Urban Planning investigates the factors that have resulted in the irrevocable transformation of North American cities through various stages of growth, decline, and revival, while demonstrating how such conditions offer fertile ground for artistic inquiry today. Featured artworks trace the impact of critical socioeconomic developments and showcase the ongoing attempts at renewal in various urban centers. Urban Planning presents artworks by over twenty international artists, ranging from painting, sculpture, photography, and video to a new site-responsive installation produced for a public space in the Museum's vicinity. The exhibition seeks to contextualize issues St. Louis residents face within a larger narrative that spans half a century and all of North America, from Vancouver high-rises and Detroit projects to the barrios of Mexico City and the monuments of Passaic, New Jersey. Creating adjacencies between the universal and particular, Urban Planning situates lived experience within the legacies of modernism, postwar industrialization, and contemporary city planning.

Kelly Shindler joined the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) in 2011, where she has organized solo exhibitions by Tala Madani, Arlene Shechet, Lari Pittman, Sheila Hicks, Anthony McCall, the Propeller Group, Rosa Barba, Mika Taanila, Geta Bratescu, Takeshi Murata, Kevin Jerome Everson, and Josh Faught, among many others. Shindler is the curator of the major mid-career survey, Dear Nemesis: Nicole Eisenman, 1993–2013, which traveled from CAM to the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia (2014) and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (2015), and garnered a Best Monographic Museum Show Award from the AICA/USA. Prior to joining CAM, Shindler was an independent curator, organizing exhibitions such as Chicago-Scope: The Films of Tom Palazzolo, 1967–1976 at the Art Institute of Chicago, and others for art spaces and festivals worldwide. From 2003 to 2011, Shindler worked at Art21, as producer for the PBS documentary series Art:21–Art in the Twenty-First Century. She holds dual master's degrees in modern art hstory, theory, and criticism and arts administration and policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Founded in 1980, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) presents, supports, and celebrates the art of our time. Our mission is to create meaningful engagement with the most relevant and innovative art being made today.