Designing Systems Interventions: Socio-economic Inequity in Pittsburgh
by Team Strange Attractor: Jean Chu, Yujin Lee, Will Martin, and Nikita Valluri
Introduction
In Pittsburgh, socio-economic inequity is not just a persistent challenge but a complex systemic issue that influences various aspects of life — from access to essential services to the overall well-being of its communities. This deep-seated problem affects educational opportunities, healthcare accessibility, and economic mobility, underscoring a need for profound systemic changes. Our team’s assignment leverages the cumulative knowledge from previous coursework to confront these challenges head-on by envisioning and designing strategic interventions aimed at transforming Pittsburgh into a more equitable and thriving city.
Rooted in the principles of Transition Design, our approach involves understanding Pittsburgh’s socio-economic landscape through a multi-dimensional lens that spans its historical roots, present conditions, and potential futures. This comprehensive perspective helps us recognize the interconnected nature of socio-economic issues and their ripple effects across the community. The goal is to develop an ‘ecology’ of systems interventions that are not merely patches but catalysts for positive, systemic change, fostering a transition toward sustainable, equitable, and desirable long-term futures.
Our proposed solutions, though varied and multi-faceted, share a common aim: to decentralize power, redistribute resources, and empower communities. This includes reimagining how resources are accessed and utilized, enhancing community involvement in decision-making processes, and fostering a culture of collaboration and mutual support. These strategic actions are designed to address the root causes of inequity, ensuring that each step forward is towards a city where every resident can thrive.
This article explores our journey through this complex landscape, and by detailing our strategic approach, we hope to illuminate the pathways that can lead to profound and lasting change, turning theoretical frameworks into tangible actions that resonate with and uplift all segments of Pittsburgh’s population. Through this exploration, we invite readers to consider the power of design in addressing systemic challenges and imagine new possibilities for their communities.
In-Class Exercises
We engaged in a couple of in-class exercises that helped us brainstorm our thoughts to delve deeper into a practical exploration of our vision for transforming Pittsburgh’s socio-economic landscape.
In-class exercise #1
For this specific exercise, our vision emphasized flexibility in accessing education at the household level, proposing a system where individuals have the autonomy to choose when, where, and what they learn. This includes options for fully digital and remote learning, house calls for personalized instruction, and local/physical classes held in safe, communal environments integrated into the home or nearby shared spaces. This approach democratizes education by making it more accessible and tailored to individual needs and schedules, moving away from the traditional constraints of time and place.
At the neighborhood level, we expanded this concept by envisioning community training centers that offer customized educational programs. These centers aim to integrate individuals with some college education but no degree into community colleges and other educational programs. The flexibility of these programs allows residents to complete their education at their own pace, emphasizing education as a tool for personal development and community building, rather than merely a means to secure employment.
These interconnected educational strategies form part of our broader system interventions aimed at fostering mutual aid and commoning within the community. By reimagining how education is accessed and valued in society, we lay the foundation for a more inclusive and empowered community. This reflects our commitment to creating an environment where education enhances life quality and equips individuals with the skills to contribute meaningfully to their communities.
Through these activities, we began formulating a holistic and actionable strategy to break down socio-economic obstacles, ensuring that education not only responds to society’s changing needs but also becomes a foundation for collective progress and personal fulfillment in Pittsburgh.
In-class exercise #2
In this exercise, we critically analyzed the role of the dominant economic paradigm, globalized capitalism, in perpetuating the socio-economic inequities in Pittsburgh. We also explored how shifts towards new economic paradigms could help mitigate and resolve these issues and contribute to more equitable outcomes.
Exacerbating Factors Under Globalized Capitalism:
- Technological Advancements and Outsourcing: These favor high-skill jobs, often leading to job displacement and widening the income gap between the high-skilled and others.
- Education and Technology Interdependencies: The affordability and accessibility of education are closely tied to technological access, which can exacerbate income inequalities.
- Healthcare as a Product: Commercializing healthcare tends to make it less accessible to the poorer segments of the community, widening health disparities.
- Labor Exploitation: This leads to stagnant wages and poor working conditions, particularly for lower-income groups.
- Wealth Concentration: The celebration and perpetuation of wealth among the affluent exacerbate the unequal distribution of resources.
Characteristics of New Economic Paradigms Contributing to Resolution:
- Work Structure Reforms: Proposing fewer working hours with more generous compensation can lead to better work-life balance and reduce burnout, making work more sustainable.
