Summarized Bio
Jay Pitter, MES, is an award-winning placemaker and author creating joyful public spaces that foster belonging, prosperity, and cultural memory. She advances this work through cultural planning, policy frameworks, and storytelling—bridging rigor and collective imagination to advance public joy as essential urban infrastructure and a human right. As an adjunct urban planning professor, she has engaged students at Cornell, Princeton, and MIT, advancing new theories of public joy that connect practice, policy, and pedagogy. Her two forthcoming books will be published by Penguin Random House, including Black Public Joy. Beyond her professional roles, Jay is passionate about cultivating everyday joy and inspiring communities to be stewards of one another’s joy—nurturing more harmonious and hopeful cities during these divided times.
Named one of Planetizen’s 100 Most Influential Urbanists, Past and Present
Let's Advance Public Joy Together.
Contact Me
→ Reach out for public space design, cultural planning, policy-related work, and speaking engagements.
Discover My Work
→ Explore projects, advocacy, and academia — the full scope of my practice.
Explore Black Public Joy
→ Learn about my forthcoming book and the growing movement it inspires.
→ Host a Black Public Joy Reading Circle
Learn About Public Joy
→ Understand the framework, principles, and vision guiding this work.
Pathways to Public Joy — Eva’s Initiatives for Homeless Youth
Project Highlight
Pathways to Public Joy engages unhoused and underhoused youth in reclaiming public spaces as sites of curiosity, creativity, and delight. Through carefully facilitated experiences — from botanical garden visits to art-making and DJ workshops — the project transforms public space trauma into joyful spatial entitlement and community belonging.
"Jay Pitter is the most original and iconoclastic speaker on cities and urban design I’ve encountered in a long time. In a moving, articulate voice that weaves narrative and analysis, she always manages to shatter preconceptions and provide hopeful but practical ideas for meaningful change."
— Doug Saunders, Columnist & Award-Winning author (Arrival City)
Speaking & Shaping Public Conversations
Jay Pitter is a sought-after keynote speaker, lecturer, and public thinker who transforms how people understand public spaces and cities more broadly. Drawing on decades of precedent-setting practice, she delivers signature participatory keynotes that move beyond monologues — sharing her expertise while inviting every attendee to contribute their own. She has been engaged by client collaborators such as UN Women, municipal governments, cultural institutions, and leading universities. Whether addressing an auditorium of transportation planners, a room of policymakers, or a public audience in a park beneath an open sky, her talks invite people to move beyond simply solving problems to embracing the possibility and poetry of place.