Adaptation & Resilience

In 1976, many Americans had given up on cities. HR&A was founded that year as a small California firm analyzing public budgets and grounded in the belief that cities were worth investing in. In the decades since, cities have proved the skeptics wrong, and they have kept us busier than ever. For 50 years, HR&A […]

San Francisco sits along multiple active fault lines, making seismic resilience central to the City’s resilience planning. Financial feasibility is understood as a significant barrier to improving earthquake resilience across San Francisco’s seismically vulnerable concrete buildings. Responding to this challenge, the City and County of San Francisco engaged HR&A to lead the Policy and Financial […]

Adaptation is not only a climate question. It requires finance, design, engineering, and policy to come together around infrastructure investment, land use, housing, and economic development. That is why our climate practice is built as a cross-disciplinary group rather than a specialty bench. Similarly, our decarbonization work charting effective pathways to reducing emissions also requires cross-sector expertise.

HR&A is supporting the Maine Governor's Office of Policy Innovation and the Future to build a proactive, durable funding and financing strategy for climate resilience in Maine. As flooding, sea level rise, and severe storms grow more frequent and costly, this initiative furthers Maine’s leadership in climate resilience and develops an opportunity for strategic, long-term investment to protect its communities, infrastructure, and progress.

Cities don’t have the luxury of treating climate change as a future problem. The decisions being made right now — about buildings, energy systems, coastlines, and infrastructure — will shape whether cities can keep their promises to residents on both resilience and affordability. This Earth Day, we’re reflecting on the work HR&A teams have been […]

HR&A is excited to welcome Drex Owusu to our Board of Directors. Drex is a dynamic leader at the intersection of education, economic development, and civic engagement. His experience aligns with HR&A’s continued growth in Texas and our efforts to deepen the firm’s leadership and impact. Drex’s career reflects a consistent commitment to catalyzing economic […]

We’re proud to welcome three new Partners to HR&A’s leadership: Sarah Solon, Ignacio Montojo, and Erin Lonoff. Each brings a unique perspective and deep expertise that will help shape the future of our firm and the communities we serve. We sat down with each of them to discuss their paths to partnership, the trends they’re […]

With a history of leading transit-oriented development, resilience, and public-private partnership projects, new HR&A Partner Ignacio Montojo sat down with us to discuss America’s infrastructure delivery crisis, the changing landscape of public-private partnerships, and how HR&A bridges the gap between financial models and the complex realities of building large-scale projects. If you had unlimited resources […]

Climate change is rapidly becoming a fiscal crisis for cities. Rising infrastructure costs, strained operating budgets, shifting insurance markets, and growing pressure on debt capacity are converging in ways that most municipal balance sheets are not built to absorb. Addressing this challenge requires significant, sustained investment in adaptation and resilience, often at a scale that […]

Governor Kathy Hochul recently announced $150 million in awards to four regions of the state through the inaugural ACHIEVE (Advancing Collaboration for High-impact Initiatives for Economic Visions & Expansion) Competition to support transformational economic development investments. HR&A — in collaboration with Kyanite Partners, Grain, and PingPong Studio — is proud to have partnered with the […]

HR&A is proud to be an employee-owned, mission-driven company committed to building a robust workforce with the brightest minds in our industry. Our people are dedicated to delivering on our mission to create vital places, build equitable and resilient communities, and improve people’s lives.   Our Summer Analyst Internship Program offers students and early professionals […]

This fall, HR&A hosted a series of trainings and immersive experiences across three of the cities we call home: New York, Washington DC, and Los Angeles. By bringing colleagues together in the places where we live and work, we created space for collaboration, shared learning, and new connections — strengthening the foundation that supports our […]