Toni L. Griffin, professor in practice of urban planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and founding director of the Just City Lab, has been named the recipient of the 2026 ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development. The Urban Land Institute (ULI) announced the award on October 7, citing Griffin’s long record of advancing equity-centered planning and design, and her ability to translate ideals of justice into practical tools and development outcomes for cities.
Established in 2000 through a gift from the Miller Nichols Living Trust and the Miller Nichols Charitable Foundation to the ULI Foundation, the prize is among the most prestigious honors in the land use and development field.
“Toni was selected for her decades of work advancing equity, long before it became a part of the planning conversation,” said Mitchell J. Silver, chair of the prize jury. “Through the Just City Index and the Just City Mayoral Fellowship, she has given city leaders practical tools to turn values into development outcomes.”
At the GSD, Griffin’s Just City Lab has developed the Just City Index and the Just City Mayoral Fellowship, tools that help cities evaluate and implement equity-focused planning and public realm strategies. The fellowship, offered in partnership with the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, brings an intensive curriculum in planning, design, and public policy to participating mayors working to address systemic racial and spatial injustice in their cities.
Griffin is also the founder of urbanAC, a planning and design practice that guides cities through complex, multisector processes to address historic disparities across race, class, and culture. Her work has supported equitable recovery and reinvestment in Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Memphis, and Philadelphia. As project director of the Detroit Works Project’s long-term planning effort, she led the 24-month process that produced Detroit Future City, a strategic framework for the city’s land use, economic growth, city systems, and neighborhoods.
“Justice is not separate from good development; it is an essential consideration of equitable development that benefits us all, but especially our most vulnerable places and people,” Griffin said. “Cities that measure both the values and outcomes that matter and set cross-sector tables for inclusive visioning and decision-making can truly create more just cities.”
Griffin, who recently explained her vision of the just city in an interview with Urban Land, has served as a strategic advisor to major philanthropic organizations and as a presidential appointee to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. She is a co-editor of The Just City Essays and a recipient of the Edmund N. Bacon Urban Design Award.
In addition to Silver, the 2026 jury included Christopher Calott (UC Berkeley), Kim Diamond (KD Shae Development), Winka Dubbeldam (SCI-Arc), Onay Payne (Center for Sustainable Energy), Avinash Rajagopal (Metropolis), and Lisa Switkin (Field Operations).
Past laureates include Jeanne Gang, Kajima Professor in Practice at the GSD. Recent winners are world-renowned figures such as urbanist Carol Coletta, environmental justice pioneer Robert Bullard, planner Jonathan Rose, former Washington, D.C., mayor Anthony Williams, and transportation entrepreneur Robin Chase.