- Rights to Organize: Strengthening collective bargaining rights can empower workers to negotiate for fair wages and benefits.
- Fair Labor Policies: Implementing equitable labor policies ensures that all workers are compensated fairly, helping to level the playing field.
- Healthcare Accessibility: Promoting universal healthcare ensures that all individuals have access to necessary medical services regardless of their economic status.
- Economic Inclusion: Different quotas for investment and capital gains benefits can encourage a more diversified and inclusive economic growth.
By contrasting the current economic impacts with potential solutions rooted in new economic paradigms, we see a pathway towards addressing and dismantling the deep-seated inequities embedded within Pittsburgh’s socio-economic structure. This approach not only highlights systemic issues but also frames actionable strategies that can lead to substantial societal change.
In-class exercise #3
This exercise involves critically analyzing and reframing the dominant narratives around socio-economic inequity, moving from existing perceptions to new paradigms that foster equity and inclusivity.
Existing Narratives:
- Zero-Sum Economy: This perspective sees socio-economic resources as finite, creating a competitive environment where one person’s gain is another’s loss, fostering hostility over cooperation.
- American Dream: Rooted in the values of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” this narrative suggests that success is accessible to anyone in America through hard work and determination, often overlooking systemic barriers.
- “Drain the Swamp”: This expression reflects a distrust in the system, viewing it as broken and manipulated by elites disconnected from the everyday realities of most people.
New Paradigms:
- Global Village & Job Offshoring: Shifts the focus from job loss due to globalization to creating policies that support job creation across borders, fostering a global community where support and economic development are mutual.
- Substantive Equity: Moves beyond formal equality to ensure equitable opportunities for all in producing economic goods. This approach focuses on recognizing and valuing universal human abilities, including those of marginalized groups, ensuring everyone can contribute to and benefit from economic prosperity.
- Autonomy: Participatory Systems and Self-Generated Prosperity: Advocates for systems where individuals have more control over their economic outcomes through decentralized and participatory decision-making processes, promoting self-reliance and community empowerment.
- Sum/Multiplication of Us: Emphasizes that racial justice and economic equality are not separate issues but interconnected; achieving one can help realize the other, promoting a more inclusive and equitable society.
This exercise not only highlights the need to challenge and change outdated narratives but also emphasizes creating new frameworks that recognize interdependence, diversity, and the right to self-determination in the pursuit of socio-economic equity.
In-class exercise #4
In this in-class exercise, our team engaged in a brainstorming process to identify potential policy interventions. After careful consideration, we selected the “Unconditional Autonomy Allowance.” This policy proposes to implement a minimum wage aligned with a universal basic income while also capping the maximum wage to maintain wage equity across various socioeconomic strata.
The “Unconditional Autonomy Allowance” directly targets several systemic issues that underpin socio-economic inequity:
- Financial Insecurity: It provides a financial safety net for all, ensuring that economic downturns do not lead to severe personal or familial crises.
- Inequality of Opportunity: By guaranteeing a basic income, the policy ensures that all individuals have the opportunity to pursue education, healthcare, and personal development without the overriding concern of financial survival.
- Systemic Poverty: The policy disrupts cycles of poverty that are often perpetuated through insufficient wages and unequal economic growth.
By addressing these critical areas, the “Unconditional Autonomy Allowance” not only mitigates the symptoms of socio-economic inequity but also targets its root causes, making it a strategic choice for catalyzing meaningful and lasting change in Pittsburgh.
This integrated approach aligns with our broader objectives of creating a more equitable, resilient, and thriving community, making it an essential first step on our pathway toward a more just society.
In-class exercise #5
In this class exercise, we deeply engaged with the concept of symbiotic solutions and satisfiers, aiming to develop multifaceted interventions that address various human needs simultaneously within the context of socio-economic inequity in Pittsburgh. This method involves not only proposing single-dimensional solutions but integrating actions that collectively enhance the community’s social fabric.
Concept 1: Shared Living in Cluster Homes
Shared Living involves creating cluster homes that provide shared public spaces for intergenerational living, fostering a close-knit community atmosphere. This concept effectively addresses several human needs:
- Protection: The cluster home design focuses on community well-being by ensuring equitable access to essential services and support structures for all residents, promoting a safe and secure living environment.
