Asian City Cooling Fellowship

Shaping Real-world City Climate Governance

Cities across Asia are heating fast, threatening public health, straining infrastructure, and deepening social inequities. As urban heat islands intensify, traditional public administration education struggles to equip leaders with the specialized, interdisciplinary skills needed to respond effectively.

The City Cooling Fellowship bridges this critical gap by combining cutting-edge climate science, governance capacity-building, and practical policy development to empower the next generation of urban climate leaders.

What Is the Fellowship?

This 12-month applied learning program equips city officials, MPH students, urban planners, researchers, and NGO leaders with the tools and strategies to design and implement comprehensive urban cooling solutions. Working in cross-sectoral city-based teams, fellows develop actionable City Cooling Roadmaps aligned with their city's unique climate vulnerabilities and development priorities, creating policy infrastructure designed for implementation from 2026 to 2050.

The fellowship represents MPHplus's commitment to expanding access to specialized training in complex, emerging fields where current  MPH programs face resource constraints. Through this program, public leaders gain practical expertise in climate adaptation governance—one of the most critical competencies for 21st-century public service. This Fellowship may be a credit or non-credit program, depending on the local university hubs hosting it. Local university partners are encouraged to activate a Climate Action Labs chapter to provide a more robust platform for university-city collaboration. 

A Multi-Sector Approach to Systemic Change

Each participating city convenes a cohort scaled to its population—approximately one fellow per 10,000 residents. This ratio ensures sufficient diversity and reach without overwhelming local coordination capacity:

• Cities of up to 300,000: ~30 fellows

• Cities of 500,000: ~50 fellows

• Cities of 1,000,000: ~100 fellows

Each cohort represents diverse sectors and perspectives to address the full complexity of urban heat challenges:

City government leaders work alongside university researchers who provide technical rigor; community organizers ensure equity considerations remain central; private sector professionals bring implementation expertise and financing innovation; public health officials connect cooling interventions to health outcomes; urban designers and planners translate science into spatial interventions.

Fellows are organized into intervention teams of 3-5 people, each focused on a specific cooling strategy or geographic zone within the city. These small teams allow for nimble prototyping and deep stakeholder relationships, while the larger cohort provides collective intelligence, peer learning, and city-wide coordination. A cohort of 50 fellows might include 10-15 intervention teams working on complementary strategies—from nature-based solutions in one district to cool roof policies in another to heat refuge networks in vulnerable neighborhoods.

This multi-layered structure transforms the fellowship from a training program into a city-wide coalition for climate action—building the relationships, shared language, and collaborative capacity essential for implementing systemic change that extends far beyond the fellowship year. At scale, this creates a critical mass of climate-literate leaders distributed across all sectors of urban governance.

The Role of Local University Partners

Each participating city requires 1-3 local universities to serve as city-level research hubs, providing:

• Physical infrastructure: Meeting spaces, computer labs, and research facilities for fellows

• Faculty expertise: Technical mentorship in climate science, urban planning, public health, and policy analysis

• Academic credentialing: Options for graduate credit and professional certificates

• Research support: Data collection infrastructure, GIS mapping capabilities, and analytical tools

• Student engagement: MPH and graduate students who serve as fellows while contributing to faculty research agendas

• Long-term institutional memory: Universities outlast political cycles, ensuring cooling strategies persist beyond individual administrations

For smaller cities, a single university partner may suffice; larger cities benefit from 2-3 university partners representing different geographic areas and disciplinary strengths (e.g., a technical university for engineering solutions, a public health school for vulnerability assessment, and a policy school for governance frameworks).

These university partnerships transform the fellowship from a one-year program into enduring city-university collaboration for climate resilience—with universities continuing to support implementation, research, and leadership development long after the initial cohort completes the fellowship.

Learning Through Real-World Impact

The fellowship integrates four powerful pedagogies:

Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA): Fellows learn Harvard Kennedy School's proven methodology for building governance capacity and driving policy innovation in complex, uncertain environments—skills transferable across all governance challenges.

AI-Augmented Learning: Fellows utilize artificial intelligence tools to accelerate heat risk analysis, identify cooling intervention patterns from global case studies, synthesize research literature, draft policy frameworks, and model implementation scenarios. This AI augmentation allows teams to work at scale and sophistication typically requiring far larger resources—making it feasible to coordinate cohorts of 20-150 fellows effectively.

Collective Intelligence Strategies: Drawing on cutting-edge research in how groups solve complex problems, the fellowship deliberately structures collaboration to harness the cognitive diversity within each city cohort. Through structured deliberation methods, prediction markets, and collaborative sense-making tools, teams generate solutions more innovative and robust than any individual expert could produce alone. These methods are specifically designed to work at scale—larger, more diverse groups often outperform smaller teams when properly orchestrated.

Applied Research and Co-Design: Rather than theoretical exercises, fellows conduct actual thermal assessments, analyze heat vulnerability data, and engage directly with affected communities to ground their roadmaps in lived reality. Each 3-5 person intervention team takes ownership of specific prototypes, while learning is shared across all teams.

Program Structure

Foundation and Assessment (January-February 2026): Intensive introduction to urban heat science, risk mapping methodologies, and governance frameworks. The full city cohort completes baseline thermal assessments and identifies priority intervention zones. Fellows are organized into 3-5 person intervention teams, each selecting a specific cooling strategy or neighborhood to focus on. University partners provide research infrastructure and faculty mentorship. Fellows are introduced to AI tools for climate data analysis and collective intelligence frameworks for team collaboration.

