On Friday, June 5, 2026, the City Diplomacy Lab and the German Marshall Fund of the United States brought together U.S. mayors and representatives of leading international organizations at Reid Hall for a morning of dialogue on the international engagement of American cities. The meeting served as the closing side event of Urban7 2026, the first U7 International Mayors' Summit to take place since cities were formally recognized as an official G7 Engagement Group.
The conversation was moderated by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi, Founding Director of the City Diplomacy Lab, and brought together a cross‑section of practitioners and institutional leaders across two panels.
Speaking on behalf of their cities were Steve Patterson, Mayor of Athens, Ohio, who led the U.S. Delegation to Urban7 2026; Dilpreet Sidhu, Deputy Mayor for International Affairs of Los Angeles; José "Chito" Vela III, Mayor Pro Tem of Austin; and Elle Bisgaard‑Church, Columbia SIPA alumna and Chief of Staff to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
A second panel drew together senior figures from across the multilateral landscape: Dario Liguti, Director of Energy, Housing and Land Management at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe; Linda Tinio, Coordinator of UNESCO's International Coalition of Inclusive and Sustainable Cities (ICCAR); Stefano Marta, Head of Unit for Smart and Sustainable Cities at the OECD; and Paul Costello, interim Director of GMF Cities.
City leaders argued that international engagement is less a strategic choice than a natural extension of what residents already live: migration histories, diaspora communities, and global supply chains. Sport emerged as an unexpectedly powerful entry point: from Los Angeles's Olympic diplomacy with Paris and Brisbane, to Austin's Formula 1 Grand Prix, to a New York City watch party for the Africa Cup of Nations final that Bisgaard‑Church described as a vivid image of neighborhood‑level civic internationalism. On the institutional side, speakers pointed to concrete tools: UNESCO's youth bootcamp programs, the OECD's partnership with New York City on voluntary local reviews of the SDGs, and GMF Cities' transatlantic CDIA network of city diplomats.
The closing round converged on a single word. Mayor Patterson, returning from Nancy with the freshly adopted Nancy Declaration, said it plainly: solidarity. Bisgaard‑Church extended the thought, arguing that the values underlying city diplomacy — imagination, solidarity, a willingness to push beyond one's own expectations — are precisely what is needed to counter the democratic disengagement driving polarization at home. International engagement, she said, doesn't run parallel to domestic resilience. It models it.
Read more about this event on the City Diplomacy Lab’s website.
