The Just City Lab investigates the definition of urban justice and the just city and examines how design and planning contribute to conditions of justice and injustice in cities, neighborhoods and the public realm. Professor Toni L. Griffin and her team of research assistants have produced The Just City Index, Just City Indicators for the Public Realm, tools for civic engagement, design case studies and offer masterclasses and workshops on designing for justice.
At the Just City Lab, we ask: Would we design better places if we put the values of equality, inclusion or equity first? If a community articulated what it stood for, what it believed in, what it aspired to be — as a city, as a neighborhood — would it have a better chance of creating and sustaining more healthy, vibrant place with positive, economic, health, civic, cultural and environmental conditions? Imagine that the issues of race, income, education and unemployment inequality, and the resulting segregation, isolation and fear, could be addressed by planning and designing for greater access, agency, ownership, beauty, diversity or empowerment. Now imagine the Just City: the cities, neighborhoods and public spaces that thrive using a value-based approach to urban stabilization, revitalization and transformation. Imagine a set of values that would define a community’s aspiration for the Just City. Imagine we can assign metrics to measure design's impact on justice. Imagine we can use these findings to deploy interventions that minimize conditions of injustice.
