Gentrification in the City of Pittsburgh
Multi-Level Perspective Mapping
We began the MLP mapping exercise by conducting a whiteboard activity. We started with placing elements amongst the scales. Through the whiteboard exercise, we were reminded of the initial problem we had with gentrification: all four of us are not native Pittsburgers. So in some sense, we all contribute to gentrification in the city of Pittsburgh. To us newcomers, gentrification is not actually a negative thing; however, the word gives a negative connotation. By the end of the whiteboard exercise, we saw that there are multiple sides to gentrification. It can be good for a neighborhood as it could increase amenities, investments, business, and culture. It can also be negative, as the influx of resources is not evenly distributed among citizens; newcomers receive more and the current residents don’t have a choice or way to resist change.
After mapping the different elements under landscape, regime, and niche, we attempted to also include the stakeholders we generated from the wicked problem map from assignment one. We tried extensively to separate them into landscape, regime, and niche but found they didn’t fit usefully on the map.
As we moved on to the digital version of the map, we color coded the different elements of the map under technology, infrastructure, business, practice, “norms”, and services. We hoped color coordination would help viewers efficiently discover patterns within the map with a quick glance. At first, we organized the elements into columns according to their color code but quickly abandoned that idea as we found an unhelpful structure that limited the possibility of connections. Instead, we chose to keep elements that are connected to each other on a niche-to-regime level closer together and introduced two types of arrows to differentiate between the blockaded relationships and path dependencies.
After we established the relationships, we researched existing initiatives within Pittsburgh and the surrounding area. We discovered ten in total and placed them onto the map. We found that they still only operate at the niche level. We then generated our own interventions by studying the existing Pittsburgh interventions as well as interventions from other cities. In the end, we generated ten new project concepts, filling the areas that unaddressed by the existing projects we found online.
Although the project concepts we generated also remained in the niche level, we hope they would work well in conjunction with each other as well as existing ones to create a strong network that would then be able to collectively address problems within the regime, and even the landscape level.
Considering an approach to gentrification similar to that of an acupuncturist’s, we pinpointed the aspect of ‘land’ in the landscape level and focused on it. Land directly affects zoning laws in the regime level and zoning laws can then affect and make changes in neighborhoods (niche level) over time. Wealthy neighborhoods can politically resist attempts at new construction in their areas. They have the ability to deter outside influences and maintain their residential status. However, poor neighborhoods often don’t have knowledge of the dynamics of gentrification. Even if they understood the dynamics, they often lack the free time and monetary resources to organize resistance. Therefore, as an acupuncturist would (literally) pinpoint the most potent area, we suggest that future projects primarily target two spaces: the education of communities vulnerable to gentrification (e.g. with weekly information sessions) and secondly the shifting of zoning laws so that vulnerable neighborhoods are not taken over (i.e. put control of zoning laws in the hands of the community that they affect).
