HR&A Advisors was honored to have Director Eri Furusawa speak at Japan’s Academy for Gender Parity, joining leaders committed to ensuring that women and people with marginalized identities have a meaningful voice in shaping government decisions that impact them. Eri shared HR&A’s approach to inclusive community engagement and our work supporting newly elected mayors as they set priorities for their first term.

She highlighted lessons from Reclaim Gwinnett Place Mall, where HR&A helped translate community voices into an Equitable Redevelopment Plan, and from All In Allegheny, where we supported Allegheny County’s first female County Executive and led the largest community engagement effort in county history to shape her first-term Action Plan on topics including housing, economic development, childcare, and health.

We are grateful for the positive feedback from participants—including elected officials, nonprofit leaders, political campaign experts, and academics—following the session:

“こんな取り組みがあるのか！とひたすら驚きました。本当に勉強になりました。”
“I was amazed to learn that these initiatives exist. It was truly eye-opening.”  

“身近な自治体で次の総合計画の策定時期のところがいくつかあり、住民参加のあり方について考える時間となりました。”
“Several municipalities near me are about to begin developing comprehensive plans, so this session was helpful for me to reflect on how resident engagement should be designed to inform these efforts.”  

“ジェンダー平等とまちづくりというテーマは本当にうれしかったです。なぜならば、ジェンダーと多様性から最も遠いテーマがまちづくり、都市計画、建築、土木の分野です。このセミナーを何度もやってほしいです、本当に素晴らしかったです。”
“I was truly glad to see gender equality and city-making discussed together. These fields—urban planning, architecture, civil engineering—are often farthest from discussions regarding gender and diversity. I hope you offer this seminar many more times; it was outstanding.” 

Learn more about Japan’s Academy for Gender Parity.

Translation:

日本で若手女性のリーダーシップを養成されているパリテアカデミー様によるセミナー「ジェンダー・公平性の視点から考えるまちづくり―アメリカ地方自治体における政策立案の現場から」に弊社ディレクターの古澤えりが登壇させていただきました。古澤は、HR&A が全米各地で取り組むインクルーシブな住民参加プロセスや、新しく就任される女性・マイノリティの首長さんの重点政策づくりを支援するアプローチについて紹介しました。取り上げた事例には、住民の声を「公平な再開発計画（Equitable Redevelopment Plan）」へと結びつけた Reclaim Gwinnett Place Mall、そして大規模の住民参加を通じて、就任したてのサラ・イナモラート県知事のアクションプランを策定した All In Allegheny が含まれます。

オンラインでは９３名の方にお申込みいただき、会場では２０名の方に参加していただきました。パリテアカデミーの皆様、貴重な機会をどうもありがとうございました。パリテアカデミー様の活動はこちらからご覧ください 

Financial inclusion—access to high-quality, low-cost, user-friendly financial services—is a fundamental building block of economic stability. Yet today, 62 million Americans are unbanked or underbanked, a figure equivalent to twice the population of Texas. The consequences are significant: lack of access to traditional banking often forces households to rely on expensive or predatory financial services, costing American families an estimated $22 billion each year and limiting their ability to build savings, manage emergencies, and plan for the future.

After more than a decade of conducting banking access studies in cities and states across the country, HR&A is proud to launch Unbanked America, a first-of-its-kind, publicly accessible digital platform that brings together national, state, and demographic data on financial inclusion. This new resource makes it possible for policymakers, practitioners, community leaders, and residents to explore banking access with clarity and precision—no specialized tools or expertise required.

Unbanked America allows users to examine how every state compares on unbanked and underbanked rates, track trends over time, and understand how financial exclusion relates to household status, race, ethnicity, and citizenship. Through an interactive map, longitudinal data, and accessible storytelling, the platform highlights both persistent inequities and areas of progress. For example, states like Mississippi continue to be hotspots for financial exclusion, while others have seen meaningful improvements over the last decade.

Built on data from reliable national sources, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Unbanked America simplifies complex datasets into a unified, easy-to-use interface. For the first time, information that was previously scattered across multiple sources is available in a single place—free and open to the public.

The stakes could not be higher. At a moment of growing economic uncertainty, helping Americans make the most of their money is both urgent and essential. Unbanked America equips communities with the insight needed to identify barriers, shape solutions, and advance policies that strengthen financial resilience.

