#2: Mapping Stakeholder Relations — The Lack of Affordable Housing in Pittsburgh, PA
A reflection on our approach to mapping relationships between the concerns of three key stakeholders in the wicked problem of a lack of affordable housing in Pittsburgh, PA.
By Team Emergence:
Tomar Pierson-Brown, Joe Nangle, Janice Lyu, Bingjie Sheng
Transition Design argues that social relations form a type of ‘connective tissue’ within wicked problems. The often competing, yet occasionally aligned, priorities of problem stakeholders form networks of connections that bind and form the characteristic framework of complexity. Stakeholders are those entities and actors who are either affected by or anchored to an aspect of the problem. Stakeholders may be identified as parties who bear the consequences of the problem; parties whose interests contribute to the perpetuation of the problem; or parties who benefit from the circumstances giving rise to the problem.
Stakeholders can also be categorized in terms of their relative power to change the consequences or sustain the benefits of, a wicked problem. Among the definitions guiding this exploration is the understanding of power as, “a multi-faceted social phenomenon at the core of human relations”, that comes from the Thematic Learning Programme engaged by Dutch NGOs in 2011. Power is an implicit part of social structures and norms. Power is a form of systemic feedback that contains important information about how different groups of human actors can impede or facilitate sustainable change. The conflict that can result from power imbalances often roots wicked problems in place. At the same time, stakeholder interests and relative power do not always track in tandem with one another. Parties with vast power differentials may find that they have allied positions flowing from shared values, unintended systemic consequences or other hidden commonality. From a transition design perspective, identifying the parties who stand to lose or gain from wicked problems, as well as their relative power, is an important prerequisite to developing outcome-changing interventions.
This post, the second of a series of five, describes the transition design process: mapping stakeholder relationships. This activity involves identifying stakeholder groups; investigating stakeholder beliefs, assumptions and cultural norms; and naming power relations among stakeholders. We continue our exploration of the lack of affordable housing in Pittsburgh by discussing how we narrowed the numerous groups with a stake in the outcome of this wicked problem down to the three stakeholders whose hopes and fears are depicted in our map. We then describe the points of conflict and alignment our stakeholder map highlights. Our first post in this series discussed the process and outcome of mapping the wicked problem of the lack of access to affordable housing in Pittsburgh. Identifying some of the interconnections revealed on this initial map, we go on to speculate about how the results of both documents might guide further field research. Finally, we conclude by offering some of the challenges and lessons learned from the process of creating our stakeholder relations map.
Identifying stakeholders: Power, Positions, Perspectives
There are numerous and diverse parties with a stake in the housing market in Pittsburgh, PA. Team Emergence identified 58 human and nonhuman stakeholders to housing and housing accessibility. We categorized these parties into categories: advocacy groups; market forces; community development organizations; community members; competing housing industry; development groups (both nonprofit and for-profit); government actors; healthcare; infrastructure-related; legal; non-human stakeholders; and secondary stakeholders.
Once our broad spectrum of stakeholders was identified, we turned our attention to assessing the relative power of each group. Acknowledging that such dynamics contribute to the intractable nature of wicked problems, we asked ourselves which groups are empowered and which groups are disenfranchised. We attempted to rate relative power on a scale from 1–10, with one representing the least amount of power and 10 indicating the most power. This approach was so heavily subjective, we had a hard time surfacing relationships between stakeholders.
To ground our assumptions, we turned to different frameworks for identifying and evaluating power relations. First, considered the four power sources identified by Michael Mann (2013): ideological, political, economic and military power. To make these sources more relevant to the wicked problem of affordable housing, we recast military power as state or governmental power. We created a venn diagram that plotted the stakeholders across and between these four domains. This led us to the conclusion that, with regard to the wicked problem of affordable housing, relative power correlated to power across multiple sources. Most of the stakeholders that we identified as disenfranchised, like the elderly, persons with disabilities, and youth aging out of foster care, actually could be considered as having some political power through the right to vote for city and county leadership. The only truly disenfranchised stakeholders are children and those homeless who cannot meet the residency requirements for voter registration. The stakeholders we presumed were most powerful had access to two or more of Mann’s power sources.
Then we plotted our identified stakeholders on a continuum of visible to invisible, based on the power cube framework developed by the Institute of Development Studies. Visible power is welded by those with access to the definable aspects of power; that is, to the formal structures, institutions, and procedures of decision making. Hidden power involves the use of dynamics that exclude and devalue the concerns and representation of other, less powerful groups. The problems and issues of those with invisible power are kept from both the decision-making table, and from the minds and consciousness of other stakeholders. “This level of power shapes people’s beliefs, sense of self and acceptance of their own superiority or inferiority.”
