Patty Heyda is a professor of urban design and architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, where she is also a faculty scholar with the Center for Race, Ethnicity and Equity, the Center for the Environment, and the American Culture Studies Program. Her research examines the political economy of architecture, urbanism, and public space in American cities.
Her interdisciplinary work combines mapping and design with planning, policy, and the social sciences to critically reimagine the built environment. Before entering academia, Heyda worked on large-scale projects in Washington, D.C., and Prague with Chan Krieger Associates (Boston) and Pritzker Prize–winning architect Jean Nouvel (Paris). She earned her Master of Architecture with Distinction from Harvard University, where she also taught.
Heyda is the author of Radical Atlas of Ferguson, USA—reviewed in the Los Angeles Review of Books and shortlisted for the national On the Brinck Book Award—and coauthor of Rebuilding the American Town and Rebuilding the American City (with David Gamble, MIT). Her scholarship has been featured in leading journals and platforms, including the Journal of Architectural Education, Journal of Urban Design, Planning Magazine, CityLab, Fast Company, and Architecture Is All Over.
She serves on the founding board of the national Urban Design Academic Council and has contributed to projects such as the St. Louis City Reparations Commission Report. Heyda has been featured on NPR, St. Louis Public Radio, and in The Kinloch Doc film. In 2022, she received the American Planning Association–St. Louis Dwight F. Davis Award for Outstanding Planning Advocacy.
