As part of the SPUR Regional Strategy, we sent photographer Ryan Young out to meet his neighbors. Over the course of a week, Young traveled 2,000 miles north, south, east and west to capture images of residents in the Bay Area's many and varied communities. The resulting photographs and conversations have been turned into We Are the Bay, a new exhibition at the SPUR…

Even among landscape architects, Michael Painter was unique. After all, it’s incredibly rare that the person responsible for a project comes as highly admired as the project itself. His ability to beautifully design landforms was surpassed only by his humility, and his love of collaboration was surpassed only by his willingness to ensure that every idea be heard. Ultimately, Michael’s body of work would span a half-century, hundreds of clients and more…

Cities across the country are rethinking linear parks and trails to create community hubs and iconic spaces. From New York’s High Line to Atlanta’s BeltLine, from Miami’s Underline to Chicago’s 606, downtown districts and neighborhoods are turning neglected infrastructure into engaging public spaces. In San Jose, the 2.6-mile Guadalupe River Park can learn from these leading examples, leveraging both its natural and built assets to…

Humans have long exhibited an innate need to classify, categorize and taxonomize everything we encounter. How We Move, the newest exhibition at the SPUR Urban Center, applies a similar level of classification to the multiplicity of transportation modes that we experience on a daily basis. Come explore this new transportation taxonomy that communicates how people around the world travel from city to city, place to place and anywhere to home.

Humans have long exhibited an innate need to classify, categorize and taxonomize everything we encounter. Such a process helps us better grasp the complex, sometimes impalpable relationships between objects. Its history can be traced back to our earliest ancestors, when knowledge of what plants they could and couldn’t eat and from what animals they should and shouldn’t flee would trigger an appropriate reaction and determine…

Over the course of three years, photographer Jason Reblando focused his camera on three Greenbelt Towns around the United States — Greenbelt, Maryland; Greenhills, Ohio; and Greendale, Wisconsin — that had been planned and developed as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s. Each town was constructed to provide work for the unemployed, affordable housing for low-income families and become a model for future town planning across the…