Goat Fest 2022

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 honored each summer at Goat Fest, a community event organized by the volunteer group Friends of South Side Park.

This was not only my first Goat Fest but also my first time visiting South Side Park. The park is located just a ways up the hill from me in the neighborhood of Arlington. Arlington is above South Side Flats and at the edge of South Side Slopes.

When I arrived mid-afternoon on Saturday the area was buzzing with activity, with visitors and vendors crowded across Arlington Baseball Field.

I was totally blown away by South Side Park itself. I had no idea that there was such a large and lush park so close to where I live.

Goat Fest was held on the same day as this summer’s final Open Streets event, and the park offered a perspective where I could look out over the East End neighborhoods that I had rode through earlier that morning.

It was also possible to catch glimpses of iconic downtown skyscrapers through the trees.

The goat’s efforts are concentrated in an area of the park called Jurassic Valley. Placards placed along the footpaths provided information on the goat’s work and the park itself.

Of course the stars of the show for most visitors were the goats themselves. A penned area near the park entrance allowed guests to view and pet the animals.

Further into the park visitors could encounter the working goats engaged in their labor of consuming unwanted vegetation.

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 cycling. I think this was the hilliest route so far and it offered a lot of variety in the topography and built features of the different neighborhoods.

My favorite part of this route was the Homewood sections, which is the neighborhood that I’ve spent the least time in out of those on the Loop.

I took the opportunity to stray away from the route and explore some of the public art and architecture in the area.

In a bit of serendipitous synchronicity I came across the Holy Rosary Church. I had just learned about the existence of this church last week while doing some research and was already planning an expedition to seek it out.

This is one of three churches that architect Ralph Adams Cram designed in Pittsburgh (there is a fourth nearby in Greensburg), along with East Liberty Presbyterian aka the Cathedral of Hope in East Liberty. So this East End Loop route ended up being a bit of a Cram Jam.

Cram supposedly considered the East Liberty cathedral (pictured below, also along the OpenStreets route) his masterpiece and “most profound spiritual experience” of his life.

To commemorate this final OpenStreets of the season (as well as my completion of the hat trick with this summer’s events) I also made my first foray into cycling videography. I felt inspired by all the Terry Barensten riding content I’ve been binging lately, but rather than splurging on a GoPro I decided to experiment with just my phone and a handlebar-mounted holder.

I had wanted to shoot the whole thing in a properly cinematic 16:9 aspect ratio but the possible configurations of phone and holder didn’t work out (except for some footage looking down over the front wheel and street which I used to bookend the video). So I opted for a Kubrickian or Errol Morris-inspired 3:3 frame. Anyway, I edited together a compilation of raw footage from the ride and slapped on some explanatory place-marking titles in iMovie. The onboard audio caught a lot of my huffing and puffing up the hills, but I don’t think there’s too much of my swearing or muttering about saddle sores in these clips.

City Scenes: Cycling to East Liberty, Oakland, and back again

Ever since my roommate got his new road bike a couple weeks ago he’s been tearing up the road and trails. He rode 12 miles out to the town of Duquesne this week just because he had the afternoon free. And he’s now completely switched from commuting via public transit to cycling. I had been pleased with my modest outings after arriving in South Side this summer, and especially just enjoying going out on the river trail just for the hell of it. But now my friend has a fancier (and faster) bike, he’s putting in significantly more miles in the saddle, and he’s thrown down the gauntlet regarding daily commuting via bike. So for the past two weeks he’s been asking me nearly every day if I’m going to ride into campus with him, and I’ve replied that I don’t feel up to it yet, that I still don’t feel confident riding in traffic, that I want to build my stamina up. But this past Sunday I decided to finally bite the bullet: when he asked if I wanted to ride into Oakland, I said “OK.”

