The Just City Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and the United States Conference of Mayors are pleased to announce the launch of the 2026 Just City Mayoral Fellowship , taking place in a hybrid virtual and in-person format in Spring 2026.
The 2026 Just City Mayoral 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. Over a semester-long program, the Lab’s Just City Index frames dynamic presentations and dialogues with experts in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, art activism, housing, and public policy. Throughout the Fellowship, mayors and their staff identify how injustices manifest in the social, economic, and physical infrastructures of their own cities and develop manifestos of action for their communities. The 2026 cohort in particular will explore reparative development: embedding justice and equity goals within efforts to repair economic disinvestment and restore the cultural identity of neighborhoods through just city design and development strategies.
The 2026 Just City Mayoral Fellows are:
- Broadview, IL Mayor Katrina Thompson
- Columbia, MO Mayor Barbara Buffaloe
- Durham, NC Mayor Leonardo Williams
- Fairbanks, AK Mayor Mindy O’Neall
- Gresham, OR Mayor Travis Stovall
- Moline, IL Mayor Sangeetha Rayapati
- Salem, MA Mayor Dominick Pangallo
- Santa Monica, CA Mayor Caroline Torosis
The Just City Mayoral Fellowship is a program of the United States Conference of Mayors and The Just City Lab, made possible with additional support from the Kresge Foundation
. The United States Conference of Mayors is the official nonpartisan organization of cities with populations of 30,000 or more, with each city represented by its chief elected official, the mayor. The Just City Lab
is a design lab located within the GSD led by Toni L. Griffin, professor in practice of urban planning. The Lab has developed nearly 10 years of publications, case studies, convening tools and exhibitions that examine how design and planning can have a positive impact of addressing the long-standing conditions of social and spatial injustice in cities.
“We are honored to welcome this broad and engaged cohort of mayors to the 2026 Just City Mayoral Fellowship,” said Sarah M. Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture at the GSD. “Now in its sixth year, the Fellowship creates an important opportunity for visionary leaders to engage directly with each other and with the GSD community—students, faculty, staff, alumni, and more—around how design can create more equitable development, and more justice, in their cities.”
“The United States Conference of Mayors is proud to welcome this year’s cohort of eight visionary mayors to the Just City Mayoral Fellowship,” said Tom Cochran, CEO and Executive Director of the United States Conference of Mayors. “This program gives mayors the opportunity to find answers to the fundamental questions that keep them up at night: How can I keep my residents safe? How can I create progress without pushing people out? How can I shape a future where everyone in my city can thrive? The Fellowship’s candid, small-group format and access to national design justice experts has equipped nearly 40 mayors with bold, transformative ideas to build greater opportunity for their communities, and we look forward to continuing this work.”
