Next American City and the German Marshall Fund’s Urban and Regional Policy Program are pleased to announce two International Journalism Fellows, Sarah Goodyear and Dayo Olopade, whose writing on comparative urban policy issues will be published as part of the Forefront series.

Goodyear, who has worked as an editor and writer for a wide variety of publications including The Atlantic Cities, Rolling Stone, Grist and Streetsblog, will be reporting on the gated communities of Gurgaon, India. In the face of the Gurgaon’s myriad challenges — open sewage, rampant crime, privatized infrastructure — community activists have filled the needs for local services and even employment. While this city, which gained more than 1 million inhabitants in a few short decades, is seemingly very different than those in the United States, its novel approach to distributed leadership may deliver some insights for American cities teetering on bankruptcy.

Olopade, a recipient of a New America Fellowship and contributor to publications such as The New Republic and The Root, will cover a $24 billion infrastructure mega-project underway in Lamu, Kenya. The development of a deepwater port in Lamu is at once highly controversial, given the site’s proximity to politically unstable Somalia and a terrorist network’s influence in the region, and highly desirable due to its potential ability to unlock new employment and business opportunities for Kenya. The piece will look at how the public and private sector can leverage infrastructure to jumpstart a new form of regionalism that may help to better distribute the area’s population and resources.

Goodyear and Olopade’s articles will be published in late 2012 and early 2013. A third fellowship, focused on comparative policies in the United States and Europe, will be announced in September.

Diana Lind is the former executive director and editor in chief of Next City.