The Just City Mayoral Fellowship is a program of the United States Conference of Mayors and the Just City Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in partnership with the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, and with support from The Kresge Foundation. This unique and highly interactive program brings together a small group of mayors and their staff to directly tackle injustices in each of their cities through planning and design interventions. Now in its sixth year, the 2026 MICD Just City Mayoral Fellowship will follow a hybrid in-person and virtual format between February and April of 2026, with extended advising dispatched to each mayor’s city in May through September of 2026.
This year’s Fellowship will focus on moving local projects forward in a time of constant change and uncertainty — specifically, how cities can maintain a vision of equity, address injustice, and advance the design and development of more just cities while responding to shifting resources, capacities, and constraints.
Through a combination of virtual learning and in-person convenings at Harvard, the Just City Mayoral Fellowship takes a cohort of eight mayors and their staff through a semester of dynamic presentations and dialogues with experts in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, art activism, housing, and public policy. After the semester, each mayor may continue to advance their priority project over the next several months with personalized consultation from a team of leading experts and graduate student interns.
Interested mayors may submit an expression of interest form through Monday, November 17, 2025 to be considered for this program.
The expression of interest form is designed to be an easy lift for mayors: simply fill out your contact info and answer three open-ended questions about your administration’s values, goals, and relevant ongoing projects. More guidelines and details can be found at micd.org/jcmf.
Read more about the 2026 Fellowship
Register for informational webinar (10/16)
Submit an Expression of Interest (Due 11/17)