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People • Faculty

Patty Heyda

Patty Heyda is an urban and architectural designer, author, and educator. She studies American cities and design politics, with a focus on mapping, privatization, St. Louis, and spatial justice in weak market cities and transitioning American suburbs. She earned her Master of Architecture with distinction from Harvard University. 

Heyda is the author of “Radical Atlas” (2024), an exploration of the structural contradictions and racial inequalities underlying market-based planning in the American first ring suburb, told through the lens of Ferguson, Missouri. Her other projects detail particularities of what she calls “erasure urbanism” and constructions of race and redevelopment processes that erode urban, democratic, and lived space. Recent work includes: “Food Desert: Feeding the Regional Economic Imaginary” (2023), “The Façade of Redevelopment” (2022), “#ArchSoWhite” (2021), “What About Typology? An Update for Late Capitalism” (2019), “Erasure Urbanism” (2017), “Unbuilding and Rebuilding St. Louis” (2016), “Dispatch from the Moral Border” (2011) and others. Heyda is also the coauthor of “Rebuilding the American City” (2016) with David Gamble, which profiles complexities and creative design strategies 15 U.S. cities navigate as they transform in the public-private context marked by compounding eco-social crises. A follow up, “Rebuilding the American Small Town” is forthcoming (2024). Portions of Heyda’s coauthored “Roman Operating System,” exploring ancient Rome as a capital growth machine, can be found in Mutations and Content (ed. Rem Koolhaas). 

Heyda’s professional experiences span architecture and urban design, in Europe and the U.S. Her built work with Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel has been published in El Croquis, Domus, and other books and periodicals. Heyda’s independent design projects are also widely recognized with awards from the St. Louis AIA, Nashville Civic Design Center, the Zagreb-based ThinkSpace platform, among others. 

In 2022, Heyda received the APA St. Louis Dwight F. Davis Award for Outstanding Planning Advocacy. She has been interviewed on National Public Radio’s “Here and Now,” and for the documentary film “The Kinloch Doc.” Her public facing work appears in The Conversation, Blavity, Fast Company, Salon, The Houston Chronicle, City Lab, and other outlets.

Heyda headshot
Patty Heyda
Professor
Academic programs
Master of Architecture
Master of Urban Design
Bachelor of Science in Architecture
Bachelor of Arts in Architecture
Email
heyda@wustl.edu
Office
Givens 209
Box
1079-131-105

Select Articles, Chapters, and Publications

Ferguson, Missouri, became the epicenter of America’s racial tensions after the 2014 murder of Michael Brown and the protests that followed in its wake.

Though this suburb just outside St. Louis might have seemed like an average midwestern town, the activism that exploded there after Brown’s killing laid bare how longstanding municipal planning policies had led to racial segregation, fragmentation, poverty, and police targeting.

In over one hundred maps, Patty Heyda charts the systemic forces that have defined Ferguson, and the first-ring suburb in America more broadly. Through an in-depth look at the contradictions undergirding city planning and design, it illuminates how tax incentives, housing codes, urban design, policing, philanthropy, and even landscaping often work against the betterment of residents’ lives. At its heart lies a key question: Just who are our cities being built for?

A profound rethinking of what maps can be, Radical Atlas of Ferguson USA will challenge city planners, designers, and everyday citizens to change their perspective of public space.

  • “Rebuilding the American Town”, 2024 (forthcoming), Patty Heyda and David Gramble. Published by Routledge.

  • “Food Desert: Feeding the Regional Economic Imaginary,” in Journal of Architectural Education: Deserts, 2023, v. 77, no. 2. Patty Heyda. Edited by Ersela Kripa, Francesco Marullo, and Stephen Mueller.

  • “The Façade of Redevelopment,” in Common Reader: Material World of Modern Segregation, 2022, vol. 6, no. 1. Patty Heyda. Edited by Iver Bernstein and Heidi Kolk.

  • “The Things We Do to Prop Up Work…” in The Quarantine Atlas, 2022. Patty Heyda. Edited by Laura Bliss and Bloomberg City Lab. Published by Black Dog & Leventhal, New York, Ny.

  • “#ArchSoWhite,” in Journal of Architectural Education: Building Stories, 2021, v. 75, no. 2. Patty Heyda. Edited by Lisa Findley and Marc J Neveu.

  • “Book Review: Urban renewal and school reform in Baltimore: rethinking the 21st century public school,” in Journal of Urban Design, 2020, vol. 25, no. 6. Patty Heyda.

  • “A dismantled post office destroys more than mail service,” in The Conversation, 2020. Patty Heyda.

  • “What About Typology? An Update for Late Capitalism,” in Journal of Architectural Education Online: Design as Scholarship, 2019. Patty Heyda. Edited by Marc Neveu.

  • “Erasure Urbanism,” in Architecture is All Over, 2017. Patty Heyda. Edited by Esther Choi and Marikka Trotter. Published by Columbia University Press, New York, Ny.

  • “Rebuilding the American City: Design and Strategy for the 21st Century Urban Core”, 2016, Patty Heyda and David Gramble. Published by Routledge.

  • “The City as Diagram Agency,” in Urban Infill: Diagrammatically, 2012, vol. 5. Patty Heyda. Edited by Karen Lewis and Terry Schwarz. Published by Kent State University.

  • “Welcome to the Post-Ideological City,” in MONU Magazine on Urbanism, 2011, vol. 15. Patty Heyda. Edited by Bernd Upmeyer. Rotterdam.

  • “Quality Urbanism: We Got What We Wanted But We Lost What We Had,” in Conditions: Politics of Quality Management, 2010, iss. 5/6. Patty Heyda. Oslo.

  • “How to Build a Roman City,” in Mutations, 2001. Patty Heyda, Jennifer Lee, Rami El Samahy, and Hunter Tura. Edited by Armelle Lavalou, Rem Koolhaas, et al. Published by ACTAR.

Select Exhibitions and Presentations

  • “Considering the Urgency of Urban Design in Architectural Education,” Patty Heyda; presented at ACSA Annual Conference 112: Disruptors on the Edge, 2024, Vancouver, Canada.

  • “Small Town Urbanism: Plans, Politics, People,” Patty Heyda and David Gamble; presented at APA National Planning Conference, 2024, online.

  • “Lab for Suburbia: A Rolling Think Tank,” Patty Heyda and Gavin Kroeber; presented at ACSA Annual Conference 110: In Commons, 2022, St. Louis, Mo.

Select Awards and Grants

  • 2024 — Confluence Award Finalist, Washington University in St. Louis

  • 2022 — Dwight F. Davis Award for Outstanding Planning Advocate, American Planning Association St. Louis Metro Section

  • 2021 — Research Grant for “Mobilizing the Middle: A Radical Atlas of Ferguson,” The Divided City funded by the Mellon Foundation, PI.

  • SOM Traveling Fellowship, school nominee, Harvard University

  • AIA Gold Medal, Tulane University

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