Billy Fleming is the Wilks Family Director of the Ian L. McHarg Center in the Weitzman School of Design at University of Pennsylvania. He is a senior fellow with Data for Progress, and co-director of the “climate + community project.” His fellowship with Data for Progress has focused on the built environment impacts of climate change, and resulted most prominently in the publication of low-carbon public housing policy briefs tied to the “Green New Deal for Public Housing Act” introduced in 2019.
His writing on climate, disaster, and design has also been published in The Guardian, The Atlantic, CityLab, Dissent Magazine, Houston Chronicle, Jacobin, Places Journal, and Science for the People Magazine, and he’s frequently asked to weigh in on the infrastructure and built environment implications of climate change.
Prior to joining Penn, he worked as a landscape architect, city planner, organizer, and, later, in the Obama Administration’s White House Domestic Policy Council.