Mapping Stakeholder Relations

by Team Symbiosis

Ally Hopping, Master of Human-Computer Interaction

Julie Choi, Bachelor of Design with Minors in Human-Computer Interaction and Photography

Morgan Newman, Master of Public Policy and Management

Adam Cowart, Ph.D. Teaching Fellow and Researcher in Transition Design

Gentrification in Pittsburgh

At the beginning of the semester, our group chose gentrification in Pittsburgh as our wicked problem. While the public discourse regarding gentrification often centers around common challenges that cities face, such as racial discrimination, socioeconomic segregation, and government inaction, wicked problems cannot be removed from their local context. They are deeply embedded in place-based systems, as are the possible solutions for addressing wicked problems. Hence, through our first assignment of mapping gentrification in Pittsburgh, we sought to understand the general issues that many cities face and the unique factors at play in Pittsburgh that interact to create the more significant problem. This localized mapping of the issue allowed us to move quickly to mapping stakeholder relations.

Why Map Stakeholder Relations?

One of the biggest challenges in addressing a wicked problem like gentrification in Pittsburgh is uniting all stakeholders connected to and affected by the problem. Because of the scale and complexity of wicked problems, it’s crucial that all stakeholders gain a common understanding of the problem and set themselves up to collaborate on interventions. However, wicked problem stakeholders often have conflicting agendas, experiences, and expectations, making it difficult to create consensus on the problem. The key to finding a path forward is to bring all stakeholders together to build empathy among conflicting groups, identify divergent and convergent perspectives, and gain cross-stakeholder alignment on the problem.

During the mapping process, stakeholders work together to draw lines of agreement and disagreement between groups. Lines of agreement represent opportunities for immediate interventions, where the propensity to work together can strengthen relationships and make disagreements easier to address. Lines of disagreement bring to light the complexity of the problem and represent areas that will require slower, more thoughtful processes to build convergence across groups.

Unfortunately, bringing together real stakeholders is outside the scope of our class. For this assignment, we rely on background research and our inferences to map the stakeholders involved in gentrification in Pittsburgh.

Our Stakeholder Relations Mapping Process

Our process for mapping stakeholder relations was multi-faceted, in which we worked on two distinct systems scales: stakeholders as thematic representations and specific identifiable stakeholder groups situated within Pittsburgh.

As a team, we engaged in generative dialogue around how best to approach creating a comprehensive list of stakeholders. To illustrate this challenge, consider the role that Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) as a place of learning plays in the process of gentrification in Pittsburgh. Undoubtedly it contributes to the problem. But how best (and accurately) to map this? For our project’s purposes, are we mapping CMU as a specific stakeholder, distinct from the University of Pittsburgh and other learning centers? Or, for our purposes, would “Higher Education” or “Universities” more accurately and succinctly describe the stakeholder group? At what level of scale should we represent the stakeholders?

Our solution was to research a comprehensive list of groups and organizations (including government, nonprofit, community organizations, etc.) as well as to generate a Spider Web Network Diagram that mapped the relationships between stakeholder groups within defined conceptual groupings. For example, we chose “real estate agents and agencies” to represent individual real estate stakeholders, rather than create a comprehensive (and for our purposes unnecessary) mapped articulation of every real estate agency that has a stake in gentrification in the city of Pittsburgh.

Stakeholder List

For us, highlighting this process of grouping and consolidating is critical as it increases the opportunity for bias and assumptions to come into play. The underlying reality is that there could be stakeholders we have unfairly consolidated under a single heading. Specific real estate agencies could indeed have greater levels of power within the local system: either a balancing effect by working with local long-term residents or a reinforcing effect by aggressively pursuing predatory practices against low-income residents. But for our purposes, we needed to make several decisions regarding representation at scale, which meant taking the necessary step of grouping stakeholders.

Once we had itemized a comprehensive list of stakeholders and mapped them, and explored the power relationships between them, the next step was determining the three stakeholder groups which are most likely to have conflicting needs and perspectives regarding gentrification.

3 Key Stakeholder Identification Process

The first group we identified as a key stakeholder was property developers/management because they are the group that arguably has the most motivation to change the makeup of existing neighborhoods. After all, their livelihood relies on purchasing cheap property, redeveloping it, and charging more for it. Building and home redevelopment is a defining characteristic of gentrifying neighborhoods. Thus, we placed this group in the position with the most power because they have the most money and agency to win government contracts and change communities’ makeup.

We chose long-term neighborhood residents (those who have resided in neighborhoods pre-gentrification) as the group that is most adversely affected by gentrification, yet still has some power or agency. We felt this group had the most to lose as their neighborhood changes before their eyes, leading to higher rents, the disappearance of affordable housing and small businesses, and eventually, displacement. One of the key characteristics of gentrification is the movement of younger, wealthier, whiter populations into lower-income neighborhoods that are often also communities of color. In addition to changing the physical makeup of neighborhoods, this leads to psychological effects and polarization as long-term residents are made to feel alienated or othered just for existing in the way they always have. These effects build on top of existing challenges that result from living in underserved neighborhoods. However, long-term residents can also organize and provide input to local businesses and the government to protect affordable housing and influence reconstruction. Long-term residents who own property also often have more power than those who don’t. In this way, long-term residents still have a voice, although it is often diminished or ignored in favor of redevelopment.

