial trouble. The city’s Recreation and Parks Department (RPD) has lost more than 25 percent of its General Fund revenue in just five years. Meanwhile, labor costs have gone up 34 percent. This mix of factors has forced the department to make dramatic cuts…
How Can We Reclaim Market Street?
News / San Francisco’s Market Street has a long and fascinating history: from its ambitious beginnings as an over-scaled boulevard, laid out by Jasper O’Farrell in 1847, to its heyday as the city’s vibrant theater district in the early twentieth century. Market Street rose to prominence after the 1906 Earthquake, survived a series of urban planning experiments in the mid-twentieth century, and absorbed the important yet disruptive…
BART of the Future
News / Forget what your mother told you about "it's what’s on the inside that counts.” In the case of BART trains, it’s all about what’s on the outside. BART’s new fleet of cars is on track to begin service in 2016. This month, BART provided a first look at the concepts for the new train cars , holding a series of forums for the public to…
Food Desert No More: New Grocery Store Opens in the Bayview
News / In many neighborhoods in San Francisco, the opening of a new grocery store is notable. But in the Bayview, a new Fresh & Easy store that opened on August 24 filled a full-scale grocery store gap that had persisted for more than 15 years. “It’s all about health, about neighborhood vitality, about jobs, and about fulfilling old promises,” explained Mayor Ed Lee at the opening…
Election 2011: How Did SF’s Pension Problem Get This Bad?
News / With two different pension-reform measures on the upcoming ballot, it’s no secret that pension reform will have a significant impact on the November election. But how did the city get to the point of having a problem of this magnitude? Clearly the recession has played a big part, but what about the many negotiated increases in benefits over the course of the last decade? While…