PDIA Capacity Building (March 2026): Deep dive into Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation methodology. Intervention teams diagnose root causes of heat vulnerability in their focus areas, map stakeholder landscapes, and design rapid prototyping cycles. AI tools support pattern recognition across global cooling interventions; collective intelligence processes ensure learning flows between intervention teams while maintaining team autonomy.

Prototyping Phase (April-July 2026): Each intervention team applies PDIA principles to design and test rapid interventions. Through short iterative cycles, teams prototype cooling solutions—from tactical urbanism projects to policy pilots—generating real-world learning before summer heat peaks. University partners provide research support and faculty guidance. AI augmentation accelerates iteration cycles by rapidly analyzing prototype results. Regular cohort-wide sessions use collective intelligence methods to share learnings across all intervention teams.

Scaling and Strategy Development (August-October 2026): Drawing lessons from summer prototypes, intervention teams develop their portions of the comprehensive city roadmap. Teams engage in structured design sessions with technical mentors and policy advisors, translating proof-of-concept projects into scalable strategies. University partners facilitate integration of all intervention strategies into a coherent citywide plan. AI tools model long-term climate scenarios and financing pathways; collective intelligence processes synthesize insights across the regional cohort.

Community Engagement and Refinement (November 2026): Teams conduct deeper stakeholder consultations, refine intervention designs based on community feedback, and build political coalitions. Each intervention team engages its specific stakeholders while the cohort maintains coordination through collective intelligence processes.

Policy Dialogue and Launch (December 2026): Fellows present the integrated City Cooling Roadmap to key decision-makers, including city councils, national agencies, and potential funders. Intervention teams present their specific components while demonstrating how all strategies work together as a comprehensive system. University partners commit to ongoing research support and leadership development beyond the fellowship year.

Who Should Apply

For Cities

Cities ready to commit to:

• Assembling a cohort scaled to population (approximately 1 fellow per 10,000 residents)

• Partnering with 1-3 local universities as research hubs

• Supporting fellows' prototyping work during the critical April-July implementation phase

• Providing data access and stakeholder engagement opportunities

For Individual Fellows

Each participating city should recruit a diverse cohort including:

• City and municipal government officials (planning, public works, environment, health departments)

• MPH students and academic researchers from local universities

• Urban planners, designers, and built environment professionals

• Public health officials and community health workers

• NGO leaders and civil society advocates, especially those working with heat-vulnerable populations

• Private sector professionals in real estate, construction, utilities, and urban development

• Community organizers representing informal settlements and marginalized neighborhoods

• Media and communications professionals to amplify cooling strategies

Cities are encouraged to intentionally include voices historically excluded from climate planning processes, ensuring cooling interventions address rather than exacerbate existing inequities. The collective intelligence approach works best when teams maximize cognitive diversity—bringing together different professional backgrounds, lived experiences, and ways of knowing. Larger cities benefit from recruiting fellows across all districts and neighborhoods to ensure geographic representation.

For Universities

Universities positioned to:

• Provide physical infrastructure and research support

• Contribute faculty expertise in relevant disciplines

• Support academic credentialing pathways

• Commit to long-term partnership beyond the initial fellowship year

What You'll Gain

Tangible Deliverables: A comprehensive City Cooling Roadmap co-created by intervention teams across your city, heat risk dataset and analysis, documented prototype results from summer implementation, stakeholder-tailored policy brief, public engagement strategy, and regional policy presentation.

Team-Based Experience: Work in a focused 3-5 person intervention team while benefiting from collective intelligence of the full city cohort—developing both deep expertise in your specific cooling strategy and broad understanding of systemic urban climate governance.

21st Century Skills: Beyond climate expertise, fellows develop proficiency in AI-augmented policy analysis, collective intelligence facilitation, and cross-sectoral collaboration—capabilities increasingly essential for public sector leadership in any domain.

Professional Development: Technical mentorship from university faculty and global experts, access to global toolkits and research networks, peer learning across sectors within your city and across the regional fellowship cohort, and support in developing funding proposals.

Academic Recognition: Professional certificate in Urban Climate Governance, with options for graduate-level credit through partner MPH programs (subject to institutional agreements).

Institutional Capacity: Your city builds a trained, networked coalition of climate leaders distributed across all sectors and neighborhoods who can sustain implementation long after the fellowship concludes—transforming cooling from a technical project into an enduring civic movement. Cities with larger cohorts develop deeper bench strength for climate adaptation leadership.

Co-Convenors and Partners

The fellowship is delivered through partnership between Climate Action Labs, the Asian School of Governance, local universities, and city governments. This collaborative model ensures hyper-local relevance while connecting fellows to regional and global knowledge networks, including UN agencies advancing SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and SDG 13 (Climate Action).

Join the Movement

Asian cities need leaders who can translate climate science into effective governance, mobilize diverse stakeholders around shared goals, and implement evidence-based solutions at scale. The MPHplus City Cooling Fellowship prepares you to be that leader—while building the cross-sectoral coalitions your city needs to stay cool in a warming world.

By integrating AI augmentation and collective intelligence strategies with proven climate science and governance methodologies, this fellowship doesn't just prepare you for the climate challenges of today—it equips you with the collaborative and technological capabilities to lead adaptive, resilient institutions through whatever challenges tomorrow brings.

Application opens: Dec. 1, 2025
Program begins: January 2026
Cohort size: 20-150 fellows per participating city (approximately 1 fellow per 10,000 city residents)
Team structure: 3-5 fellows per intervention team
University partners: 1-3 local universities per city as research hubs
Contact: CityCooling@climateactionlabs.com