Jay Pitter

Jay Pitter is an award-winning placemaker who leads a binational practice across 25+ North American cities mitigating growing divides. Her practice leads institutional city-building projects focused on public space design and policy, mobility equity, cultural planning, gender responsive design, transformative public engagement and healing fraught sites. In addition to leading these types of projects, Ms. Pitter is a sought-after speaker who has delivered keynotes for organizations such as United Nations Women and the Canadian Urban Transit Association. She is also an Adjunct Urban Planning Professor and Lecturer who has engaged students at Cornell University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Princeton University and numerous other post-secondary institutions including York University where she won the Dean’s Award for her urban planning course, Engaging Black People and Power.

Highlights of Jay Pitter Placemaking’s diverse practice portfolio include acting as the Infrastructure and Equity Lead for the Canada Healthy Communities Initiative—a $31- million national COVID-19 recovery granting program; helping Westbank to preserve intangible cultural heritage and expand engagement during the Honest Ed’s redevelopment project; being retained by United Nation Women to provide gender based mobility equity training to their teams across 35+ countries; leading the (RE)IMAGINING CHEAPSIDE Confederate monument placemaking process in Lexington; and applying a gender-responsive design lens to the redevelopment of Granville Bridge in Vancouver. Ms. Pitter is honoured to have led the development of the Cultural Districts Program Proposal and the Little Jamaica Cultural District Plan for the City of Toronto—two precedent-setting projects within her home city. Her work pertaining to the latter project received a Heritage Toronto Award recognizing Ms. Pitter’s comprehensive and innovative approach connecting public history to the built environment and the Dr. Daniel G. Hill Award from the Ontario Black History Society.

Ms. Pitter’s numerous other accolades include her selection as the John Bousfield Distinguished Visitor in Planning at the University of Toronto, being a Knight Foundation Public Space Fellows Award Finalist and being short-listed for the Margolese National Design for Living Prize. Ms. Pitter was also awarded the Silver Award for Best Personal Essay at the Digital Publishing Awards and was voted one of the “100 Most Influential Urbanists, Past and Present” by Planetizen. Her forthcoming books, Black Public Joy and Where We Live, will be published by McClelland & Stewart and Penguin Random House Canada.