For the past five years an annual Pittsburgh event has celebrated a cutting-edge technology of ecological restoration: goats. Since 2017 an organization called Allegheny GoatScape has utilized goats – “nature’s lawn mowers” – to reduce invasive vegetation and clear away difficult brush in the city’s parks, vacant lots, and other public spaces. This work is … Continue reading Goat Fest 2022
Tag: eastliberty
OpenStreetsPGH July: East End Loop (w/ Video!)
This past weekend featured the final OpenStreets Pittsburgh event of the year. The last route of the summer was a 4.4 mile loop through the East End neighborhoods of East Liberty, Larimer, Homewood, North Point Breeze, and Shadyside. As with the events in May and June, it was another hot and sunny summer day for … Continue reading OpenStreetsPGH July: East End Loop (w/ Video!)
Shots from the Block: Back in the Burgh
After an 18 month residency in Nashville I have returned to Pittsburgh. I had mixed feelings about coming back to the city where I lived for the six years prior to the pandemic. It’s not the move I was hoping to make. I treated my time in Tennessee as a temporary detour, an opportunity to … Continue reading Shots from the Block: Back in the Burgh
The Fair City part 4: Equitable Development & Urban Justice
The following explores how notions of urban aesthetics and urban justice are implicated in contemporary concerns with gentrification and “equitable development.” The term “gentrification” was introduced by sociologist Ruth Glass in her 1964 book London: Aspects of Change. Glass coined the term from the English title “landed gentry,” denoting the land owning social class, to … Continue reading The Fair City part 4: Equitable Development & Urban Justice
City Scenes: shots from around the block
Demolition of the last building in Penn Plaza started late last month. When I stopped by the site this weekend I noticed light poles along the perimeter had been plastered with stickers reading "Homes not Whole Foods." A lot of ambivalence surrounds the development, with many housing activists and other concerned Pittsburghers seeing Whole Food's … Continue reading City Scenes: shots from around the block
Community engagement: setting a standard
I used to live one street over from the Penn Plaza apartments, one of the last affordable housing complexes in Pittsburgh's East Liberty neighborhood. The other low income rental units and high rise housing towers, built as part of sweeping urban renewal projects starting in the 1960s, have all been demolished and replaced with market-rate apartments … Continue reading Community engagement: setting a standard
Pittsburgh: driving transportation innovation
"Ride-sharing" service Uber recently announced a partnership with Carnegie Mellon University to establish a research center in Pittsburgh. As the Post-Gazette reported: Uber, a San Francisco-based ride-sharing company, announced a joint venture with CMU on Monday creating a robotics research lab and technology center at the RIDC Chocolate Factory along 43rd Street that is already … Continue reading Pittsburgh: driving transportation innovation