Stephen F. Gray

A multi-racial Midwesterner practicing and teaching urban design on the East Coast, Stephen Gray leverages his personal and professional background to make meaningful contributions in culturally dynamic and sometimes contentious urban settings. His interests lie at the intersection of social justice, resilience, and urban design. 

Stephen’s work engages the relationship between race, class, and the production of space, interrogates design’s contribution to and complicity with structural and infrastructural racism, and develops methodologies and interventions that address inequality, exclusion, social injustice, and precarity at the scales of infrastructures, communities, metropolitans, and the globe. Stephen’s approach to tackling complex urban challenges involves developing inclusive processes, facilitating organizational growth and transformation, and co-creating more inclusive built environments.

As the founder of Grayscale Collaborative and Director of the Urban Design Program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, Stephen has collaborated on or led over 25 community-engaged design projects and high-profile research initiatives, receiving national recognition from the American Institute of Architects in 2015 and 2020. He has also held notable appointments, including the Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture Racial Imagination for Racial Justice Committee, Emerald Necklace Conservancy Board of Directors, Associate Director on the Board of the Boston Society of Architects (BSA), co-chairman of Boston’s 100 Resilient Cities Resilience Collaborative for “Resilient Boston: An Equitable and Connected City”, Harvard University’s Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery, Legacy of Slavery Memorial Project Committee, as well as being tapped to serve on several Urban Land Institute (ULI) advisory panels.