CityLab, June 1, 2018: In search of the ‘Just City’
As an urban planning professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, specializing in spatial and racial justice, Griffin is well aware of the historical role of design in perpetuating segregation in U.S. cities. She also knows St. Louis, a city already made infamous by its pioneering of red-lining policies, could not afford to now become a pioneer in green-lining—using a greenway to reinforce the line separating the city. Griffin’s disruptive approach to the Greenway project criteria is consistent with her ideas around designing “just cities”—a concept she’s been developing since she was a Loeb fellow at Harvard in 1997.
The “just city” concept infuses social justice concerns throughout the planning and design process. It’s a style Griffin has been honing over nearly two decades while practicing as an architect, designer, and urban planner, leading major civic projects such as the Washington Nationals Ballpark District in D.C. and the Detroit Future City master plan. She has formed a pedagogy from this as well, drawing on her field experience to become the founding director of the J. Max Bond Center on Design for the Just City at the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York in 2011.
