This spring, the Just City Lab hosted eight mayors, along with members of their staff and a curated resource team of expert practitioners, for the three-day closing workshop of the 2026 Just City Mayoral Fellowship. The workshop took place April 15–17 at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD).
The 2026 Just City Mayoral Fellows who participated are:
- Mayor Katrina Thompson, Broadview, IL
- Mayor Barbara Buffaloe, Columbia, MO
- Mayor Leonardo Williams, Durham, NC
- Mayor Mindy O’Neall, Fairbanks, AK
- Mayor Travis Stovall, Gresham, OR
- Mayor Sangeetha Rayapati, Moline, IL
- Mayor Dominick Pangallo, Salem, MA
- Mayor Caroline Torosis, Santa Monica, CA
The sixth edition of this pioneering fellowship program focused 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 the semester-long program, the Lab’s Just City Index framed dynamic presentations and dialogues with experts in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, art activism, housing, and public policy. The 2026 cohort in particular explored 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.
At the closing workshop in April, mayors and their staff presented the work they had done over the course of the semester on their priority projects, identifying how injustices manifest in the social, economic, and physical infrastructures of their own cities and developing manifestos of action for their communities.
The course curators and resource team discussion and input informed next steps, as well as project scopes for the inaugural cohort of the 2026 Just City Summer Fellowship, a competitive 10-week summer program for GSD students supporting the eight 2026 Just City Mayoral Fellowship cities.
The Just City Summer Fellows and the respective cities with which they have been paired are:
- Montréale Jones (MArch I ’27), Broadview, IL
- Javier Zarazua (MDes ’27), Columbia, MO
- Xiluva Mbungela (MDes ’26), Durham, NC
- Shane Wooley (MUP ’27), Fairbanks, AK
- MatÃas Griffiths (MAUD ’27), Gresham, OR
- Milena Almetica (MUP ’27), Moline, IL
- Zhaoyi (Max) Wang (MDes ’27), Salem, MA
- Nisreen Tarbell (MAUD ’27), Santa Monica, CA
This year’s Just City Summer Fellows will deploy a variety of research and implementation skills to contribute to and help make progress on the mayors’ priority projects, which were developed as part of the semester-long Just City Mayoral Fellowship curriculum.
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, made possible with additional support from the Kresge Foundation.
