Toni Griffin
Founder
Urban American City
Toni L. Griffin is founder of urbanAC LLC, based in New York, a planning and design management practice that works with public, private and nonprofit partnerships to reimage, reshape and rebuild just cities and communities. The practice designs, leads complex and transformative social and spatial urban revitalization projects rooted in addressing historic and current disparities involving race, class, and generation. Over the past ten years, we have successfully collaborated with several major U.S. cities on the cusp of just social and economic recovery. Recent cities include Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, and St, Louis. www.urbanac.city
Ms. Griffin is also a Professor in Practice of Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she teaches design studios and seminars also rooted in issues of social and spatial justice. She is founder and director of the Just City Lab, an applied research platform that investigates the ways design can have a positive impact on addressing the conditions of injustice in cities. www.designforthejustcity.org
Toni brings her experience and expertise as an architect, practicing at Skidmore Owings & Merrill early in her career, and later as a public official serving in senior planning and community development director roles in Washington, DC and Newark, New Jersey working across the public, private and nonprofit sectors to shape equitable growth and design excellence.
Ms Griffin is the author of multiple articles on design justice, and co-editor of The Just City Essays (2015) and the upcoming publication The Just City Dialogues: Disruptive Design. She has lectured extensively in the US, Netherlands, South Africa, and South America, and between 2016-2020 served as an Obama Presidential appointee to the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts.
Ms. Griffin is also a Professor in Practice of Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she teaches design studios and seminars also rooted in issues of social and spatial justice. She is founder and director of the Just City Lab, an applied research platform that investigates the ways design can have a positive impact on addressing the conditions of injustice in cities. www.designforthejustcity.org
Toni brings her experience and expertise as an architect, practicing at Skidmore Owings & Merrill early in her career, and later as a public official serving in senior planning and community development director roles in Washington, DC and Newark, New Jersey working across the public, private and nonprofit sectors to shape equitable growth and design excellence.
Ms Griffin is the author of multiple articles on design justice, and co-editor of The Just City Essays (2015) and the upcoming publication The Just City Dialogues: Disruptive Design. She has lectured extensively in the US, Netherlands, South Africa, and South America, and between 2016-2020 served as an Obama Presidential appointee to the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts.