Jay Pitter, MES, is an award-winning public space expert and author leading a binational practice spanning more than 25 cities. She creates joyful public spaces that foster belonging, prosperity, and cultural memory through cultural planning, policy frameworks, and storytelling. An adjunct urban planning professor, she has lectured at Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, and numerous other institutions, and was the John Bousfield Distinguished Visitor in Planning at the University of Toronto. Her accolades include being named one of Planetizen’s 100 Most Influential Urbanists, being shortlisted for the Margolese National Design for Living Prize, and developing the City of Toronto’s first-ever Cultural District Plan, which received the Heritage Toronto Award and Dr. Daniel G. Hill Award. Her latest book, Black Public Joy (Penguin Random House, 2026), was featured on the Forbes Summer Reading List and longlisted for the Toronto Book Awards.
In this keynote, Jay Pitter will present her Public Joy Framework, positioning public joy not simply as a feeling, but as civic, cultural, and spatial infrastructure. Drawing on her practice and research, she will explore what might change if public joy became an intentional consideration within planning practice. Together with participants, she will also apply her Public Joy Framework to local case studies. What new prompts might shape community engagement? How might we expand the metrics used to assess the impact of a place? And what becomes possible when we move beyond thinking about communities as user groups and instead engage them as co-stewards? Through these propositions, Jay will invite planners to consider how public joy might expand both the possibilities and impact of their practice.
