Open Data is Helping Neighborhoods Plan for the Future
In 2014, the City of Pittsburgh, in partnership with the Allegheny County and the University of Pittsburgh, began to make City data open and accessible to everyone. Our regional open data platform, Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center, currently houses over 250 data sets. As part of the Open Data effort, we’ve reached out to different Pittsburgh residents, community groups, non-profits, and researchers to see how they have been using this data to improve Pittsburgh. Read the full Open Data Progress Report for more user stories and the history of open data in Pittsburgh.
Demi Kolke and Stephanie Joy are Senior City Planners in the City of Pittsburgh’s Department of City Planning. Using the City’s data, they are working with residents to create comprehensive neighborhood plans in Homewood, Machester-Chateau, and Hazelwood.
What are you working on in City Planning?
Stephanie: We are working on comprehensive neighborhood plans in Homewood, Manchester-Chateau, and Hazelwood. These ten to twenty year plans are helping to set short and long-term community priorities around housing, land use, zoning, mobility, open space, public art, economic development, and a host of other areas.
Why are you making these plans?
Demi: There is some catalytic change coming into these neighborhoods whether it is some public development such as a busway, or some private investment interest. Before Homewood becomes an East Liberty story, we want to figure out how to prevent the same issues we see in East Liberty from cropping up. How do we get ahead and be organized in a way to benefit the residents there?
What has been happening at City Planning to inspire this neighborhood-level planning?
Stephanie: Since the 1970’s and 1980’s, the planning responsibility has always been placed on the neighborhood organizations and only recently has there been interest for the City to be involved. We intend to make sure all the different people in a neighborhood can have their interests represented by listening to stakeholders and residents.
What do you hope comes out of your plan on a community level?
Demi: We’re figuring this out as we talk to the community. Each of the neighborhoods has a team compromised of organization leaders, resident leaders, and property owners. Once the existing conditions are understood, each team will host a public kick-off meeting to get input around both the plan’s broad vision and concrete, tangible action items. A big focus in Homewood is for residents to not only feel ownership of the plan but tangibly have ownership, to feel that what they say has a genuine impact in the plan. From a City Planning perspective, we want to understand what are the priorities really are. Is it affordable housing or are residents really worried about the number of shootings?
Stephanie: We want to ensure feasible actions and have the financing expertise to go along with the plan. How do we obtain some of the goals the residents have, long term and short term? Also, we need to make sure that government and community leaders, are invested in the same goals to ensure funding and support for these plans.
Which neighborhoods will be next?
Stephanie: We are not sure. Some neighborhoods are happy with where they are and do not want to change at all. We are particularly interested in making plans for neighborhoods that foresee a big change coming or have been experiencing disinvestment for years.
How are you using City data to inform these plans?
Demi: We worked with the community and consultants to create an existing conditions report using one-on-one interviews with stakeholders and open datasets. We used Census data, condemned property data, tax delinquency data, and streetscape data. Requesting data from different city departments and county entities can be difficult, but using the WPRDC makes the process seamless.
How are you addressing sustainability?
Demi: We are creating a tool kit to supply to the rest of the planners in the department and community organizers. This will help streamline the process and enhance city operations and efficiency. We are also working on a planning manual to allow community groups to hire their own consultants or do the work themselves if they have the capacity. It will include data, elements, topic matters, and processes.
Stephanie: Data is key to making decisions. You can have a perception of something, but the data has to back it up.
Why is this work meaningful to you?
Stephanie: Everyone’s lives are effected by their built environments. Who they become and their perception of themselves is largely part of that.
Demi: My reasoning is a little more personal. Homewood is my home. What will happen to Homewood if we don’t ensure that it remains an African American neighborhood that people can afford to live in?
This is a profile from our Open Data Progress Report. Check out the full report and corresponding article on Harvard’s Data-Smart City Solutions. You can also take a look at the City’s open data on Burgh’s Eye View — and see other datasets on the regional data center!
