Mayor Jake Day has been selected for the 2022 MICD Just City Mayoral Fellowship, a program of the Mayors’ Institute on City Design (MICD) and the Just City Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Over a series of convenings in Spring 2022, this program will bring together a small group of mayors and city design experts from around the country to directly tackle racial injustices in each of their cities through planning and design interventions.
Launched with an inaugural class in Fall 2020, the new 2022 class of MICD Just City Mayoral Fellows includes Charleston, SC Mayor John J. Tecklenburg; College Park, MD Mayor Patrick L. Wojahn; Duluth, MN Mayor Emily Larson; Madison, WI Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway; Providence, RI Mayor Jorge O. Elorza; Richmond, VA Mayor Levar M. Stoney; Salisbury, MD Mayor Jacob R. Day; and Youngstown, OH Mayor Jamael Tito Brown.
The Mayors’ Institute on City Design, the nation’s preeminent forum for mayors to address city design and development issues, is a leadership initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the United States Conference of Mayors. Since 1986, MICD has helped transform communities through design by preparing mayors to be the chief urban designers of their cities. The Just City Lab is a design lab located within the Harvard Graduate School of Design and led by architect and urban planner Toni L. Griffin. 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.
The 2022 MICD Just City Mayoral Fellowship will help mayors navigate a just and equitable recovery from the pandemic, providing actionable ideas for city leaders rising to meet this moment of change. The program will explore ways to create lasting, transformational impacts from new federal funding streams such as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the American Rescue Plan Act. The Lab’s Just City Index will frame dynamic presentations and dialogues with experts in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, art activism, housing, and public policy. Over the semester-long program, mayors will identify how racial injustices manifest in the social, economic, and physical infrastructures of their cities and develop manifestos of action for their communities.
“It’s a tremendous honor to have been called to serve as a 2022 MICD Just City Mayoral Fellow,” said Mayor Day. “I’m eager to share some of our successes, and to hear what others have done to break racial and socioeconomic barriers in their own communities. In cities and towns across America, inequity is hard-wired into our infrastructure: Lack of access to transportation, lack of access to medical care, food deserts, lower-performing school districts, lack of recreational activities, lack of opportunity. Conscientious, equitable city design is more than a topic for consideration – it is our moral imperative. I offer my thanks to MICD and the Just City Lab for providing this unique forum to discuss these issues, and the impact of the pandemic on our communities.”
Salisbury City staff members will also participate in some of the sessions: Amanda Pollack, Director of Infrastructure & Development, handles Salisbury’s planning, development review, and engineering portfolios; Ron Strickler, Director of Housing & Community Development, handles City’s homelessness, housing, code enforcement and neighborhood relations portfolios.
“Mayors have led our communities through a series of unrelenting challenges over the past two years. With new federal funding streams, we have a unique opportunity for once-in-a-generation change,” says Tom Cochran, CEO and Executive Director of the United States Conference of Mayors. “Mayors are now tasked with uniting their communities around real solutions and making transformational investments. The United States Conference of Mayors is proud to partner with the Just City Lab to help guide mayors through this important chapter of American history.”
“Building on the National Endowment for the Arts’ vision to heal, unite, and lift up communities with compassion and creativity, we are proud and humbled to continue this important collaboration between MICD and the Just City Lab,” said Jennifer Hughes, NEA Director of Design and Creative Placemaking. “This program will take the transformative power of MICD, which illuminates the power of design to tackle complex problems, and apply it to the defining challenge of our time: ensuring equity and justice for everyone.”
Learn more about the host organizations at www.micd.org and www.designforthejustcity.org.