We rode down Carson and crossed over the river on the Hot Metal Bridge. We went through Panther Hollow into Oakland but my friend wanted to get breakfast first, so we transitioned onto Ellsworth and traveled through Shadyside into East Liberty. East Liberty–and in particular the Highland/Centre nexus–remains one of the significant neighborhoods for my experience of Pittsburgh. Not only as a major hub when I lived in Friendship and Bloomfield, but also through my research in urban change, and all the transformations I’ve seen and studied in and around East Liberty in the past seven years. As we locked up our bikes I expressed relief that Patron was still there. It’s not the greatest restaurant, not the greatest Mexican food I’ve had, but it is truly one of my comfort spots in the city. There was a time I went so often that the wait staff recognized me, and would even ask where I had been if I missed a week. It was my go-to location for both celebrating good times and getting through bad times. It was where I went after my dissertation defense, and one of the first places I went this summer when I came back to Pittsburgh.

My roommate and I were both gobsmacked at the scale of the development going up at the former Penn Plaza location in East Liberty. It is massive: totally out of proportion with the existing neighborhood. Our destination was another marker of change since I had last lived in the city: Square Cafe, which took over the location previously occupied by the stalwart local restaurant Spoon.

It was a beautiful Fall day, clear and cool. We had to wait out front for nearly half an hour before getting a table and the rays we were soaking up had me wishing I had brought sunscreen. It was my first time to Square, although I had patronized the former restaurant. We were seated by a window with a view of our bikes locked up across the street. Overall I was super impressed by the Square menu, and although I was faced with a lot of good options I decided to stick with the Fall vibes and ordered some of their seasonal specials: pumpkin walnut pancakes and a Jack-o-lantern latte.

The streets in the East End neighborhoods were mostly easygoing on this Sunday morning. The most excitement involved coming upon a car accident at Ellsworth and Aiken: two cars had collided in the intersection with one ending up rolled over on its side, the horn persistently blaring. Soon we were at the base of the Cathedral of Learning. Bigelow Boulevard between Forbes and Schenley drive was blocked off for Pitt’s Fall Fest; as we locked our bikes to the rack we heard the soundchecks coming from the temporary stage.

I spent most of the afternoon working in my office and I assumed that my adventure for the day was mostly finished. But my friend got a wild hair to go see the Riverhounds game that evening, and suggested that we might as well just ride down to the stadium after crossing back over to the South Side. So that’s what we did.

This was my first time cycling to a sporting event, although this summer I did walk to Highmark Stadium as well as to PNC Park for the first time. It was a great capper to a beautiful autumn day; a Goodyear blimp drifted overhead amongst cotton ball clouds, and the downtown skyline glimmered with the fading final rays of daylight.

After the game it was nice to avoid all the chaos of the parking lot and the lines of traffic as cars headed for the exits. We took the river trail east to go home; it was my first time riding on the trail after dark, because it is unlit. I followed my friend because he has bike lights and I don’t. It was sort of exhilarating: in the darkness of the evening, exacerbated by the overgrowth and trees lining the trail, the only thing I could see clearly was my friend’s silhouette against the small cone of path and trees illuminated by his bike lamp. I pedaled hard to keep close as that was my only hope of getting my bearings amongst the tangle and murk. We made good time through the shadow and dusk until we hit the train tracks at 18th st and were delayed by the passing of a CSX Coke Express freight. All-in-all a rather welcome expenditure of energy.

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 take stock and reorient myself. I gave substantial consideration to where I’ve been, where I’m at, and what direction I want to go in the future. I worked as hard as I could to gain some traction and build a foundation for forward movement. The results I hoped for failed to materialize, and in many areas of my life I felt I was spinning my wheels more than ever.

I’ve always had an ambivalent relationship with the notion of a hometown. Growing up I had difficulty responding to the question “Where are you from?” The implied pinning-down of origins was not as simple as the question seemed to presume. My parents moved to a new city two weeks after my birth, so the place where I was born was unfamiliar to me. My family moved again the summer after I finished elementary school. Unlike many of my childhood friends I didn’t have the experience of growing up with grandparents or other relatives living in the immediate vicinity, or a strong sense of hometown rooted in emplaced community relationships and memories that endured change over time. This early experience of uprootedness also instilled in me an association with geographical movement and personal progress. Subsequent life events further cemented this connection between physical relocation and the milestones of one’s personal journey. Moving to a new city after college provided an ersatz semblance of progression in lieu of the meaningful employment or career opportunities that eluded me after graduation. And that’s what moving to Pittsburgh for graduate school represented to me seven years ago: an exciting new chapter and evidence of forward progression. But most importantly it was always understood to be a temporary home. Pittsburgh was a place of transition, a stepping stone on my way to bigger and better things, with a built-in time limit established by the intermediate goal of completing the degree.

