Who is a member?
Our members are the local governments of Massachusetts and their elected and appointed leadership.
The Mayors’ Institute on City Design is accepting expressions of interest through Nov. 15 from mayors who want to participate in the fifth year of the institute’s Just City Mayoral Fellowship program in spring 2025.
In partnership with the Just City Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Just City Mayoral Fellowship is an interactive, semester-long program for a small group of mayors and their staffs to tackle injustices in their cities through planning and design interventions. Working with experts in architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, art activism, housing and public policy, mayors and their staff identify how injustices manifest in their cities’ social, economic, and physical infrastructures, and advance their justice-centered goals to address systemic challenges.
For each cohort, the fellowship tailors the program and curriculum to meet the current needs of mayors. This year’s curriculum will explore the meaning of housing communities in the face of a nationwide housing crisis. The curriculum will introduce mayors and their staff to planning and design frameworks — beyond housing supply and demand — that maximize all city resources to support housing needs faced by a broad range of city populations. Each mayor will also explore conditions of injustice in their own community, culminating in a manifesto of action.
The selected fellows will be expected to commit a significant amount of their time between February and April 2025, and there will be assigned readings and homework during the semester.
All U.S. mayors are eligible, and the selected mayors can identify two key staff members to participate in the weekly classes and all of the fellowship’s virtual components. To be considered, mayors must fill out a form and answer three open-ended questions about the opportunities, challenges, and potential projects in their cities.
The institute will also host an informational webinar about the fellowship on Oct. 16 from 1 to 1:30 p.m., for mayors and their staff. (Click here to register.) A recording of the webinar will be posted online.