San Francisco’s chief economist has estimated that it would be take another 100,000 units of housing to stabilize rents. However, physical and political constraints on the city’s built form make it difficult to find the space for this housing. The newest exhibition at the SPUR Urban Center takes aim at this very issue and seeks to answer how we can build the city that we have…

San Jose is hosting a juried design competition to transform St. James Park into a vibrant and awe-inspiring public space. The goal is to inspire everyday use and enjoyment of the park, reinforce a dynamic downtown and celebrate the city’s history and future. Four highly qualified design teams have been selected as finalists to create concept plans for the park, which will include a Levitt…

What started as a goal of the MIT Media Lab to create one map every day for a year has evolved into an ambitious plan to build 100 different maps of 100 different cities, creating a veritable atlas of human experience. With guidance from SPUR, the group has begun to focus their creative talents on San Jose. Experience the result with SPUR San Jose's latest…

The Transbay Center District is in the midst of a major makeover that has been in the works for decades, shifting the heart of downtown south toward the future Transbay Transit Center. SPUR's first photography exhibition presents a set of images taken by local photographer Sergio Ruiz from the streets of the Transbay neighborhood from 2010 to 2016. The images focus on street life as set within the…

How do sounds influence our sense of place within cities? How do they affect how we move, feel and relate to one another? SPUR's exhibition, Sound and the City, seeks to answer these questions by convening artists, designers, musicians and scholars and showcasing a series of interactive projects that encourage the exploration of our contemporary urban environments with newly open ears. Generously sponsored by the Yerba …

VENUE is a multimedia documentation of the 16-month U.S. tour embarked upon by two of the Internet’s most acclaimed bloggers, Geoff Manaugh (BLDGBLOG) and Nicola Twilley (Edible Geography). Inspired by 19th century survey expeditions, VENUE documents “often overlooked yet fascinating sites through the eyes of the innovators, trendsetters, entrepreneurs, and designers at the forefront of ideas today,” thus creating a cross-section of the country for the 21st century.