So now, seven years later, moving back to Pittsburgh felt like backsliding, a tangible manifestation of my failure to make meaningful progression in my life. For a while I resigned myself to rejecting any possibility of coming back to the city, treating a potential return trip as a line in the sand that I would refuse to cross. But I ultimately decided to view the return through the lens of the “upward spirals” model of personal progression rather than the “endless cycles” prism of total stagnation. When I entered Western Pennsylvania last week, for the first time in a year, the Appalachian environs evoked a fond familiarity. I didn’t want to find myself back in Pittsburgh but I’m grateful for the opportunity that’s been offered to me, and the city feels more like home than any other place I know.

As an intermediary concession to my migratory impulses I decided to settle in a part of town I haven’t lived in before. My previous Pittsburgh residences were all in East End neighborhoods. I’m now living across the river in the South Side flats. The neighborhood has a distinct and dynamic vibe. Yes, there’s the noisy nightlife scene that tends to keep more mild individuals (like myself) in quieter neighborhoods. But there’s also an abundance of fantastic architecture and street art. I may be most excited about the easy access to the Three Rivers Heritage Trail. In my first week here I’ve been on the trail several times walking, running, and cycling. Aside from getting to explore a new neighborhood there’s some exciting things happening in the city including a new mayoral administration and interesting policy initiatives. I’ve also been assessing how the city has changed during the past year and a half. A saddening number of local businesses shuttered during the pandemic, and the ongoing redevelopments in the East Liberty area seem to have continued unabated. So here’s to new beginnings, second chances, upward spirals, and the resolution of unfinished business.

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 refer to the displacement of working class residents by the influx of middle class residents into London neighborhoods. Since the original publication of Glass’ book, the term “gentrification” has been used extensively to refer to patterns of urbanization typically characterized by neighborhood reinvestment and demographic change. Despite these common elements in application, gentrification has persisted as a hazily defined and often contested term. Lance Freeman, for instance, defines gentrification as “the process by which decline and disinvestments in inner-city neighborhoods are reversed.” Eric Clark advocates a broader definition that understands the root causes of gentrification as the commodification of space, polarized power relations, and “a dominance of vision over sight.” Wyly and Hammel have considered the legacy of Glass’ linguistic invention, wondering how discourses of urban development over the last four decades would’ve proceeded without “gentrification” as an operative term. They write:

Without the word gentrification, it is hard to imagine what other term could have served as such a powerful rallying-cry for the many thousands of meetings and marches, city council sessions and street-corner conversations, among millions of people over the past 45 years working to protect their communities and to maintain the use values of neighbourhood life against the polarisation and displacement involved in “the production of urban space for progressively more affluent users.”

Neighborhood gentrification is closely associated with the displacement of existing residents, and displacement has increasingly been used in definitions of gentrification. Freeman states “displacement has become synonymous with gentrification in the way that White flight has become synonymous with racial transition.” Increased awareness of and concern with rampant gentrification in U.S. cities have resulted in an abundance of public discourse on the subject. Municipalities and community organizations have tried to position themselves in response to these developments in a variety of ways. New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has made a concerted effort to include explicit discussion of gentrification in his public addresses. In contrast, Pittsburgh mayor Bill Peduto has made a concerted effort to avoid references to gentrification occurring in his city.

The city of Pittsburgh has reinvented itself following decades of deindustrialization, and the East Liberty neighborhood stands out as an exemplar of urban change and redevelopment. East Liberty has undergone a succession of urban redevelopment phases and population changes in the last half century. At different periods in the city’s history, the neighborhood has been used metonymically in official and popular discourses to signify starkly different conditions of urban development. Once the third busiest commercial district in Pennsylvania, post-war urban redevelopment schemes scattered residents and shuttered businesses, leaving East Liberty an icon of urban blight. Recent years have seen another reversal of the neighborhood’s fortunes, and today the district plays an integral role in the discourse of Pittsburgh’s post-industrial reinvention and revival. The narrative of East Liberty’s recovery, however, will vary greatly depending on who is telling the story. While being celebrated nationally as an example of successful and equitable neighborhood redevelopment, the recent changes are also accompanied by the displacement of longtime residents amid fears of rampant gentrification.