Based on the context that the venn diagram and the continuum of visibility provided, we were able to identify particular stakeholders who represented different forms of power. The Pittsburgh City Council has visible power across the domains of economic, state, and political power. Households headed by single mothers, have invisible political power. Because so many households within this demographic live at or near poverty, they can be dismissed as out of mind for those stakeholders with access to the decision-making tables. At the same time, families headed by single mothers make up 42 percent of all families in Pittsburgh. These women are taxpayers and voters. Further, their status as a vulnerable class — families headed by single women also account for 78% of families experiencing poverty in Pittsburgh — has put these women on the priority list of major philanthropic organizations, The Pittsburgh Foundation. For-profit developers, like LG Realty Advisors, use both hidden and visible power through the domains of economic and political power. While city council members have the power to set regulations that limit the activity of developers, the impact of for-profit development companies on the city’s economy is quite influential and can have repercussions for the election campaigns of city council members.
As a triad, these stakeholders represent one group who has little to no power to resolve the problem and who is adversely affected by it (single woman headed households); one group who has a lot of power and who may even be invested in the problem remaining unresolved (LG Realty Advisors); and one group somewhere in the middle (members of the Pittsburgh City Council).
Given the constraints of the semester, it was not feasible for our team to engage in the community-engaged research necessary to gather first-hand accounts from the three key stakeholder groups we chose to focus on. Within the public record, however, we found a published report from The Pittsburgh Foundation who engaged in structured conversation with single mothers about their needs, hopes, and fears and members of the greater Pittsburgh community. We found the report of Pittsburgh’s affordable housing task force, which gave us insight into the kinds of competing concerns the city council must balance. Finally several news articles written about the Penn Center Plaza Project gave clues as to the positions, statements and actions of Pittsburgh-based developer LG Realty Advisors.
Interdependencies Between Stakeholder Hopes and Fears
We recognized several interdependencies between the hopes and fears of our three key stakeholders. First, not only did we identify conflicts between different stakeholders, but the hopes and fears of a single stakeholder can also be in conflict. For example, single mothers are afraid that living in a subsidizing house will lead to her and their children being judged by others, but at the same time, the neighborhoods they can afford are often not very nice and have problems such as high crime rates. This conflicting situation makes it more difficult for single mothers to make a ‘right’ decision. Second, we observed that many single mothers’ hopes and fears are difficult to link directly with those of private developers. The fact that there were so few connections to be made between the single mother and the developer exemplifies the women’s disenfranchisement. Very little, for better or for worse ties the hopes and fears of the powerless to the powerful.
Another finding we realized is that the roles the city council plays in this wicked problem are complicated. We can see that the fears and hopes of the other two stakeholders are directly from their own interests and feelings. City Council’s actions often involve a battle or cooperation with one or more other groups. They need money and political power to get them elected or re-elected, which requires them to enact a series of policies that do not anger the wealthy community. But policies tilted toward the wealthy or powerful should not be so pronounced as to make life more difficult for the disadvantaged, as this would affect the stability and resilience of the city. Often, in such dilemmas, governments end up doing nothing in the face of wicked problems.
Mapping the stakeholder relations revealed to us the uneven power dynamics lying behind the wicked problem. At the same time, we also feel that there are many difficulties to further explore or try to tackle this problem. For example, we kept asking during the discussion why the people who hold the power do not take action. When we found out that some people would find living in affordable housing to be a less-than-dignified affair, we realized that society perceives it as if affordable housing is just not as good as a single-family house, or that the communities in which these housings are located are not likely to be a high-income, amenity-rich community. But does it have to be that way? This is the case now, but is this the right way to go in the future? We think that with proper design, affordable housing can be very decent, good looking but low cost. To a large extent, it seems to be people’s biases and stereotypes that exacerbate the complexity of the wicked problem. However, changing people’s perceptions is difficult. This may be a problem we cannot avoid in our subsequent work.
And finally, all of the revelations point to a range of inequalities, segregation, and conflicts of interest that are not solely linked to the lack of affordable housing in Pittsburgh. This seems to be related to our previous phase of the study and sets the ground for the next step (Mapping the evolution of a wicked problem). We started this phase by identifying the different stakeholders, and at the end, we were left with the ultimate question: How can the design intervention we want to propose afterward allow different groups to cooperate and mutually benefit while having conflict?
Stakeholder Relations and the Wicked Problem
Having previously completed the wicked problem mapping assignment, we were able to identify indirect, secondary stakeholders whose interests play a role in the systems that entrench a lack of affordable housing in Pittsburgh. Among the notable indirect stakeholders identified were material suppliers and manufacturers, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center groups, and the Port Authority of Allegheny County. While these groups may not be directly involved, we saw them as stakeholders who advocate for or adversely effect the problem of a lack of affordable housing. For example, groups from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center are invested in advocating for affordable housing in hopes that stable housing will result in improved health outcomes of their patient populations. Mapping the bigger picture of the wicked problem before mapping stakeholder alignment and conflict prepared us to see the interconnectedness of secondary stakeholders as well.