- Affection: By living in close proximity, residents of the cluster homes forge strong bonds of friendship and mutual dependence, enhancing social cohesion and emotional support.
- Subsistence: Residents engage in communal gardening and the sharing of food and other essentials, which not only ensures food security but also fosters a sense of collective responsibility and sustainability.
- Understanding: The diverse cultural backgrounds of families living together in these clusters provide daily opportunities for cultural exchange and mutual learning, enriching the community’s social fabric.
Concept 2: The Community Hub
The Community Hub is envisioned as a central space within the neighborhood that supports a variety of community-driven activities and resource sharing:
- Understanding: The hub is a focal point for educational opportunities, such as workshops and classes, where community members can learn new skills and share knowledge, enhancing collective intelligence and adaptability.
- Creation: It provides a platform for individuals to pursue personal and professional growth with support from the community, fostering innovation and career development within a supportive environment.
- Participation: The hub enables large-scale community projects that enhance communal identity and asset ownership, encouraging active civic engagement and collective decision-making.
- Protection: Health and wellness resources available at the hub ensure that all community members have access to necessary healthcare services, promoting overall community health.
This exercise is instrumental in illustrating how holistic, integrated interventions can effectively address complex issues like socio-economic inequity. By focusing on solutions that satisfy multiple needs, we ensure that our strategies are comprehensive, addressing the root causes of inequity and promoting sustainable change.
Wrapping Up: Our Vision Towards the Future
At the very end of the semester, we had a chance to revisit the previous assignments we completed, develop a presentation to address our views on our wicked problem, and lay the foundation for the next steps in Assignment 5. Therefore, we would like to take a few paragraphs to provide an overview of how we address this issue.
Developing an ecology of interventions for addressing socio-economic inequality requires adopting a holistic framework for understanding and specifying aspects of what socio-economic equity would feel like as a desirable future that enables the everyday ways people might choose to live flourishing lives. We quickly realized that focusing on income inequality, the normative metric for measuring socio-economic inequality, through approaches that would only help currently low-income households find reliable, livable middle-class wages subsumes the problem within a landscape paradigm of capitalism which commodifies all aspects of life, especially the vital provisioning systems that enable people to fulfill their human needs.
Focusing on equity from the reductive market logic of the affordances of market participation through the monetary exchange would open any solutions to the corrupting forces of the commodification process, which would reliably corrupt the solution’s viability as a catalyst for systems-level change. Therefore, we sought to articulate equity outside of the totalizing frame of commodification by further elaborating our understanding of Mandred Max-Neef’s systemic framework of human needs satisfaction. By contrasting the ideal model of free market exchange with the contemporary reality of corrupted monopolization of late capitalism through mapping exercises, we realized in our market and commodity-based economy that prices relative to income drive inequitable access to the need-satisfiers. Because market failure enables firms to capture monopoly rents through excessively high prices, income precarity, and inequality, many can easily lose access to commoditized satisfiers, which generates the cascading poverty and pathologies that plague so much of our society.
In the commodity-based system of capitalism, access to satisfiers remains tenuous and brittle, and they are susceptible to external shocks. This condition represents the increasingly ubiquitous precarity most people feel under this system. Only an elite few structurally accrue excess capital through exploiting other people and the planet sufficient to maintain robust access despite volatile and excessive price escalation. In the context of previous research concerning spatial dimensions of inequitable access to resources, this mapping exercise further suggested that we interrogate non-financial dimensions of the persistent access to need satisfiers. Indeed, the distance required to travel (i.e., long commutes) or duration required to realize (i.e., long voting lines) a need satisfier has clear spatial and temporal limitations in addition to monetary ones. Equity in this context, therefore, demanded addressing these additional dimensions, which, advantageously, pointed to solutions outside of capitalist commodification where culture imagines income as the sole limiter of access to the need-satisfiers.
Consequently, we found that framing equity through Max-Neef as unconditional and resilient access to the robust satisfaction of all one’s needs through a high diversity and density of non-material consumption-based satisfiers in immediate adjacency to one’s home represented a structurally resilient networked system of satisfiers that could withstand external shocks and help ensure universal access. Not surprisingly, once we jettisoned the market logic of need satisfaction, we confronted the challenges and opportunities for generating equitable access to a robust provisioning system. Our ecology of interventions, therefore, sought tactical approaches across social, technological, economic, environmental, and political domains that would scaffold the development of this new form of “livable proximity,” as Ezio Manzini puts it in his book of the same name.
