Billy Fleming is a landscape designer, city planner, and climate activist who currently serves as the Wilks Family Director of the Ian L. McHarg Center at the

University of Pennsylvania School of Design The University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design is the design school of the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia. It offers degrees in architecture, landscape architecture, city and regional planning, historic preservation, ...

. He is the founding director of the Center and is known for fusing

climate justice Climate justice is a concept that addresses the just division, fair sharing, and equitable distribution of the burdens of climate change and its mitigation and responsibilities to deal with climate change. "Justice", "fairness", and "equity" ar ...

and policy work with the

landscape architecture Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor areas, landmarks, and structures to achieve environmental, social-behavioural, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic design and general engineering of various structures for constructio ...

and planning professions. He teaches, writes, lectures, and works on the intersection of climate change and the built environment, often through the policy framework known as the

Green New Deal Green New Deal (GND) proposals call for public policy to address climate change along with achieving other social aims like job creation and reducing economic inequality. The name refers back to the New Deal, a set of social and economic refo ...

. He was one of the key instigators and organizers of the "Green New Deal Superstudio."

Education

Fleming earned his Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from the

University of Arkansas The University of Arkansas (U of A, UArk, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It is the flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System and the largest university in the state. Founded as Arkansas ...

' Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, followed by a Master of Community and Regional Planning from the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

, and a PhD in City and Regional Planning from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universit ...

Career

Formerly, he was a policy adviser in the

White House Domestic Policy Council The Domestic Policy Council (DPC) is the principal forum used by the president of the United States for the consideration of domestic policy matters and senior policymaking, Cabinet, and White House officials. The Council is part of the Office o ...

during the Obama Administration, a co-author of the

Indivisible Indivisible may refer to: Mathematics *Method of indivisibles, the historical name of what is now known as Cavalieri's principle *Absence of divisibility (ring theory) Arts Films * ''Indivisible'' (2016 film), a 2016 Italian film * ''Indivisibl ...

Guide, a co-creator of the Data Refuge Project, and worked briefly as a landscape designer, city planner, and community organizer. He became the founding Wilks Family Director of the McHarg Center in 2017, where he's led a variety of public research projects, events, and coursework dedicated to the Green New Deal and its role in bringing climate justice into the design professions. In 2018, he became a Senior Fellow with Data for Progress where he contributed to the publication of low-carbon public housing policy briefs tied to the “Green New Deal for Public Housing Act” introduced in 2019 by Rep.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (; ; born October 13, 1989), also known by her initials AOC, is an American politician and activist. She has served as the U.S. representative for New York's 14th congressional district since 2019, as a member of ...

and Senator Bernie Sanders. In 2019, he worked with

Frederick Steiner Frederick R. "Fritz" Steiner is an American ecologist who currently serves as the Dean and Paley Professor for the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, having succeeded Marilyn Jordan Taylor in 2016. He is a fellow of the American Socie ...

Richard Weller Richard Weller is an Australian landscape architect and academic. He is Professor and Chair of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, having succeeded James Corner in 2013. Weller also holds the Martin and Margy ...

, and Karen M'Closkey to organize Design With Nature Now to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Ian McHarg's landmark book. The celebration involved a conference, three exhibitions, a book, and a special issue of the journal Socio-Ecological Practice Research. In 2020, his studio teaching won the Award of Excellence in Student Collaboration from the

American Society of Landscape Architects The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) is a professional association for landscape architects in the United States. The ASLA's mission is to advance landscape architecture through advocacy, communication, education, and fellowshi ...

. The studio's work served as the template for the Green New Deal Superstudio collaboration between ASLA, the Landscape Architecture Foundation, the McHarg Center, Columbia, and the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture.

Selected publications

* ''Design With Nature Now'' (with Frederick Steiner, Richard Weller, and Karen M'Closkey, 2019) * ''A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation: Uniting Design, Economics, and Policy'' (with Carolyn Kousky and Alan Berger, 2021) * "Design and the Green New Deal," ''Places Journal'' * "To Rebuild Our Towns and Cities, We Need to Design a Green Stimulus," ''Jacobin Magazine'' * "The Dutch Can't Save Us From Sea-Level Rise," ''CityLab'' * "An Atlas for the Green New Deal," via the McHarg Center *"A Stimulus Plan for the Planet," ''Los Angeles Review of Books'' *"Crises and Contestations: The Promise and Peril of Designing a Green New Deal," ''Architectural Design'' *"Frames and Fictions: Designing a Green New Deal Studio Sequence," ''Journal of Architectural Education''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fleming, Billy Living people American architects American climate activists University of Pennsylvania people Year of birth missing (living people)