Stephen Gray

Stephen Gray is an urban designer, educator, and principal of Grayscale Collaborative, a research and design firm focused on spatial justice and equitable development. He is an Associate Professor of Urban Design and Director of the Urban Design Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Stephen’s research, teaching, and practice examine how race, capital, and infrastructure intersect to shape cities—and are anchored by two core commitments: (1) foregrounding the systems and ideologies of power that have historically and continuously shaped the field of urban design; and (2) developing principles and methods for a practice that not only engages power more critically, but also envisions cities as places where more people can exercise agency over their own futures. His work connects theory to practice, linking design to the political and economic systems that structure urban life, and has been nationally recognized by the AIA and ASLA, professional associations in both architecture and landscape architecture.

Through his practice, Stephen leads and collaborates on community-engaged urban design projects across the country, with particular focus on Boston. His writing and advocacy which are more contextually broad, reject the notion of space as a neutral backdrop to political life, arguing instead that it is actively produced through power-laden social relations—often manifesting as racialized territorial inequality. Whether co-leading World Bank–sponsored research on resilience in the Philippines; co-founding the Global Design Initiative for Refugee Children (GDIRC) to support displaced youth in Lebanon; co-leading the Boston Race and Space project as part of the Harvard Mellon Initiative Urban Intermedia: City, Archive, Narrative; or developing the widely used Community First Toolkit with the Urban Institute—Stephen’s work surfaces embedded power dynamics and advances strategies to expand access, agency, and opportunity for those most often excluded. He writes regularly for public audiences, including op-eds in Next City and The Boston Globe, and is a founding member of Dark Matter University, a decentralized network advancing equity in design education.

Notable academic and professional service includes appointments to the President’s Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery (H&LS); the Legacy of Slavery Memorial Project Committee; the Harvard University Committee on the Arts (HUCA); the Asia Center Council; and the University Design Advisory Pool. He serves on the board of the Emerald Necklace Conservancy and has advised initiatives such as the Just City Mayoral Fellowship and Boston’s Radical Imagination for Racial Justice grant program. Previously, he was Associate Director of the Boston Society of Architects (BSA), co-chaired Boston’s 100 Resilient Cities Resilience Collaborative, and contributed to several Urban Land Institute (ULI) Technical Assistance Panels.

Stephen has held teaching appointments at MIT-DUSP and Northeastern University and holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Cincinnati and a Master of Architecture in Urban Design (MAUD) with distinction from Harvard University, where he received both the Thesis Prize and the Award for Outstanding Leadership in Urban Design.