On October 14th 2015, mayor Peduto spoke at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the East Liberty Transit Center. Development of the East Liberty Transit Center cost $150 million, and the project was funded through various agencies, including a $15 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation. The project represents a significant investment in the city’s transportation infrastructure, and part of an ongoing phase of reinvestment in the surrounding neighborhood. When the center was officially opened the local press referred to it as “the centerpiece of the neighborhood’s ongoing revitalization.” One headline matter-of-factly announced “East Liberty transit center opens, revitalizing area.”

Peduto does not use any of the familiar euphemisms for redevelopment in his remarks. He does not mention renewal, recovery, or revitalization during his address. The idea and ideals of renewal, however, are evident in his speech. Peduto says that current investment in the neighborhood is “doing it in a way that will build the future for everyone,” and cites the need for efforts to keep community members in the neighborhood, “so that those people that went through the hard times will be there to be a part of the good times, too.” Peduto has already cited elements of the neighborhood’s earlier “blighted” condition as evidence of the “hard times,” so clearly the transit center and other contemporary developments are evidence of the “good times”. The notion of revival is also evident near the close of Peduto’s address, when he declares: “We’re not even halfway there. We’re not even halfway of seeing this neighborhood come back to its full luster.” Peduto cites the importance of affordable housing for the continuing redevelopment, saying:

And fourteen years later, we stand here today, doing what this area has always been: a transit hub. And we’re doing it in a way that will build for the future for everyone. And that’s why it’s so important that we have an affordable housing investment fund. So that the wealth that’s going to be created, on both sides of the road, on both sides of the track, on Shadyside and East Liberty, will be invested so that those people that went through the hard times will be there to be a part of the good times, too.

Peduto’s mention of affordable housing received applause from the audience, a testament to the abiding anxieties concerning housing and displacement during the current redevelopment in East Liberty. Concerns about rapid gentrification in the neighborhood had grown steadily since the beginning of this most recent reinvestment period in the early 2000s. More than a decade later, the gentrification of East Liberty was complete in the eyes of many. In 2014, Ebony.com contributing editor Damon Young published an article reflecting on the changes in East Liberty titled, “Did gentrification make my neighborhood better?” Young cites the arrival of corporate retail tenants and younger, more affluent residents to the neighborhood, but also emphasizes the role of gentrification in displacing violent crime. The increased neighborhood safety, Young wrote, was clearly a beneficial outcome of the recent developments:

So even as I lament the injection of and appropriation by others - and even as terms such

as displacement and pricing out enter my consciousness - I value the neighborhood’s

current decrease of familiar and conspicuous danger more than I’m put off by the means

taken to get it there.

At the time of his speech at the transit center opening ceremony, Peduto was keenly aware of the threat of displacement facing residents of the neighborhood. Only two months earlier, he had personally responded to the most recent mass displacement crisis in East Liberty during an emergency meeting held with affected tenants. In the summer of 2015, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland held a two-day policy summit in Pittsburgh to discuss “housing, human capital and inequality”. During the summit, participants toured East Liberty with the goal of observing examples of equitable neighborhood development. When their tour bus arrived in the neighborhood, it was met by a group of residents and activists holding signs displaying messages calling attention to the plight of residents facing displacement as a result of gentrification in the community. The following month, residents of the 300 unit Penn Plaza apartments in East Liberty received eviction notices, stating that they had 90 days to vacate the premises. An advocacy organization representative referred to the evictions as “a mass relocation of folks of color.” Days after the eviction notices went out Peduto convened an emergency meeting with affected residents, tenant advocates, and city officials. The city was able to quickly negotiate extensions for the relocations. 

