Though its history dates back millennia, cartography has exploded in the digital age. The advent of the personal computer, and more recently the smart phone, has driven the creation of maps at a frenzied pace. From the struggle between open source and proprietary systems to the constant balance between data and artistry, Urban Cartography selectively examines the last 20 years of map making and explores…

Pulled from artist and illustrator Wendy MacNaughton's most recent book, Meanwhile in San Francisco: The City in It's Own Words, SPUR's latest exhibition features beautiful illustrations that form a collaborative narrative: the drawings are hers, but the words came from people living and working in San Francisco. To create each of these stories, Wendy spent anywhere from twenty-four hours to four weeks getting to know the place, the​…

By highlighting the vocabulary of sustainable agriculture, and with it the conversation about America’s rapidly evolving food culture, The Lexicon of Sustainability educates, engages and activates people to pay closer attention to how they eat, what they buy and where their responsibility begins for creating a healthier, safer food system in America.

What does history smell like? Over the past decade, a surprising number of historians, preservationists, architects and artists have experimented with scents to record, represent and reconstruct historical buildings, interiors and cities. From a 21st century Rotterdam sweetened with aromas of its river to the foul stench of an early 18th century Paris, join us for an olfactory odyssey through landscapes, both agrarian and urban…

The twentieth century saw both a series of ambitious efforts to reimagine the city of San Francisco and the explosive growth of the Bay Area as a metropolitan region. In Unbuilt San Francisco: The View From Futures Past, the California Historical Society and SPUR will present some of the most revealing episodes in these distinct but related streams of civic discourse through projects that were proposed but never realized.

After receiving much acclaim in San Francisco, Grand Reductions: Ten Diagrams That Shaped City Planning is now on exhibit at SPUR San Jose!