Benjamin Grant is an independent city planner, urban designer, and curator in the
San Francisco Bay Area. His areas of emphasis include conceptual urban design,
transportation and land use integration, and targeted client and stakeholder
communications. He has developed exhibitions on a range of urban issues, including
a major survey of local history for the new SPUR Urban Center in San Francisco.
He has contributed to a range of planning and urban design projects, both public and
private, including a conceptual design for Fordham Plaza in the Bronx, and, as a
consultant to Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, a Vision Plan for a major portion of
central Beijing, China. Other consulting clients include the San Jose Redevelopment
Agency, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and the County of Alameda.
San Francisco Bay Area. His areas of emphasis include conceptual urban design,
transportation and land use integration, and targeted client and stakeholder
communications. He has developed exhibitions on a range of urban issues, including
a major survey of local history for the new SPUR Urban Center in San Francisco.
He has contributed to a range of planning and urban design projects, both public and
private, including a conceptual design for Fordham Plaza in the Bronx, and, as a
consultant to Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, a Vision Plan for a major portion of
central Beijing, China. Other consulting clients include the San Jose Redevelopment
Agency, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and the County of Alameda.
With the San Francisco design firm SMWM, Mr. Grant contributed to a series of planning and design
efforts in Downtown San Jose, California, most importantly the Greater Downtown San Jose Strategy for
Development, the city’s ten-to-twenty year vision plan. He was also a principal author of the VTA
Manual of Best Practices for Integrating Transportation and Land Use.
He received national recognition in the competition to design New York City’s High Line, which drew
over seven hundred submissions. He is co-founder and director of city|space, a nonprofit cultural
institution exploring cities and urbanism through fine art, film, design, and cultural landscape
research. Since 2006, he has been a lecturer and studio instructor in the graduate program in Urban
and Regional Planning at San Jose State University.