The Penn Plaza evictions and rising housing costs throughout East Liberty caused concern among residents about the availability of affordable housing in the neighborhood. In August 2015, mayor Peduto called for a “very proactive affordable housing program” and established a city taskforce to focus on affordable housing initiatives. By the end of the summer, Peduto and the Urban Redevelopment Authority announced a plan to delegate a portion of investment funds generated by the East Liberty Transit Revitalization Investment District for low-income housing.

As a salient term, “gentrification” may be more conspicuous in Peduto’s speech by virtue of its absence. Elvin Wyly and Daniel Hammel have suggested that decisions of whether to use the term “gentrification” are significant, “especially when asking questions of policy officials who have made the choice to avoid, redefine or suppress an uncomfortable word that so accurately describes the geographies being produced in so many cities.” They argue that “the most familiar and accurate term for a contested process is the one most carefully avoided by those institutions and individuals working to promote it.” In the context of concurrent developments in East Liberty, Peduto’s appeal to affordable housing and resident retention can be understood as acknowledging the occurrence of gentrification and displacement, without using those specific terms. 

This avoidance of “gentrification” as a term was made even more explicit less than a month after Peduto’s address at the Transit Center opening. On November 5, 2015, the Twitter account associated with Peduto published the message: “So far Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood has avoided gentrification while reducing crime & improving investment.” This sentiment was derided by the local press and community members as being wildly out of touch with the actual effects of the neighborhood’s development.

What are we to make of Peduto’s determination to avoid “gentrification”? Pittsburgh is growing, and its recent economic Peduto understandably wants to celebrate these successes and highlight the positive developments in the city. Peduto seems to want “gentrification without gentrification;” he wants the “orderly” reinvestment and development, without the associated “disorderly” effects of displacement that these developments often incur. Perhaps there is another lesson to be learned here regarding the connection between the aesthetics of urban order and the ideal of justice. The concluding section of this essay considers the unique function of urban space in cultivating a concern for aesthetic beauty and social justice.

References

City Channel Pittsburgh. “East Liberty Transit Center Ribbon Cutting – 10/14/15.” Filmed [Oct. 2015]. YouTube video, 42:55. Posted [Oct. 2015]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovDqFVlYOXc

Clark, Eric. “The order and simplicity of gentrification--a political challenge,” in Gentrification in a Global Context: The New Urban Colonialism, Atkinson, R. & Bridge, G., Eds. (2005). London & New York: Routledge: 261-269.

Glass, Ruth. London: Aspects of Change. (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1964).

Lyons, Kim. “$150M East Liberty transit center opens, revitalizing area,” NEXTPittsburgh, Oct. 26, 2015, retrieved from: http://www.nextpittbsurgh.com/neighborhoods/east-liberty/ribbon-cutting-marks-official-opening-east-liberty-transit-center/

Wyly, Elvin & Daniel Hammel, “Commentary: Urban Policy Frontiers,” Urban Studies 45, no. 12 (2008): 2643.

Young, Damon. “Did gentrification make my neighborhood better?” Ebony.com, April 4, 2014, retrieved from: http://www.ebony.com/news-views/did-gentrification-make-my-neighborhood-better-506#axzz3Y3lwUoAT

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 abandonment of plans to build on the site as a victory. If it is a victory, it's perhaps a Pyrrhic one, as it came to late to save the homes of hundreds of displaced residents. The re-development will continue regardless of whether the anchor tenant is Whole Foods or another company. Also, now that Whole Foods is under new ownership following the purchase by Amazon last month, maybe the high-end market will be back in the mix. Scenes like this are not unique to Pittsburgh, of course, but once again affordable housing has been demolished in the city without replacements or alternatives being prepared. 

Notorious Pittsburgh graffiti artist Daniel Montano, known by his writer's alias MFONE,  died on June 11. Montano was among the most prolific and high-profile writers active in the city, and was seen as the successor to MOOK, another notorious local artist who left his mark on the city's graffiti culture (as well on several city landmarks, as can still be seen on the 10th street bridge). This picture shows a memorial next to mural along Penn Ave between Bloomfield and Garfield. 

