Toni L. Griffin, professor in practice of Urban Planning and Publics Domain head, is the 2022 recipient of the Edmund N. Bacon Urban Design Award. Given by Philadelphia’s Center for Architecture and Design, the award recognizes professionals who have made significant contributions to the field of urban planning through expert articulation of vision, communication, and improvement in their communities. Griffin joins an impressive legacy of Edmund N. Bacon Urban Design Award recipients, including Theaster Gates (LF ‘11), Denise Scott Brown, and Paul Goldberger.
Griffin was selected as this year’s recipient for her focus on design justice in the built environment. A central question in her work asks, “Would we design better places if we put the values of equality, inclusion, or equity first?” A press release from the Center also acknowledged Griffin’s alignment with “conversations the Center is having about the future of our student design competition and how we can use it to help students become better designers with an ubiquitous lens of equity, inclusion and justice in their approach to urban design, planning and architecture.”
Griffin’s firm, New York-based urbanAC, consults on planning and design revitalization projects with a focus on “historical and current disparities involving race, class, and generation.” Cities Griffin and urbanAC have had their hand in include Chicago, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Memphis, and Detroit.
A graduate of the Loeb Fellowship Class of 1998, Griffin’s work to address, define, and stimulate the just city carry over to her engagements at the GSD. This semester, you can find her teaching “The Gentrification Debates: Perceptions and Realities of Neighborhood Change,” a seminar exploring the causes and effects of gentrification on national and city-specific scales. She is also the founder and director of the Just City Lab, a Harvard-based research center investigating the ways design can have a positive impact on addressing the conditions of injustice in cities.
Griffin will be honored in person and online and will give a talk at the Edmund N. Bacon Urban Design Award ceremony on March 24, 2022, in Philadelphia. Registration for the Zoom and in-person ceremony is required. RSVP and learn more.