Cities

More than just home to half of the world’s population, cities are engines of economic growth, drivers of design, and centers of public health progress.

Metro news

Advancing progress in cities around the globe

Harvard's Bloomberg Center for Cities is providing cities-focused opportunities for collaboration while also strengthening hundreds of local governments and their leadership on a global scale.

Learn more about the center

Helping cities improve people’s daily lives

By working with mayors, training new leaders, and leading research, Harvard Kennedy School is helping cities to improve the daily lives of citizens.

Learn more from the Kennedy School

Award-winning urban design

The Grand Paris Express, which comprises four new metro lines, 200 kilometers of new track, and 68 new stations, was celebrated with an exhibition at the Graduate School of Design.

What can be done to stem the tide of destabilization?

The answer may lie in the world’s cities, says Rawi Abdelal, professor of international management.

Learn more from Harvard Business School

How the pandemic transformed urban America

If local leaders do things right, Harvard Law alumni mayors say, cities can come back from the pandemic stronger than ever before.

Fighting back against climate change, block by block

From rural Zambia to urban Colorado, community leaders are deploying technology to reduce emerging health risks.

A tale of three cities

Harvard Kennedy School students an alumni are making a difference in three global urban hubs.

Learn more about these efforts

Our urbanists

Sara Arman

Graduate School of Design alum Sara Arman promotes health equity through community organizing and urban planning.

Learn more about her work

Ben Green

Ben Green, an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center, is researching how cities can be both technologically advanced and socially just.

Learn more about his book

Jorrit de Jong

Jorrit de Jong, faculty director of the Bloomberg Center for Cities, has led the collaboration between Harvard and urban leaders in the United States and around the world.

Learn more about his vision

Juan Reynoso

Alum Juan Reynoso pursued a joint Master in Public Health and Urban Planning, bridging the research for those interconnected worlds.

Learn more about his studies

Bruno Carvalho

As professor of romance languages and literatures, Bruno Carvalho explores cities as lived and imagined spaces.

Learn more about his research

Emily Romero Gonzalez

Emily Romero Gonzalez’s Presidential City of Boston Fellowship in 2021 included a mayoral transition, COVID-19 challenges, and a public health and housing crisis.

Learn more about her fellowship

The future of cities

A parking garage with plants growing on it

Podcasts, galleries, and articles

The future of the American city

Harvard Graduate School of Design affiliates discuss possible futures for how and where we will live.

Remote work

Will people still move to where the jobs are?

Reduce, reuse, recycle

Can Mexico City lead the conversation on how urban wastewater can benefit rural crops?

An abstract drawing of epidemiological soils showing piles of garbage.

Big Apple big data

How can New York City resolve health disparities with data?

Climate-ready cities

How can American cities prepare for an increasingly destructive climate?

Making cities more just

The case for restitutional medicine

Kansas City officials are looking to use reparations to redress structural racism and boost community health outcomes.

Learn more about Kansas City

The Just City Lab

The Harvard Graduate School of Design's Just City Lab investigates how design and planning contribute to conditions of justice and injustice in cities, neighborhoods, and the public realm.

Learn more about the lab

The role of the activist architect

Experts from MIT and Harvard Graduate School of Design came together to examine how architecture and design can strengthen democracies.

Learn more about the panel discussion

Can community land trusts stop gentrification?

The success in protecting El Caño de Martin Peña in San Juan, Puerto Rico story could help formalizing other informal settlements around the world.

Helping cities address food insecurity

Harvard Kennedy School researchers examined Chelsea Eats, a cash assistance program that supported residents of Chelsea, Massachusetts, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Learn more about the program

Helping out at home

Harvard works with the cities of Cambridge and Boston to create and preserve thousands of affordable housing units as well as to support efforts to eliminate homelessness.

Learn more about this initiative

Building to advance equity

Harvard Graduate School of Design students imagine equitable possibilities for a soon-to-be-developed plot of land in Boston.

Learn more about the urban design studio

Design interventions to address racial injustice

The Just City Mayoral Fellowship brought mayors together for a discussion on how design and planning interventions can promote racial and infrastructural justice.

Learn more about the panel discussion

Street by street

Cities and city maps have changed dramatically over the last 500 years. Thanks to the Harvard Libraries, you can explore maps of urban design and urban planning for cities around the world, from the 16th century to the present.