Wicked Problem Mapping

Hanyuan Zhang, Kazumi Kanagawa

Mapping a wicked problem helps us explore, grasp, and gain a better understanding of complex issues. Our task in this assignment was to “explore ways of representing issues at different systems levels, distinguishing root causes from consequences, showing interconnections/interdependencies among issues/other problems, and begin to speculate on where the greatest ‘leverage points for change‘ are within the system”.

Topic: Poverty in Pittsburgh

Our chosen topic was Poverty in Pittsburgh. Despite being known for its recent surge in technology related businesses, Pittsburgh carries many issues surrounding disparity and poverty. The average income disparity between white residents and black residents shows a significantly larger gap than the national average, and a growing disparity between wage growth and job growth (fueled by flocking tech companies with high-paying engineering jobs) underlines how this is an ongoing problem that needs to be addressed.

After our initial research, we created a simple timeline to organize some of the major events and their consequences pertinent to poverty in Pittsburgh. We found this chronological timeline useful because many of the issues that came up had triggers and links to other events, and the historical context provided a clearer picture of why some things had happened. Wicked problems and their potential leverage points are most often place-based and localized. We noticed the importance of such location based perspectives in the research stage as well, which meant we had to gain an understanding of the location’s history.

Wicked Problem Map

Mapping a Wicked Problem

The visual mapping process of our topic began with filling in this project canvas of five categories to consider: Infrastructure/Technology Issues, Social Issues, Environmental Issues, Economic Issues, and Political Issues. As this assignment’s focus was grappling with the process of tackling a wicked problem with a transition design approach, the information collected on the topic came from secondary resources. Using a spreadsheet to organize content into the five categories, we first collected relevant information from online resources, then wrote them down on post-its, and clustered them around the relevant categories on the project canvas. We made an effort to consciously rephrase the information we had collected into specific “issue statements” so that our map wasn’t a jumble of stats, but rather a high-level map that covers large ground on the issue of Poverty in Pittsburgh. Some of our more specific facts and statistics became important later on, as evidence of the consequences stemming out from the issues specified on the canvas.

Matrix Mapping

We found ourselves a bit lost after the initial Wicked Problem Map — we couldn’t quite organize our thoughts about connections between the issues, and we found ourselves unsure of where we still had gaps in information to fill. In order to overcome this roadblock, we took a second approach to mapping our research insights. We created a grid that split each of the five categories into root causes, secondary root causes, and consequences. Reorganizing our post-it notes on this matrix allowed us to clearly identify which areas needed more research, and helped us identify the connections between different issues and different categories.

Final Wicked Problem Map

We went through multiple iterations at the digitizing stage of the process as well, one of the main challenges we faced was creating a map that would be comprehensive for an outsider looking at the issue for the first time. In order to overcome this challenge, after a first pass at mapping our process, we went through each box and rephrased our words so that our points were clearly framed in the context of being either a cause or consequence of poverty in Pittsburgh.

TECHNOLOGY/INFRASTRUCTURE ISSUES

In this category, we identified problems related to public transportation, acquiring skills for tech-related jobs, universal design for disabled people, and sewage and lead pipe infrastructure. Many of these infrastructure related issues were secondary root causes of poverty, and linked back to broader root causes such as only being able to afford substandard housing, lack of access to education, and poor quality of public transportation. Especially in this category, it was important to ask ourselves whether something was a cause or consequence of poverty, because in many cases the lines were blurred, and issues seemed to loop back to other issues, creating vicious cycles of continued poverty. For example, at first glance, quality of public transportation seems distant from the issue of poverty, but digging into an impoverished lifestyle revealed that transportation options deeply affect the services people have access to, the areas and types of work one can find, which then goes back to the disadvantages of living in a low income neighborhood, all acting as catalysts for falling into, or continued poverty.

SOCIAL ISSUES

Under social issues, we identified single mother households, industry transition, and opioid addiction as our root causes that lead to consequences such as income disparity, gentrification, drug addiction, and a gap between wage growth and job growth.

Pittsburgh has the highest rate of poverty for African-American children under age 5 in the entire country, and 80% of African-American women in Pittsburgh give birth outside of marriage. Due to the difficulty of balancing work and rearing children, and the lack of social support for single mothers, we identified single mother households as a major root cause of children suffering from poverty. The consequences are racial disparity in education and lack of parental support for African-American children as they grow up, which have consequences such as mental health issues, inability to pursue higher education, and being tied down to low wage jobs. During the industry transition after the recession, education disparity also leads to income disparity, which links back to the economic issues of disparity between racial groups.

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

It may not be very intuitive to connect poverty issues with environmental issues, but we were able to find direct connections such as untreated sewage and storm water being dumped in rivers, which exacerbates Pittsburgh’s sewage overflow problem, which leads to a lack of access to clean water for many people. The sewage problem become more prominent for low income residents living in rundown housing due to old infrastructure and inadequate maintenance. Studies have shown that exposure to elements of rundown housing such as lead contaminated water directly and negatively affect school performance for children.

