Johanna Lovecchio is the Associate Director of the Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes. She specializes in urban climate adaptation planning and public infrastructure project design that is forward-looking and conscious of community-based and ecosystem resilience. At CRCL, she manages the Resilience Accelerator, which delivers strategic support, technical design and climate systems research, and intensive local workshops to advance resilience project design and implementation in partnership with local governments around the world. Johanna recently led a year-long engagement with Tel Aviv-Yafo – “Urban Heat, Equity, Resilience, and the Future of the Public Realm” – which assessed city-wide vulnerability to heat impacts and generated community-based urban design concepts to be piloted by the municipality. Today, she is supporting the launch of the Resilience Design Corps, which supports local organizations in New York City with design assistance for public realm projects that aid in COVID response and recovery as well as adapt to extreme urban heat. Current partners in the Red Hook Initiative and WeACT for Environmental Justice.
Prior to joining CRCL, Johanna worked as a Senior Analyst and Program Manager at HR&A Advisors, where she scaled resilience capacity-building models, including the National Disaster Resilience Competition and Global Resilience Academy programs, developed city- and district-wide climate adaptation plans, such as the Lower Manhattan Climate Resilience Study, and supported the design and evaluation of transformational urban resilience infrastructure investments. As City Planner at the New York City Department of City Planning, she researched planning opportunities in post-industrial, waterfront communities impacted by Hurricane Sandy.
Johanna holds a Masters of Urban Planning from the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service and dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Environmental Studies and Metropolitan Studies from the New York University College of Arts and Sciences.