Taken together, the two assignments inform the need for further field research. The wicked problem map surfaces multiple interconnected issues each of which could serve as the basis for its own in-depth study. The stakeholders to each of these issues within the problem could comprise the subject of further position mapping. The stakeholder mapping in particular will be a great resource to know who to talk to and how to frame the questions to stakeholders to better understand the needs and entry point. It can also be used as an empathy tool to help them reveal underlying pain points. Review of more stakeholder clusters creates more opportunities to (re)discover alignments and to identify the “low hanging fruit” of common goals. Harnessing multiple instances of jointly desired outcomes generates the leverage for change needed to address affordable housing. Further the wicked problem map highlights where the lack of affordable housing intersects with other wicked problems. Because these problems are likely to have common stakeholders, there are opportunities for collaboration with teams working to address closely related systemic issues. Both maps can be used to hone in on major events that have taken place in the evolution of the problem as we currently understand it. Past and present knowledge can then be used to inform future visions, a further pillar of the transition design approach.
Conclusions
“The Avenues of Hope initiative was born out of a desire to reimagine economic development in Black neighborhoods and provide something that offers more than a false choice between gentrification or failed policies and neglect,” said Diamonte Walker, the deputy executive director of Pittsburgh’s Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). She is hopeful that an alternative approach, one of “culturally astute, community-centric economic development” can offer a transformative alternative (Lord, 2021) to housing policy that has seen Black residents abandoning Pittsburgh.
Walker’s comments highlight the challenging dynamics between some of the key stakeholder groups identified in our map. URA acts as a key mediator between those seeking affordable housing, the developers who may or may not engage in its production, and the City Council who facilitates and funds its development — the three groups represented in our stakeholder map.
Walker’s quest to address “racial income inequality, the lack of quality affordable housing, disparate impacts Black people face when looking at the social determinants of health, and rebuilding once thriving business districts and centers of Black culture and commerce,” (Lord, 2021) are emblematic of the hopes of both single female headed households and the Pittsburgh City Council.
However, developers often fall out of alignment with this notion of progress. Instead, they see economic opportunity at the high end of the housing market and in commercial properties like office buildings and retail developments.
The Penn Plaza apartments provide a telling example of how these groups engage and conflict with each other. An emblem of Pittsburgh’s mid-century urban renewal, Penn Plaza was built in the 1960s to house more than 200 lower-income residents. In 2015, residents received unsettling news that their leases would be expiring without renewal, leaving them just 90 days to find suitable alternative housing.
LG Realty, owned by Larry Gumberg, saw an opportunity to redevelop the site as high-end housing, riding the wave of tech-driven gentrification in Pittsburgh.
This shocking news prompted significant community organizing and engagement. We hope to have captured some of the sentiments heard in similar proceedings in our map. Fears about where displaced residents will go next, what the alternatives might be like, and whether alternatives would remain affordable. We also hoped to depict hopes about what modernized housing might enable for those struggling to make ends meet.
Although Mayor Peduto initially claimed ignorance to the Gumbergs’ lack of community engagement, he later backtracked, revealing prior knowledge of the plans (Krauss, 2020).
Unfortunately, our reconstruction of the hopes and fears depicted in our stakeholder map comes from secondary reporting and our own perception of those involved. If primary research were in the scope of this project, we could have gained significant insight through more direct interaction and interviews with affected stakeholders.
While constructing these “secondhand” empathy maps can reveal important connections between stakeholder groups and might capture some of the dominant themes revealed publicly, we also recognize their risk of magnifying our own biases. As discussed in a guest lecture from Dr. Sasha Costanza-Chock, the design justice movement calls for us to get closer to those with whom we are designing, and truly bring them into the process.
In the context of affordable housing development, that could involve a far greater degree of engagement with future residents before new projects are conceived and designed. Community workshops could help developers understand what locations, features, and configurations of housing would best serve their needs.
City Council, in its situatedness between developers and residents, could play an interesting role in facilitating a productive dialogue between groups often seen as fundamentally opposed.
This approach might turn some longstanding practices on their heads. For instance, the Penn Plaza development plan appears to have been largely completed before being revealed to the public. When a nearly fully-formed plan is presented, changes are costly, complex, and difficult to justify.
We instead imagine an engagement program led by a party like URA that could bring community voices together before the first plans were even drawn up. Future residents could have the opportunity to share their desires, fears, and questions before critical decisions were set in stone.
