Justin Garrett Moore, FAICP, is a transdisciplinary designer and urbanist. He serves as the program officer for the Humanities in Place program at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where his work focuses on advancing equity, inclusion, and social justice through place-based initiatives, built environments, cultural heritage projects, digital and ephemeral programs, and commemorative spaces and landscapes. He has extensive experience in architecture, planning, and design—from urban systems, policies, and building projects to grassroots and community-focused planning, design, preservation, public realm, and arts initiatives. He is also the co-founder of Urban Patch, a social enterprise focused on sustainable design and development projects in the United States and Rwanda.
With over fifteen years of public service with the City of New York with work in diverse contexts, Moore has led several urban design and planning projects, including the Greenpoint Williamsburg Waterfront, Hunter’s Point South, and the Brooklyn Cultural District. From 2016 to 2020, he was the executive director of the New York City Public Design Commission, where he led initiatives to address social equity and inclusion and sustainability through built environment design and public processes. His wide-ranging work addresses issues of housing and community development, place and open space design, historic preservation, public art and monuments, and civic engagement. He has lectured internationally at universities, government agencies, and civic and professional organizations on a range of design, urbanism, and policy topics.
Moore holds a Bachelor of Design degree from the University of Florida and Master of Architecture and Master of Science in Urban Design degrees from Columbia University, where he is now an Adjunct Associate Professor of Architecture. He has taught at Morgan State University, Tuskegee University, and the Yale School of Architecture, and has been a member of the Dark Matter University network. His professional affiliations include the American Planning Association, the American Institute of Certified Planners, the National Organization of Minority Architects, and the Urban Design Forum. He is a founding member of the Black urbanist collective BlackSpace and serves on the boards of ioby.org and the Youth Design Center; he has served on advisory boards for Columbia World Projects, the Van Alen Institute, The Museum of Modern Art, and Dumbarton Oaks. In 2021, he was honored with the Award in Architecture of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was elected to the AICP College of Fellows in 2024.