Explore the platform and learn what the data reveals about your community.

Sacramento State is advancing plans for a multi-use campus in the heart of downtown Sacramento, proposing student housing for 1,000 to 2,000 upperclassmen and graduate students alongside academic and commercial space. The project draws inspiration from successful models such as Arizona State University’s downtown Phoenix campus, which opened in 2006 to address both enrollment growth and downtown revitalization. 

In this interview with @PBS KVIE, Managing Partner Kate Collignon points to lessons from other downtown campuses: strategic university investment can simultaneously elevate a school’s visibility and help reshape a city’s urban core. This approach to downtown activation through institutional investment represents a promising path forward for cities seeking to reimagine their urban cores in an evolving economic landscape. 

This conversation echoes the growing national interest in university-driven downtown revitalization and aligns with the work HR&A is leading across the West from our new San Francisco Bay Area office. As we shared in our recent office launch announcement, the region is at the forefront of innovation around the very issues reshaping cities everywhere  

We’re excited to see Sacramento explore what could become a catalyst for its next chapter. 

Read the full PBS KVIE article here.  

Rural healthcare in America is at a pivotal moment. Earlier this year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services launched the multibillion-dollar Rural Health Transformation Program — one of the most significant federal investments in rural care delivery in decades. In a new Route Fifty op-ed, Principal Shawn Daugherty argues that its success depends on something often overlooked: reliable, affordable high-speed broadband.

Connectivity is now fundamental to care delivery. Without it, rural patients and providers cannot access electronic health records, participate in telehealth, or use remote monitoring tools, limiting the very innovations the program is designed to advance.

Shawn underscores that broadband access and digital literacy are essential determinants of health, and that investments in digital infrastructure must be integrated with rural healthcare strategy from the start. She points to proven models, including statewide digital equity plans and community-based digital navigator programs, that demonstrate how coordinated approaches can expand access and improve outcomes.

Read Shawn’s full op-ed here.

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 work with communities nationwide. Through workshops, project-based sessions, and conversations with local partners, participants deepened their understanding of the cities we serve and the challenges we’re helping our clients navigate.

In each city, we hosted two events:

HR&A U

HR&A U is designed to create meaningful opportunities for HR&A team members to learn, grow, and build connections that will last throughout their careers. This year, we hosted Analysts for two days of engaging dialogue, practical skills development, and real-world project applications.

City Connect

One thing that connects everyone at HR&A is our passion for cities. We stepped out of the office to engage with the places where we work — learning from local partners, sharing meals at beloved cafes and restaurants, and exploring programs and places that are making a positive impact for surrounding communities.

We’re proud to invest in the growth of our people and the collaborative culture that drives HR&A’s impact. Thank you to the clients, collaborators, and local partners who contributed their expertise, shared their stories, and exchanged ideas with us!

Los Angeles

Washington DC

New York

HR&A Advisors and our partner Needs Map Global organized a tour in Madrid, Spain, on behalf of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) for a delegation from the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality (AMM). The visit is part of HR&A’s ongoing Land Value Capture (LVC) Opportunities Study for EBRD and AMM, as AMM plans to expand its metro network over the next decade with EBRD’s financial and technical support. 

At HR&A, we believe that cities thrive when public investment and private development work in concert to deliver lasting public benefit. Our work on land value capture brings this principle to life—helping local governments design financing and policy tools that make major infrastructure investments both financially viable and socially equitable.

It was fantastic to see how this is taking shape in Madrid. Our tour focused on how Madrid integrates transit investment, urban regeneration, and land value capture through flagship initiatives such as:

• • • • Madrid Calle 30 & Madrid Río Park: A transformative project that buried a 10 km section of the M-30 ring road to create a linear park and unlock adjacent redevelopment opportunities.
      • Madrid Nuevo Norte: A long-term rail yard redevelopment anchored by a regional mobility hub, demonstrating how public leadership and private delivery can generate district-scale value creation.
      • MetroSur (Line 12): A circumferential metro line connecting multiple southern municipalities, catalyzing station-area development and expanding access to jobs and services.

