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 to directly tackle injustices in each of their cities through planning and design interventions.
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.
The 2026 Just City Mayoral Fellowship is an intensive, 11-week commitment plus extended advising. The 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:
- January 2026: Team preparation and travel planning
- February: 1.5-day opening workshop in Cambridge, MA (in-person, mayors only)
- Six required 90-minute classes (virtual)
- Readings and homework (self-paced)
- April: 2.5-day project workshop in Cambridge, MA (in-person, mayors + city staff)
- Summer 2026: One-on-one extended advising and graduate student internships in each city
The call for expressions of interest is currently open through Monday, November 17, 2025.
Submit an expression of interest
Read more about the Just City Mayoral Fellowship
Watch recording: 2026 Just City Mayoral Fellowship informational webinarÂ