To specify the qualities that the interventions would try to produce through time, we considered the important socio-technical transition pathways that had defined the transition from more traditional, local economies toward the mechanistic, commoditized system of late capitalism. Based on dominant themes within our previous multi-layered perspective analysis of the wicked problem, we considered agency, economic and demographic compositions, and resource accessibility as key frames through which to consider interventions as they provide non-strictly monetary based dimension for describing the qualities of the provisioning system. To further clarify how interventions would help move the needle on a more robust set of economic metrics. These included neighborhood and worker solidarity for the frame of agency, income inequality and resource intensity for the frame of resource accessibility, and economic diversity for economic composition. Future iterations of this chart could also include intersectional diversity to represent demographic composition and economic composition to reveal our intent that demographic diversity is also a goal and a driver.
Understanding the evolutionary nature of socio-technical transition pathways, we recognized that we would also need a strong floor within the current capitalist context to ensure that everyone could achieve equitable and robust access to satisfiers within the current commoditized system as the system transitions away from the income and monetary exchange based mechanisms for needs satisfaction. Therefore, implementing income minimums, maximums, and maximum ratios and unconditional autonomy allowances ensures a robust liberatory environment for communities to self-organize and build emergent localized cultures for realizing their individual and community needs that does not drive up consumption to unsustainable able levels.
To anchor the experience of the current status quo of socio-economic inequality and the preferred future state of regenerative, livable proximity through holistic, local lifestyles, we further evolved our networked representation of the systemic nature of needs satisfiers through a more overtly spatialized diagram that reveals the nested spatialized dimension of everyday life. Representing need-satisfying systems in this manner enabled us to imagine needs-satisfiers as happening in places that generated relative distance to the household in question.
Adding satisfiers to the newly spatialized diagram forced us to consider the spatial configuration of the satisfier in relation to other satisfiers and the home. As a result, our interventions included places for satisfying needs through non-material, non-consumption-based means. This spatial intervention included new types of homes, which enable a broader set of inclusive participants and relationships and distributed spaces within the community for varying forms of educational experiences and a broad range of other uses. Interventions are oriented towards enabling and encouraging the freedom for neighbors to self-organize and build such networked systems of place-sourced needs satisfiers.
Assignment 5 | Designing System Interventions
The goal for Assignment #5 is to develop a set of ecological interventions as a concrete project plan, or in other words, the next steps to address our wicked problem. It involves a matrix that aligns different scales or domains of our everyday life, as touched upon in Assignment 4, with the five categories from our problem map in Assignment 1. We should also consider the four characteristics of the project, including issues to mitigate, maintain, and innovate, as well as incorporate niche events as future findings.
An interesting point to note is the difference in how we usually approach problem-solving. People typically view problem-solving methods in a linear fashion: a single solution for a single issue. This assignment challenges us to shift our mindset to view this as a system and to focus on ecological relationships rather than simply brainstorming as many solutions as possible.
To begin with, we brought our core vision to the table: livable proximity, which aims to create environments where essential needs and services are close enough to where people live for easy access. To be even more specific, we decided to start with the idea of a mini-garden, allowing people quick access to food right in their backyards. We believe that addressing the basic need for food is an appropriate first step, considering that employment and the economic foundation of resource exchange are all driven by the pursuit of livelihood.
Next, our approach to expanding food access extends beyond individual homes to the neighborhood level. Through the Community Care Initiative project, we aim to establish distributed care hubs that communalize tangible resources like surplus produce, clothes, and educational materials, as well as intangible services such as intergenerational care, shared daycare services, and play pods. The connection to our previous idea, the mini-garden, is clear: communal gardens and local care hubs create a sharing loop, fostering interdependent relationships among households.
Building on this, we considered the human resources necessary for these hubs, especially in regards to care. We propose the Senior Re-Employment Program, which integrates retirees with the capacity to provide care back into the workforce. Tailored support such as skills training and care hub pairing would be provided. This arrangement not only utilizes the experience of seniors but also facilitates a labor exchange, allowing working adults to focus on their careers without the burden of childcare or household chores.