     

    Through these visits, the delegation observed how well-designed public investments can unlock surrounding land value and how fit-for-purpose delivery models—such as Spain’s Junta de Compensación, a legal corporate entity charged with executing urban planning intitiatives—align public and private incentives by organizing landowners to finance and deliver infrastructure in exchange for development rights.
    

    These insights now inform the next phase of our work: identifying the most effective LVC tools and projecting potential revenues to support urban regeneration in three AMM-selected pilot areas along planned metro corridors. 

     

    We extend our sincere thanks to our hosts and colleagues in Madrid for their time and generosity: Ayuntamiento de Madrid, Comunidad de Madrid, Crea Madrid Nuevo Norte, Metro de Madrid, and TYPSA. We look forward to translating these lessons into action in Ankara. 

     

As US cities grapple with the effects of climate change, they’re also facing growing housing affordability challenges. Decarbonizing existing buildings lies at the heart of these dual crises, but in large cities like New York, there are significant barriers we need to address to make decarbonization possible.  

The only practical way to decarbonize existing building stock is through significant investments, which are expensive and risk increasing occupancy costs. To add an additional layer of complexity, funding for these investments is limited.  

One of our favorite things to do at HR&A is to roll up our sleeves alongside the smartest people working to address issues facing cities and turn our good ideas into workable solutions. We recently hosted a salon-style conversation in our New York Office about this topic and developed a few solutions to move the needle: 

1. Partner for Regulatory Innovation: Although local and regional resources are limited, we cannot wait for new policy directions from Washington. Removing local regulatory barriers is the most robust, plausible, short-term response. We still need to consider the actual risks that decarbonization technologies present, especially in the context of other risks routinely accepted or “grandfathered” by regulators. Simultaneously, we must lay the foundation for a longer-term strategy at the state and federal levels. 
2. Frame Investments around Improving Quality of Life: There is a strong need for explicit connections between investments in decarbonization and investments in housing quality. For example, investing in heat pumps improves the quality of life for tenants by increasing their control over heating and cooling while also lowering carbon emissions. This type of investment creates opportunities for pooling funds and batching work for greater impact. The pitch to policy makers, funders, and residents is focused on comfort, health, and equity, not climate mitigation. 
3. Focus on Technology: There are opportunities to focus on technology as a way to speed deployment, reduce construction costs, and expand impact. For example, there are products coming to market that enable faster installations and minimize costs since they don’t require specialized equipment or labor. Technology shifts will continue making products better (in terms of greater efficiency and lower cost) and are also creating new opportunities to make this industry more accessible to a wider range of workers.

While funding challenges remain a significant barrier, there are additional tools in a city’s toolkit that can help streamline the process for decarbonization efforts and make the solutions more financially feasible for building owners. We look forward to continuing the conversation and exploring other ways we can move the climate needle in New York and beyond.  

If you’re interested in exploring this topic further, we encourage you to read a new report — Decarbonizing NYC Co-ops: A Local Law 97 Compliance Roadmap — the result of a ULI Technical Assistance Panel chaired by HR&A Partner Jonathan Meyers and other industry leaders. The report was recently featured in Crain’s New York Business and Smart Cities Dive.  

By Sharon Carney 

The federal Opportunity Zones (OZ) incentive, first established in 2017 as part of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, was extended and revised in The One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025. As a result, next year, governors will nominate the next round of census tracts that will be eligible to receive OZ investment, shaping where private capital can flow for the following decade. Many of these governors will seek input from local officials. As states and local government consider which census tracts to nominate as Opportunity Zones, they should keep several factors in mind.

First, understand what this tool is, and what it isn’t. 

• • It’s a by-right tax incentive, not a community development program. At its most basic, OZ is a tax incentive for investors with capital gains to invest in places with low household income or high poverty. Those investments can support qualifying real estate projects or operating businesses, but to get the tax benefit, there is no requirement that investments yield community benefits, such as new amenities or housing that existing residents can afford, or for investors to seek approval from state or local governments. In short – OZ is a tool, and the user have a lot of discretion about how to use it. While data on OZ investments made to date are limited, we can infer from recent Urban Institute research that these investments are largely producing multifamily rental housing and mixed-use real estate projects.
  • It’s competitive. The incentive gives investors tax relief on profits they have already made, as well as profits that they make via their OZ investment. Thus, profit-oriented investors will seek opportunities to maximize their earnings when choosing where to make their OZ investment. While some taxpayers with capital gains are mission-driven or socially conscious, the majority favor projects in places well positioned to appreciate in value with the least risk. In short, just because a place needs investment does not mean that an OZ designation will be powerful enough to attract those resources, as investors have options across the country to consider. 