Development continues along the Penn Ave corridor through Bloomfield-Garfield, although I haven't seen evidence of the "phase two" road reconstruction project beginning in earnest. This stretch of Penn has been among my favorite areas in the city for the past two years, and for that same period of time I have been meaning to photograph the area as it is now because I know it's going to change drastically and soon. Long-standing local businesses like bike shops and tattoo parlors stand alongside art galleries and cafes. This environment is of course conducive to certain patterns of gentrification. The influx of high-end retail will eventually begin along Penn, with the residential developments bound to occur on the Garfield side of the avenue. I've been saying to my wife since we moved here, "Just watch: this whole area is going to change." Last week I spotted a boutique underwear store as well as a sign advertising a forthcoming smoothie and juice shop. The area is home to robust community organizations and several beloved local businesses, so it remains to be seen how these changes are handled.

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 and retail space. In the summer of 2015, the 200+ residents of Penn Plaza received notices that the property owners had sold the land for redevelopment, and giving tenants 90 days to vacate the premises. Following uproar from tenants and other community members who were shocked at the manner in which this decision was made and communicated, the city intervened to delay both the evictions and the demolition (the second of the two buildings is still standing, and people still living there have until March to relocate).

The developer's plans for the Penn Plaza space was finally revealed this past summer: new high-end rental units and businesses including a Whole Foods grocery store. Whole Foods has earned ire for its expensive and sometimes outlandish offerings, is identified with an affluent-white consumer ethos, and has become iconic of gentrifying development (see the season-long gentrification arc on South Park in which the arrival of Whole Foods in a formerly divested neighborhood is treated as the catalyst for a demographic shift). The announcement that the Penn Plaza site was to house a new Whole Foods carried a particularly bitter irony because there already is a Whole Foods in the neighborhood, essentially across the street from the proposed location (calling it a stone's throw away seems accurate). The current Whole Foods store in East Liberty opened in 2002 amidst the arrival of similar corporate retail outlets and other new developments that heralded the neighborhood's rapid gentrification. The market was built as part of a suburban-style shopping center with accompanying parking lot that seems to be invariably congested and unfailingly irritating to shoppers, cars and buses trying to pass by on the street, and especially pedestrians using the adjacent city sidewalks. The new Whole Foods would include a larger parking lot, part of what a company representative described as "new opportunities to surprise and delight our expanding base of shoppers in Pittsburgh" (blech).

Last week the city planning commission unanimously rejected the developers' proposal for the Penn Plaza site. This decision was unexpected, and received cheers and ovation when it was announced in the commission meeting. Why had the commissioners resoundingly rejected the plan? Their decision seemed to hinge upon a perceived lack of community engagement. As reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

“It begins with and ends with the community engagement piece. And at the end of the day, I don’t believe there was any evidence that there were result-oriented parts of the application and presentation that proved that the community gave input,” said commission vice chairwoman Lashawn Burton-Faulk.

The representative for the developers disagreed with this assessment:

Jonathan Kamin, attorney for developer LG Realty Advisors, said afterward that he was disappointed with the decision, arguing that the proposal met all of the requirements needed for approval.

He disputed the commission’s contention that the plan lacked community input. He said the developer held more than 35 meetings with the various constituencies and groups, adding it was “public engagement like the city has never had.”

What to make of this discrepancy in interpretation? Why did the planning commissioners consider the level of community engagement deficient when the developer believed they had conducted an unprecedented degree of engagement? At issue is the very definition of community engagement and the standards to which such practices should be held. Community or public engagement has emerged as a procedural standard in urban planning and development, and while such engagement practices may fall short of realizing the ideals of deliberative democracy to which these terms seem to aspire, at the very least it has been accepted as part of the "due diligence" of the development process. In this most recent decision on the Penn Plaza development there is an evident contrast between standards of quantity and standards of quality. The attorney for the developers cited the number of public meetings held as evidence of "public engagement like the city has never had." The commission members, by contrast, cited a shallowness of responsiveness as indicative of the poor quality of engagement. Can one-way communication be considered sufficient "engagement"? In this case the planning board is arguing that it cannot; the developers may have held 35 meetings informing attendees of their plans, but their process did not reflect any substantive response to community input, and this was a crucial factor in the commission's rejection. Of course, one major question that bears asking in this case is: why was there no requirement for community engagement before people were displaced and their homes destroyed?