If the Senior Re-Employment Program is established, then abundant knowledge can be recycled and circulated within society. Linking back to the idea of mini-gardens, we envision the Diverse-Grow-and-Share Project. This neighborhood-wide initiative encourages communities to cultivate specific plant species and rear livestock to aid afforestation and begin restoring ecological balance. With enhanced knowledge of plant ecology, residents can better manage their gardens and livestock, further enriching the area’s unique vegetation characteristics.
We provided an example of how the left four boxes are interconnected with each other, together shaping society towards our desired future. Other projects serve as expansions or provide maintainable or innovative ideas built upon the core concept of granting food access to each household.
For example, when considering the usage of urban space, we have the Flexible Zoning Reform Initiative. It revamps Pittsburgh’s zoning codes to allow mixed-use developments, fostering urban integration and vibrant community environments. Building on the space made available, we introduce The Harvest Pop-up Initiative, where periodic harvest-exchange pop-ups allow communities to exchange surplus organic produce. This not only promotes food accessibility but also serves as a space for exchanging locally-sourced produce across regions. The vacant spaces provide areas for merchants, further bringing vitality and business opportunities to the neighborhood.
The Community Wealth Builders Initiative focuses on promoting non-monetary forms of entrepreneurship, such as cultural preservation, ecological stewardship, and community empowerment. By adopting alternative economic models like gift economies, cooperative ownership, or social entrepreneurship, this initiative prioritizes collective welfare and ecological sustainability. It complements the mini garden concept by reinforcing community and sustainability at a local level, encouraging residents to invest in and nurture their surroundings.
The Annual National Parks Clean-Up Rotation Committee (ANPCI) is managed by representatives from each neighborhood and organizes annual cleaning drives in national parks and biodiversity reserves. This promotes environmental stewardship, community involvement, and social cohesion. Moreover, it shares the goal of ecological preservation and community engagement with the concept of mini garden and the projects related, extending the principles of local sustainability to wider, communal natural spaces.
The Cross-Border Agricultural Research Cooperation Agreement facilitates the sharing of research on micro-farming across borders among universities, research institutes, and governments. This agreement focuses on pooling resources, expertise, and technologies to enhance the effectiveness of small-scale agriculture. It provides advancing agricultural practices and technologies that can be applied in small, local garden settings, enhancing their productivity and sustainability.
Finally, the Inglorious Food Discounts and Benefits Plan will work towards changing society’s perceptions of fruits and vegetables that do not meet standard appearance criteria by incentivizing buyers with discounts and redeemable points for consuming them. This initiative seeks to dismantle one of the causes of food waste by encouraging broader acceptance of all produce, regardless of appearance, which can lead to more widespread engagement in local gardening and optimized food distribution.
Together, these projects encompass a range of interventions at the city, state/region, national, and global levels, as well as the five categories, all supporting and extending the values and practicalities of local mini gardens into broader socio-economic and ecological frameworks.
Reflection
The biggest accomplishment of our engagement with the wicked problem of socio-economic inequality through transition design frameworks was our gradual capacity to conceive of and work on equity from a community-based perspective. Early in our explorations of the problem space through the eyes of various stakeholders, we limited our thinking to only income-based inequality, focusing on access to better-paying jobs, for example. It was through the laborious effort to construct a deep historical understanding of the issue through a multi-layered perspective analysis that we discovered other important dimensions of how the landscape-level forces of capitalism persistently corrupted momentary advancements.
We came to see that some of the regime-level developments, including solidarity movements through labor unions, for example, may not be sufficient a force to counter capitalism given that they maintain a focus on, primarily, income through collective bargaining agreements. Organizing for aspects of work that would commodify the exchange, for example, working hour reduction would more closely align with facilitating opportunities for non-monetary and non-consumption-based modes of flourishing. Situating the experience of socio-economic equity in the context of the nested scale of everyday life helped us clarify the spatial aspects of equity in a way that enables us to reconceptualize the system of need-satisfiers as a spatial and social system.
This revelation fueled our further elaboration of non-monetary and non-consumption-based modes of human flourishing. In our case, this helps us come to specify the contours of the wicked problem, which initially remained elusive given the breadth and generality of its terms. We hope these revelations will help others escape the consumption-based conceptualization of human needs satisfaction as they endeavor to find strategies that empower communities to evolve local capacities to thrive together within planetary limits.
Reference
Vincze. “Degrowth and the Unconditional Autonomy Allowance (UAA): A tool for equity and dignity.” Un Project de Decroissance. April 8, 2019. https://www.projet-decroissance.net/?p=2468
