New City Critics is a two-year fellowship program to empower new, fearless, and diverse voices to challenge the ways we understand, design, and develop our cities. The fellowship will support the development of critics from underrepresented backgrounds through guest lectures and workshops, research guidance, mentorship opportunities, networking, and production of new critical projects in Urban Omnibus and other leading publications. Through public programs and other channels, fellows will expand the public’s understanding of the value of design and planning and rebalance the design community’s focus towards building equitable cities. New City Critics Fellowship is founded in honor of Michael Sorkin: a fierce critic, brilliant urbanist, and significant mentor.

Mariana Mogilevich is editor in chief of Urban Omnibus, a publication of The Architectural League of New York, where she has edited the special series “The Location of Justice and Cleaning Up?” and has commissioned over 200 editorial features from artists, designers, scholars, and writers. Mogilevich’s writing has appeared in publications including The Guardian, Public Books, Praxis, Future Anterior, and in edited volumes and exhibition catalogues. Her book The Invention of Public Space: Designing for Inclusion in Lindsay’s New York (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) received a 2021 JB Jackson Book Prize from the Foundation for Landscape Studies. She has taught at New York University, Princeton University, Pratt Institute, and Cornell, and was an inaugural Princeton Mellon Fellow in Architecture, Urbanism and the Humanities at Princeton University. Her research and public projects have received support from the Canadian Center for Architecture, the Graham Foundation, the New Jersey Council on the Humanities, and the New York State Council on the Arts, among others. She has developed exhibitions and other public projects on the urban environment for the National Parks Service, the New-York Historical Society, and Place Matters. Mariana received a bachelor’s in literature from Yale University and a doctorate in the history of architecture and urbanism from Harvard University.

Daniel McPhee is executive director of the Urban Design Forum, an independent membership organization confronting the defining issues facing New York City’s built environment. McPhee oversees the Fellowship alongside Rosalie Genevro, executive director of The Architectural League. During his tenure, McPhee has built the Urban Design Forum to become a network of 600 design, development, and planning professionals. He created the Forefront Fellowship to cultivate diverse and emerging leaders in the built environment. He has also led inquiries into significant challenges facing New York City, including the rise of housing precarity, the maintenance of midcentury public works, and the advent of new mobility technologies. He has edited several of the organization’s publications, including Maintaining: Public Works in the Next New York (Urban Design Forum, 2019); Onward: Mobility in the Next New York (Urban Design Forum, 2018); and Next New York: 40 Ideas for the Future of the Built Environment (Urban Design Forum, 2014).

Architectural historian and urbanist Rosalie Genevro is executive director of The Architectural League. Genevro oversees the Fellowship alongside Daniel McPhee, executive director of Urban Design Forum. The Architectural League’s public programs, publications, exhibitions, and research projects present the work of the world’s leading architects as well as emerging talents, and investigate and propose approaches to important issues in the built environment. Genevro has led initiatives at the League addressing a variety of building types, including housing, schools, and libraries, as well as climate change. She has served as a peer reviewer for the New York City Departments of Design and Construction, City Planning, Cultural Affairs, and Parks and Recreation, and as a critic and juror for many architecture school juries and prize competitions, including the inaugural juries of the Jane Jacobs award of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Women in Architecture Awards of Architectural Record magazine.

Guillermo Gomez is program director of the Urban Design Forum. He joined the Forum in 2018 after completing a master's of arts in theories of urban practice at Parsons School of Design. Since joining, Gomez has led inquiries into the future of New York City's evolving economy, planning process, and mobility networks. He also led the Care for Hudson Square competition in 2020. He has organized and participated in conferences and exhibitions in New York City, Dallas, Berlin, Miami, Panama, and Edinburgh. He cofounded Port to Port in 2015, a nomadic curatorial initiative interested in the history of labor movements, infrastructure, and trade in global port cities.

Urban Design Forum is a membership organization that mobilizes civic leaders to confront the defining issues facing New York City’s built environment.

The Architectural League of New York, founded January 18, 1881 by a group of young architects, nurtures excellence in architecture, design, and urbanism, and stimulates thinking, debate, and action on the critical design and building issues of our time. As a vital, independent forum for architecture and its allied disciplines, the League helps create a more beautiful, vibrant, innovative, and sustainable future.