   

  So… how should States prioritize census tract nominations?  

• Balance need and opportunity. First, review socioeconomic and market data, plans that articulate local development priorities, and zoning to determine whether there is a need for the incentive and enough opportunity to use it. For example, does the area need what this tool typically delivers (mixed-use real estate market-rate or workforce housing), and does current local zoning allow it? A  census tract zoned for single family and parks will likely provide limited potential for incentive utilization. Do projects that need equity investment in the area need help securing capital? Data review should go beyond baseline socioeconomic indicators; consider real estate absorption and what’s already in the development pipeline, underutilized parcels, share of households facing rent burdens, and availability of existing incentives at tract level. 

   

  Local stakeholder input is also key — not just local government, but community development organizations, neighborhood representatives, locally active developers and landowners, and potential project sponsors. These perspectives can inform the questions about both need and opportunities.
  This post from the District of Columbia, where I led local implementation of Opportunity Zones 1.0, provides some examples of how to approach new designations. While this approach anticipated that OZs would be more useful than  they turned out to be for operating businesses, many of the principles described still apply. (Check out the 43-minute mark of this recent webinar from Economic Innovation Group if you prefer description by video, along with other great nomination advice.)

   

  Identify opportunities to advance public economic development projects. As more state and local governments face budget pressures due to the shifting federal funding landscape, public assets like land are increasingly important resources for economic development. OZ is a tool that can help unlock their potential. If I was a governor (or mayor for that matter) I would want to know the redevelopment potential of every parcel in my portfolio, alongside that of other parcels owned by public entities. The OZ incentive is a good opportunity to advance public-private partnerships, as projects involving donated public land can provide attractive opportunities for appreciation while enabling government leaders to ensure community benefits and transparency – particularly when paired with other local, state or federal incentives. Take stock of your project pipeline, but also parcels that could be in the pipeline in the next 5-10 years, now that the OZ incentive is permanent. HR&A has helped states, local governments, transit agencies, school districts and other public landowners across the country develop comprehensive asset inventories, evaluate parcels for buildability, and develop transaction and financing strategies that yield new affordable homes, community-serving amenities and tax revenue-generating uses.

   

  Create a policy environment that supports investment without displacement. One of the most important things states can do in anticipation of the OZ nomination process is cultivate a policy environment in which development is informed by and benefits local communities — regardless of whether OZ capital is involved. Many policy experts and practitioners [fairly] criticize the OZ policy for its lack of community benefit requirements and transparency, and its potential to spur displacement. Many of these concerns can be applicable to private development more generally, and state/local governments have tools to mitigate such risks. For example: 

  • • • Inclusionary zoning policies can ensure that homes for people earning lower incomes are included in private developments;
      • Right-of-first-refusal and opportunity to purchase policies can give mission-driven entities opportunities to purchase before properties become available to the wider market; 
      • Property tax relief can protect income-restricted homeowners, tenants or commercial tenants from increasing property taxes; 
      • Updates to comprehensive/master plans — which guide all development — should require community engagement and happen at least every 10 years in most cases; 
      • Development approval processes can incorporate publicized opportunities for local resident input; 
      • Local government can build a culture of data-driven and regular outreach and communication to raise awareness of available resources to residents who may be most vulnerable to changes resulting from investment.  

  Every community is unique and will need to weigh what is legally feasible and what the market will sustain. But every governor should be asking municipalities how development in their jurisdiction is informed by community priorities and consider State action to require it — including making such a strategy a requirement for Census tract nominations. 

   

  Don’t Miss the Opportunity 
  While OZ may not achieve every policy objective, it is the federal government’s most significant effort to direct capital to distressed areas, and state and local leaders shouldn’t skip the chance to think strategically about census tract nominations. Don’t miss the chance to refine this economic development tool for maximum local benefit..  

   

  
  This post describes ideas Sharon originally shared in Urban Institute’s Opportunity Zones webinar in October 2025. For the full panel discussion, please visit the site to learn more.