ECONOMIC ISSUES

In this category, we looked at how drastic industry changes from the recession, unemployment rate, rise of new wealth, and disparity from cost of education have impacted the poverty scene in Pittsburgh. Since 2007, the recession caused a decline in jobs in traditional industries, including manufacturing, construction, mining and logging. The unemployment rate continued to increase and reached a high of 7.3% in 2011. Since then, due to the emerging technology boom, the unemployment rate has dropped around 4%. However, stats from decreasing labor force indicate that many unskilled workers are leaving and giving up on the job market. One big factor we see is that most new jobs that have been added to the market do not match the skills of people who previously worked in traditional industries, and these people also suffer from a lack of opportunities to acquire new skills.

In addition to the job opportunity landscape, high cost of education also prevents the low income population from accessing quality education, which results in enlarging income disparity in racial groups as well. In recent years, attracted by local research institutions, an increasing number of students and tech companies have come to Pittsburgh and benefited the local economy and racial diversity. Simultaneously, this has also caused other problems such as gentrification, rise in real estate price and widening wage gaps.

POLITICAL ISSUES

In this category, we identified two root causes: racial discrimination against African-Americans and taxation structures that affect local funding. On a national scale, poverty is a social issue that must be addressed in policies, laws, and social services. Social security, or social safety nets are ways of preventing people from falling into poverty, and helping people come out of poverty. Especially in Pittsburgh, the high rate of poverty in the African-American population shows an inadequate social security program, which links to other issues such as racial profiling and a lack of representation of minorities in key political decisions. We also found taxation structures to be a root cause that connects to low level of education (another root cause) because local taxes fund local schools in Pittsburgh, which means that wealthy neighborhoods end up with a much larger budget and thus higher quality education, due to the difference in property values.

3 Focus Areas

Through the process of wicked problem mapping, we identified three major focus areas that kept reappearing in different places. We found that every post-it on our canvas could be talked about in the context of either Industry Transition, Racial Issues, and Access of Education. Identifying these patterns helped us find connections between the consequences and root causes that overlapped in multiple categories, and gave us a starting point to think about possible leverage points for interventions.

Adapting to Industry Transition

Pittsburgh has been going through an industry transition phase from the “Steel Town” era of the1950s. By shifting the focus to technology, health care and education, Pittsburgh has been able to transform itself from a manufacturing economy to an innovation tech hub. However, this fast transition in industry in the past twenty years has also brought on many problems for Pittsburgh. For example, most problems on our map are triggered by income and education disparity, which is one of the main causes of people suffering in poverty during the industry transition. After the Steel Town era, local residents who suffered in the recession period lost their jobs, and they did not have opportunities to learn new skills in order to work in the future booming industries of Pittsburgh (technology, healthcare or education). Therefore, people who used to work in traditional industries do not have skills to transition their career path as the industry landscape has changed.

Racial Issues

In researching this issue, we came across many studies and quantitative evidence showing racial disparities pertaining to poverty in Pittsburgh. The context of this problem expands itself to a national level and requires broader research and mapping to find leverage points for interventions. However, within Pittsburgh we found connections between education opportunities (racial disparity in pre-schools are greater than other cities), job opportunities (racial minorities are less prepared for tech industry job opportunities), and wage disparities (income disparity is higher than national average).

Access of Education

While we were mapping out connections between issues, we found that many of the problems can be related back to disparity in education. Children born in low income family are less likely to have access to quality education due to the linear relationship between neighborhood wealth and public education in that area, and this causes disparity in job opportunities and income in their futures. Besides education for children, we found that the lack of access to continued education for adults which would help them change the course of their career path was a major issue. As a result, after the recession, many labor workers have had little chance to catch up with the new industries emerging in Pittsburgh.

Process Insights

• Wicked Problem Mapping requires several iterations, and trying out different formats really helps.
• Going from post-it clusters to a matrix with hierarchies allowed us to easily identify research gaps and consider further questions.
• Digitizing the maps played an important role. The process of translating a paper map into a digital map forces you to use concise wording, and reconsider the legitimacy and reasoning behind every line of connection between the different issues. Finalizing our maps as digitized mind maps helped us reorganize our thoughts, and weed out any unnecessary or redundant information or assumptions.

Reflection

I definitely feel like there were overwhelming moments because of the sheer size and complexity of the topic “Poverty in Pittsburgh”. The upside of this was that we captured many of the fundamental characteristics of wicked problems through the process — the interconnectedness of different issues, as well as the multiple layers and depth of each problem and its causes. Many of the words that come up in this post (such as gentrification, inefficient transportation, chronic sewage problem) were wicked problems that needed separate, more in depth mapping on their own, which highlighted how much more research and organizing and synthesizing is required for a thorough mapping process. It was definitely a challenge allowing ourselves to pose big questions that don’t have answers and figuring out how deep to go, where to go deeper, and knowing what to prioritize. It was also interesting to notice how many of the issues had consequences and secondary root causes in one category, but when we got down to the actual root cause, they were shared by many of the other secondary root causes in other categories.

One particular question that came up during this process that we would like further discussion and experimentation on, is how to find leverage points in areas where root causes are closely tied to historical context and therefore can’t be intervened on.