11.03 Exploratory Interview — Polish Hill & Old Pittsburgh
We interviewed Erin, a lifelong Pittsburgh resident, at Gooski’s in Polish Hill. We explored a variety of topics with her, ranging from broad trends happening around Pittsburgh to specific qualities of her neighborhood. Some interesting takeaways from our discussion are outlined below.
Pittsburgh today is very different from the Pittsburgh of 10+ years ago
According to Erin, there are good and bad changes that came out of the last decade. Prior to these changes, Pittsburgh was very much a blue collar, Appalachian-vibe city. Now, Pittsburgh is getting a lot of high-tech and innovation drivers coming in to the city.
The sense of ‘place’ is being challenged
A lot of the developments happening around Pittsburgh are a result of non-local investors coming in and buying up land to build up. They don’t pay attention to the local identity of the community, and some of these developments aren’t being done in the best interests for the community. For example, small local businesses are being pushed out, and public infrastructure may not be able to support 800+ new developments in older neighborhoods.
Public transit wasn’t always so terrible
Erin mentioned public transit as her least liked aspect of Pittsburgh. It’s something that she partakes in, but begrudgingly. Before the time of the busses, there were trolleys that took people around, and it worked well.
In addition to questions surrounding Pittsburgh, we also asked some questions regarding her perceptions of the newcomers coming to Pittsburgh to understand how locals and newcomers enmesh within the city.
Needing a human to get “in”
Erin told us a story about her friend who had moved to Pittsburgh for graduate school after having jobs in various parts of the country. For her (this friend), she had a hard time developing a network in Pittsburgh at first. However, Erin served as her “human portal” once they became more acquainted with one another.
Erin also mentioned the 30s cohort as having a different issue with their networks. Whereas some would have children earlier on and devote their 30s to rearing them, others who choose not to would end up ‘friendless’ while different families are at different stages of their lives. Is there a way to reconcile these differences in life phases and transitions?
Digital and old-school awareness tools for resources
We asked Erin how she finds out about cool things going on around town, and she told us that she finds them out from Facebook, word-of-mouth, Post Gazette, and flyers.
Mac and I were especially interested in the flyers bit from our conversation given their tailored specificity to the locale (different flyers for different neighborhoods).
Next Steps
- Friday, November 4: We are doing some on-campus interviews with current students to get a perspective of Pittsburgh from transitional newcomers to the city. We are also going to the First Fridays (Unblurred) event happening in Garfield at night.
- Saturday, November 5: We will be doing a neighborhood walk from Commonplace at Voluto to Lawrenceville, then to the Strip District. Along the way, we will stop at Assemble to talk to Nina, and then have another interview with Megan, another Pittsburgh native.
- Sunday, November 6: We will consolidate our findings and hone in on our problem space, and begin developing possible design concepts in preparation for the following week’s presentations.
