2019 Annual Report 1 2 What would it look like to solve the housing shortage, make transformative investments in transportation, tackle climate change and use the region’s prosperity for the benefit of all? SPUR brings people together to address the most pressing problems facing the cities of the San Francisco Bay Area. SPUR’s Agenda for Change Regional Planning Concentrate growth inside existing cities. Community Planning Build great neighborhoods. Housing Make it affordable to live here. Transportation Give people better ways to get where they need to go. Economic Development Lay the foundations of economic prosperity — for everyone. Sustainability + Resilience Reduce our ecological footprint and make our cities resilient. Good Government Build the capacity of the public sector. 4 Throughout our 109-year history, SPUR’s role has been to facilitate a conversation about the future of the city. Our Organization Has Evolved Over Time Our story began in 1910, when a group of young 1910–1940 1959–1977 city leaders came together to improve the San Francisco Housing San Francisco Planning and quality of housing in San Francisco after the Association Urban Renewal Association 1906 earthquake and fire. In the decades since, (SFHA) (SPUR) SPUR has been involved in virtually every major planning issue in the region. 1940–1942 1977–2012 With the opening of offices in San Jose San Francisco Housing and San Francisco Planning and and Oakland, SPUR has become a regional Planning Association Urban Research Association organization focused on issues facing the cities (SFHPA) (SPUR) of the Bay Area. We are still leading a conversation about how to imagine a better 1942–1959 2012 urban future. San Francisco Planning and SPUR: San Francisco Bay Housing Association Area Planning and Urban (SFPHA) Research Association 5 1965 > As part of the movement to protect the Bay from rampant fill and shoreline development, SPUR helps create the Bay Conservation and Development Commission. > 1910 1950 1972 In the aftermath of the 1906 The Next Million People, an earthquake and fire (see image on SFPHA exhibit at the San The Golden Gate National Rec- previous page), the San Francisco Francisco Museum of Modern reation Area is established after Housing Association forms Art, explores regional growth years of organizing by SPUR, to fight for decent housing and management, an increasingly the Sierra Club and hundreds of sensible rebuilding. central concern for the volunteers. It remains one of the organization. largest urban parks in the world. 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1911 1957 1973 1985 The first report of the Housing The California legislature San Francisco adopts its Transit San Francisco adopts the Association leads the state approves the creation of the Bay First policy based on a SPUR Downtown Plan, including SPUR’s to adopt its first regulations on Area Rapid Transit District report directing the city to add recommendations on shaping tenement construction. (BART). The SFPHA is deeply transportation capacity without growth in the city’s downtown involved with advocacy adding cars. core. and planning. > > > 1996 San Francisco’s new City Charter > 2015 of work by SPUR and others to draft and win public approval for expanding our work to the three a modern constitution for the city. largest cities of the Bay Area. 2008 > 2015 SPUR launches the Resilient 2012 The Presidio Parkway opens, City initiative, a comprehensive SPUR leads development of replacing seismically unsafe the Ocean Beach Master Plan, Doyle Drive. SPUR members retrofit the buildings and a comprehensive vision to proposed and advocated for infrastructure that sustain city address sea level rise, protect the new design, which creates life. Today SPUR’s definition infrastructure, restore ecosystems a grand entrance to the Golden of resilience is used by cities and improve public access on Gate Bridge and reconnects the around the world. San Francisco’s coast. Presidio with Crissy Field. 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 1999 2007 2013 2018 Based on a SPUR proposal, SPUR publishes a groundbreaking SPUR embarks on a new chapter SPUR launches the Regional San Francisco launches report on the Northern California Strategy, a multiyear initiative the Better Neighborhoods megaregion, calling for a San Jose. to envision a more equitable Program to engage communities redefinition of regional planning. and sustainable future for the in guiding neighborhood Bay Area. change. Plans for Market and Octavia and other neigh- 2018 borhoods balance growth San Francisco’s Transbay Transit with preservation. Center first opens to bus > service. When completed, the project will realize SPUR’s vision to connect high-speed rail, Caltrain and bus service, linking > San Francisco to the South Bay and beyond. 