It remains to be seen what will become of the Penn Plaza site (as well as the ostensibly public park space situated on the lot), and although the planning commission's decision doesn't reverse the displacement of hundreds of East Liberty residents, I still find it heartening. This decision signals that city managers are taking community engagement seriously, holding such practices to a standard beyond a mere perfunctory formality, and requiring they be more meaningful than an empty gesture. I am currently working on a study of community engagement practices in another major redevelopment project in Pittsburgh, so I found last week's news of the planning board's decision especially salient. More than affirming my own interest in studying community engagement practices, it demonstrates that the theory and practice of public engagement can bear material consequences to urban development projects. I hope that this result will inspire planners and developers to raise their own standards for community engagement.

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 up and running. The partnership aims to develop new aspects of mapping, vehicle safety and technology with an eye toward autonomous taxi fleet development.

• From the PC Mag article:

"We are excited to join the community of Pittsburgh and partner with the experts at CMU, whose breadth and depth of technical expertise, particularly in robotics, are unmatched," Uber Chief Product Officer Jeff Holden said in a statement. "As a global leader in urban transportation, we have the unique opportunity to invest in leading edge technologies to enable the safe and efficient movement of people and things at giant scale. This collaboration and the creation of the Uber Advanced Technologies Center represent an important investment in building for the long term of Uber."

• The Pittsburgh Business Times interviewed CMU computer school dean Andrew Moore about the partnership:

CMU, a pioneer in driver-less vehicle technology, operates the General Motors-Carnegie Mellon Autonomous Driving Collaborative Research Lab, which was formed after CMU's driverless car won the DARPA Urban Challenge in 2007. Moore said CMU's established partnerships with companies and federal agencies on autonomous driving will proceed as planned.

• The announcement follows close on the heels of Uber receiving clearance from the state to continue its operations for another two years:

Those conditions included a requirement that drivers in Pennsylvania agree — in writing — to report ride-sharing activity to their insurance companies. Uber also must inform drivers of the specifics of its own insurance policy, conduct background checks on drivers, and ensure any vehicles used to give rides meet annual inspection standards of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

Uber and its rival ride-share company Lyft moved into the Pittsburgh area last year and have tangled with the PUC for most of that time. Over the summer, the PUC sought and was granted a cease-and-desist order, and its bureau of investigation and enforcement issued still-unresolved citations to individual drivers, and proposed multimillion-dollar fines against both companies.

• Amanda Waltz at POP City wrote about Pittsburgh as a driving force behind transportation technology:

The refurbished platforms -- which feature better lighting, overhead shelter, and a wheelchair-accessible ramp -- represent one component of the $130 million revitalization investment known as the East Liberty Transit Center. Partially funded by a $2.3 billion transportation bill signed by former Gov. Tom Corbett, the ongoing project, which is set for completion sometime in 2016, includes a pedestrian bridge connecting Ellsworth and Penn avenues, a parking garage, and additional residential and commercial space.

While residents can actually see construction progressing in East Liberty, there are many other innovative, yet less visible ways people are improving transportation for Pittsburgh residents and Pennsylvania as a whole.

• Bike lanes have been a key focus on transportation policy in Pittsburgh, as reported by Next City:

Pittsburgh was one of six cities selected earlier this year by PeopleForBikes to participate in its Green Lane Project, which takes municipal leaders on tours of cities with state-of-the-art bike infrastructure, such as Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto was one of the people to take that tour, and he came back eager to buy a bike for himself — and to position his city as a national leader in street design that accommodates bicycles.

• Alan Greenblatt wrote a profile of Mayor Peduto for Governing:

Peduto has a long list of other mega-developments about to come online. In addition, he has constructed a wish list of ambitious projects that include countywide light rail, a completely revamped sewer system, and higher wages for the thousands of Pittsburghers working for large health and insurance nonprofits. In order to accomplish all this, however, Peduto has fewer tools at his disposal than some mayors. He doesn’t control his city’s schools, and transit is largely under the jurisdiction of Allegheny County. In order to address the systemic problems of the city, Peduto knows he has to turn to a wide assortment of partners.