Mapmaking for a City’s Future
I have always loved cities, even going back to when I was 5 years old and pointing out my favorite houses in my hometown of Rochester, NY to my mom. I love exploring unique neighborhoods, trying different restaurants, and being surrounded by new people. I’m currently a senior at the University of Pittsburgh, and I was drawn to Pitt in large part due to its Urban Studies program. I was originally interested in an International Economics track (I’m also a French major and Hindi minor, so this made sense with my language skills), but Urban Studies encapsulated everything I liked about economics and didn’t focus on other aspects I didn’t want to pursue. I’m personally more interested in helping underprivileged communities thrive than I am in international banking, for instance, and I’ve been considering a career in local government for a long time. So, starting an internship with the City of Pittsburgh this past summer was a logical next step, and I was placed with the GIS team in the Department of Innovation and Performance (I&P).
My introduction to GIS, which I describe as computer map-making and data analytics to those who aren’t familiar, came through a beginner course required for my Urban Studies major, and I was surprised to find how much I enjoyed it. I’ve always been more drawn to reading and writing than to anything having to do with computers, but the project-based work was satisfying to me, and I loved its problem-solving aspects. I felt like I was using my brain in an entirely new way. I didn’t start my internship until almost 2 years after I took that single class, however, and that was a challenge. I had to re-teach myself so much of what I’d learned at the same time as I was gaining more advanced skills. In addition, GIS in the workplace was much different than in a classroom, but I found that I enjoyed it even more. Using GIS as a data tool to advance important, real-world work was gratifying. Instead of spending hours learning how to format every detail of a layout, for example, I was now making maps to help City Planning find the best possible locations for affordable housing development.
The GIS team is small, with 3 full-time employees and 1 or 2 interns at any given time. We handle projects for many departments of city government, including the Mayor’s Office, the Department of City Planning, and the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, as well as for external clients. We maintain the city’s location-based data, such as zoning and neighborhood boundaries, and build things like dashboards for car accident reporting or mayoral canvassing numbers. Our work helps to provide information that makes city-wide projects run smoothly, with some tasks taking less than an hour and others continuing over several months.
One of my favorite projects I worked on was helping to map tree canopy data across Pittsburgh. The GIS team and others from I&P have been working with the Resilient Cities Catalyst and Google on climate-related initiatives, including those relating to trees. It is recommended that urban areas should have at least 30% tree coverage, and many Pittsburgh neighborhoods are not near this level, leading to urban heat island effects and other issues. In most cases, tree coverage disparities can even be observed to correspond with other neighborhood inequalities. Our project is intended to combat this tree inequality, so I made a map to showcase disparities, including data on tree coverage by census block and neighborhood, buildings that fall within 300 meters of green space, parks and greenways, and underprivileged neighborhoods. Any of these layers can be turned on or off, or they can be overlaid on top of one another, allowing for deeper analysis. My hope is that this map will be a powerful tool for climate equity in Pittsburgh in the years ahead as leadership plans for mitigation and stewardship efforts.
Many of the other projects I have worked on have had climate implications as well. For instance, I worked with City Planning’s Sustainability and Resilience team to create a greenhouse gas inventory based on the city’s power consumption from building utility data. I primarily referenced parcel layers to filter out vacancies and evaluate the type of utility usage by building, and then I solved to find the building footprint of various energy use categories, thus determining overall energy use values. For this project, I had to develop my own methodology and record my new process, allowing for future staff to maintain consistency across future inventories.
One of the best parts of this internship has been the independence to choose projects that specifically align with my interests. I worked on another major project with the Department of City Planning to find potential affordable housing sites based on key transportation corridors. My first task was to compile information on environmental risk factors like steep slopes, flood plains, and landslide-prone areas and then combine it with zoning data, busways, and distances from bus stops to create several reference maps for housing development. I later worked with one of my coworkers to run a suitability analysis with an even more detailed data profile, including much of the same information that I initially gathered, to mathematically determine the best sites for housing. Both of these analysis methods are great reference projects for me in any future job interview or career. I can now knowledgeably discuss affordable housing in Pittsburgh and demonstrate how development locations can be selected through analysis of and including key equity considerations.
When I finish my internship this December, I will have been with the city for about 7 months. While I’m not sure if I want to pursue a GIS-related career, my internship has provided me with valuable experience working directly with local government on projects that have a high impact across the City of Pittsburgh. I’ve had networking opportunities with individuals from the Mayor’s Office and City Planning in addition to the connections I’ve made in I&P, and I hope to have a full-time job lined up upon my graduation in April, ideally involving historic preservation, affordable housing development, and/or city planning.
Throughout my internship, I’ve enjoyed getting to know my coworkers more than anything. I liked coming into the office more than I expected as someone getting a first taste of what a full-time office job is like, and meeting so many new people was a big part of my positive experience. Everyone in I&P has been so welcoming to me, my coworkers in GIS especially. At least a few of us go out to lunch every day with other members of the department, and they have been patient with me as I familiarized myself with the job and have been great teachers as I advanced my GIS skills. Pittsburgh as a city has always been very kind to me, and the people in its local government have been no exception.
My internship has been a wonderful opportunity to learn about local government and meet the people who make it work.