7 Today, SPUR is starting a conversation about the Bay Area of 2070. The San Francisco Bay Area is known as a place of progressive values and principles that have long guided SPUR’s work, rooted social values and original ideas — the home of gay marriage in our Agenda for Change. and the farmworkers’ movement, leading tech companies and T pioneering climate change policies. Francisco, San Jose and Oakland, interviewed hundreds of But for many who live and work here, there is a gulf people in communities around the Bay Area and visited cities between who we believe ourselves to be and the region we from the North Bay to the Central Valley, engaging local leaders have actually created. We face serious challenges that endanger and community members to gain a better understanding of the our future: a severe housing shortage, grinding commutes and region’s diverse perspectives. far too many people left out of the region’s prosperity. Our In the first year of the initiative, SPUR published Four Future Scenarios for the San Francisco Bay Area, which laid sense of anxiety and loss. out the critical forces and uncertainties shaping the region Mee and presented four radically divergent scenarios for its future. the horizon — will require bold and coordinated action. Earlier The most hopeful of these became the basis of the Regional generations invested in the region by building BART, saving the Strategy vision. It envisions a future where the Bay Area’s Bay and preserving our beloved open spaces. economic prosperity continues but is shared more equitably. In this future, the region embraces inclusion and commits to What might this generation do to secure a better future for solving problems collectively. the place we call home? For the next two years, SPUR and its partners on the Regional Strategy will continue digging into the tough The SPUR Regional Strategy questions, asking what it would take to truly make the region SPUR launched a major new initiative in 2018: the SPUR to face the climate crisis head on. We believe it’s possible for Regional Strategy. Through research, analysis and broad-based the Bay Area to provide a model of sustainability, inclusion and dialogue, we hope to paint an aspirational picture of a better opportunity and to accommodate new people and new jobs future for the Bay Area and propose actionable strategies to while not just protecting but improving this magnificent place. get there. The work is organized around four themes — Places, The initiative will conclude in 2021 with the publication of Transportation, Economy and Environment — and built on the the SPUR Regional Strategy. 8 Our report Four Future Scenarios for the San Francisco Bay Area envisions a future where the region’s prosperity is shared more equitably. 9 San Jose’s Guadalupe River Park 1010 Research Identify pressing problems and develop strategies to solve them. A CLIMATE ADAPTATION BETTER MAPS = ATLAS FOR THE BAY BETTER MOBILITY SPUR and the San Francisco Estuary Institute completed The Navigating transit in the Bay Area is complicated. Each of San Francisco Bay Shoreline Adaptation Atlas, a pioneering the region’s 27 operators develops its own map, using a wide framework for sea level rise adaptation. The atlas divides the range of styles, symbols, graphics and language. In 2018, we Bay shoreline into 30 distinct locations and provides strategies worked with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and suited to the unique landscapes, watersheds and shorelines transit operators to develop a regional map that for the first of each one. In profiling more than 20 adaptation strategies to prepare for rising seas, the atlas makes the case for nature- place. Building on this work, we published Finding Transit, a based solutions and their benefits over traditional flood control set of recommendations that transit agencies can use to create measures — including improved habitat, water access and better maps and make the Bay Area transit system easier to recreation. Bay Area agencies, including the Bay Conservation understand, navigate — and use. and Development Commission and San Mateo and Marin counties, are already using the framework in sea level rise A BLUEPRINT FOR SAN planning. FRANCISCO’S NEXT MAYOR Before the June 2018 election, SPUR published San Francisco’s > RE-ENVISIONING SAN JOSE’S Next Mayor: A Blueprint for Change, a set of policy goals for the GUADALUPE RIVER PARK next mayor to use in addressing the city’s most pressing needs. SPUR launched an initiative to help re-envision the Guadalupe River Park, an underappreciated natural resource in downtown have pushed forward several of SPUR’s priorities. To generate San Jose. To begin considering the river’s potential as a central million housing bond on the November 2019 ballot. To reduce working with Hood Design Studio to host a public engagement the time to review and approve housing proposals, Mayor Breed process that identified key areas for research and analysis. We appointed the city’s first director of housing delivery. And to presented this preliminary work in an interactive exhibition and scale up temporary homeless shelters immediately, the mayor white paper.