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

We recently celebrated the launch of our San Francisco Bay Area office with a happy hour event hosted with SITELAB and BerlinRosen to kick off Urban Land Institute’s Fall Meeting. It was fantastic to connect over the opportunities and challenges shaping the future of cities across the Bay Area and beyond. Thank you to all our clients, collaborators, and friends who joined us for the celebration, and we look forward to a bright future in the Bay!

We caught up with CEO Jeff Hébert and Managing Partner Kate Collignon to talk about HR&A’s new Bay Area office, what makes the region special, and how the firm’s work is shaping what’s next for cities across Northern California and beyond.

Why did HR&A open an office in the Bay Area?

Jeff: As we approach our 50th anniversary in 2026, we’re expanding our presence in California with a new office in San Francisco. Though we’re currently headquartered in New York, our company was founded in California with a decades-long presence in Los Angeles, and this new location builds on years of work across the Bay Area and the country.

Having a physical presence in the cities where we work, with employees who live in the communities they serve, is essential to how we do business.

California has the largest economy in the country and the fourth largest in the world. To serve its communities and clients well, we need to be close to the work. We have strong relationships here, a talented team, and a shared belief in the strength of the Bay Area — a 21-county mega-region.

Kate: This moment is especially meaningful for me since I was born in the East Bay, so I’ve always seen the relationship between Northern California and the national economy. We’ve had the pleasure of working with leaders from every sector in the Bay Area, and their collaboration is what drives progress. Our new office on Market Street in San Francisco puts us at the center of that energy and reflects our commitment to Downtown’s revitalization and the region’s future.

A big part of the equation is also that the Bay Area has long attracted our team members — before and after their time with HR&A. This office expands our ability even further to provide the caliber of talent that our clients expect from us.

You have both worked in cities across the country. What are some of the unique challenges and opportunities in the Bay Area compared to other metro regions?

Jeff: One of my projects early on in my career was in Emeryville, and I spent about a year living and working in the Bay Area, getting to know how cities here really function. I quickly learned that the Bay Area is really a network of places, each with its own history and priorities. That mix creates both complexity and opportunity. It’s a region where collaboration isn’t optional. From county governments and city agencies to nonprofits, community leaders, and Fortune 100 companies, and especially SPUR, progress here depends on bringing people together across boundaries. That’s one of the things I’ve always admired most about this region.

Kate: One of the things that makes working in the Bay Area particularly exciting right now is that it’s driving innovation around a lot of the policy issues we’re grappling with across the country. This region is often the first place to feel the pressures shaping cities everywhere, whether its housing affordability, the impact of tech and AI, climate change, and questions of equity and inclusive growth. It offers incredible livability and economic opportunity, but it also highlights the same challenges that we’re helping cities tackle across the country.

What value can HR&A bring to the Bay Area?

Kate: There are three things I keep hearing from clients about what differentiates HR&A.

1. We can draw on lessons learned from our work in other cities. Beyond our work in the Bay Area and the West Coast, we’ve been working in cities nationwide to find new solutions to some of the most critical topics of our time like economic development, climate change, and housing and homelessness. While there are a lot of innovative strategies in the Bay Area, there are also important best practices to draw on from places across the country.

2. We bring strong capacity across real estate advisory and economic development, but also core competencies beyond that like inclusive governance, the innovation economy, housing policy, digital opportunity, and resilient infrastructure — all incredibly relevant to what’s going on in the region.

3. We can serve as an extension of our clients’ teams at the negotiating table. We’re great at generating market analysis and providing the data that property owners, investors, economists, and cities need to understand how to shape their future. However, we also bring expertise and capacity for helping clients move forward with partners to make that future a reality.

What are your aspirations for the future of this region?

Kate: We’ve had the opportunity to work on some incredible projects in the Bay Area — from work supporting the creation of Diridon Station in San Jose; procuring a facility manager and programming partner for the Transbay Terminal and Salesforce Park; advising on opportunities for office conversion and downtown revitalization in San Francisco; working with the cities of South San Francisco and Hayward to mitigate displacement risks for current residents and businesses as they pursue growth; supporting both UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz in their individual efforts to fuel innovation near their campuses. I want to keep doing even more of this work.

Jeff: I’m excited about the culture of innovation in the Bay Area — a culture that really matches HR&A’s energy. What makes HR&A special is how we combine national expertise, local understanding, and deep knowledge about how the public, private, and philanthropic worlds intersect to shape the future of cities. While we bring that experience to the Bay Area, there are lots of things that happen here that don’t happen anywhere else in the country. I think there’s an opportunity for a really wonderful exchange of ideas.

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.