In identifying the third stakeholder group that is the most disenfranchised, either because they have no voice or are not human, we discussed two different options: the first was the elderly and people with disabilities. The second was the environment. Resulting from years of stigmatization and discrimination, the needs of the elderly and people with disabilities are often not considered or take a backseat to the needs of groups with more power and money. However, compared to non-human entities such as the environment, we decided that they have more power to influence the world around them because most still have a voice. Because of this, we chose the environment as our third stakeholder group. We then narrowed this down even further to the air because Pittsburgh has poor air quality, and the environment as a whole would be too broad to properly conceptualize through this assignment.

Identifying Hopes & Fears

Once we identified our three stakeholder groups, we began to write hopes and fears for each group. The hopes and fears are based on the background research we conducted for this assignment and for our initial wicked problem map. In preparing to write them, we read interviews and listened to podcasts with long-term residents, property developers, and environmental activists to understand their thoughts and concerns. While we did our best to immerse ourselves in each stakeholder’s mindset, they still represent our group’s assumptions to some extent. The interviews we found only represent a small segment of the larger population, and primary research with actual members of each stakeholder group is outside our class’s scope. Additionally, the air doesn’t have a voice that we can understand, so we can only speculate about their hopes and fears based on research and the current state of air quality. Nevertheless, we tried to represent complex and nuanced thoughts and emotions through our map, capturing our current understanding of how stakeholders feel.

After filling in the hopes and fears, our last step was to draw lines of agreement and disagreement between each stakeholder. We also drew lines representing complexity, in which the relationship could not be categorized as either alignment or misalignment, but rather something more nuanced that could include elements of both. This process helped us gain a deeper understanding of how the three groups relate and illuminated possibilities for future interventions.

Obstacles & Challenges

Mapping stakeholder relations can be a delicate balance of understanding the perspectives and needs of those involved in a wicked problem and using your privilege as an “outsider” to speak for more marginalized communities. Despite being a popular and valuable tactic in the design field, our group felt that it would be inappropriate to use our voices to speak on such a complex problem to which we are not victims. As we mentioned, the constraints of time and a pandemic hindered our ability to seek out personal stories of both the gentrifier and the gentrified in Pittsburgh. To combat this, we conducted secondary research to better understand the different perspectives. We then faced another obstacle: determining if we had the authority to use the quotes of residents that we had found elsewhere online in our map. One of our team members discussed that despite finding direct quotes, we were still interpreting them to the mold of our stakeholder map, and thus, without the consent of those quoted, it may be unethical to use them in our map. We then decided to take our quotes and write tangential statements from the perspective of long-term residents, citing specific sources. We found that this was the best alternative because it allowed us to ground our statements in something tangible without taking an individual’s words out of context. This solution was more difficult to adapt to speaking for “the air,” but we still found articles discussing pollution and air quality in Pittsburgh from which we grounded the air’s hopes and fears. Finally, with property developers/management, we had an easier time putting ourselves into the role of those with the most privilege and capital in this problem; however, we did find useful resources that helped develop our statements.

Conflict and Disagreement

The priorities of each stakeholder heavily depend on their relationship to power and money, which is a natural catalyst for resistance and disagreement. One of the biggest areas of opposition is that while property management companies seek to maximize profits by cutting costs and speeding up timelines, the air suffers not only the consequences of construction but also the lack of recognition of how much damage has been done and what needs to be done for a sustainable future. In many property development firms, there seems to be a lack of investment in better air quality as a long-term goal because many property managers prioritize the need to keep up with the competitive market run by bigger corporations. Increased development is in direct opposition to air quality.

A major complication between long-term residents and property management is their conflicting perspectives on each neighborhood. Residents call Pittsburgh their home because most grew up in the area with many emotional associations, while property developers believe the only way to maintain the buildings and land in the neighborhood is to increase profit and traction to the area. A common trend is spotted in the relationship between the three stakeholders — because gentrification immediately affects the state of human living and economic survival, the environmental concerns are easily neglected unless there are policy reforms or financed urban-green projects.

Affinity and Agreement

Perhaps the most pronounced area of agreement is that all stakeholders want Pittsburgh to be a “better” place to live. However, this desire for progress and improvement manifests across the stakeholders in different ways, from the desire for a stable place to live and a sense of community to profitable development projects that residents are excited to live and work within, to cleaner air for all. This aspirational desire for a “better” Pittsburgh is vague in its current conception, and the lack of shared understanding creates opportunities for future conflict, as each group attempts to manifest their vision of a “better” Pittsburgh that may not align with the vision of others.

The second area of relative agreement was fear of invisibility. All stakeholder groups want to be recognized. While this sentiment is less pronounced in property developers and managers, which manifests more precisely as the fear of demonization, it is heavily pronounced with the air and long-term residents. The wish to be both seen and valued for their presence is a consistent area of affinity.

And finally, an intriguing area of agreement emerged regarding how the pandemic has changed how we work and commute. Emerging trends around working from home have shifted the requirements of a home environment. New habits and needs within a home, and new patterns of mobility, have the potential to reduce fossil fuel consumption and reconfigure local residences’ sense of community. While property developers and the air are more optimistic about the implications of this trend, long-term residents are understandably more concerned about what all this may mean to them.

Complexity

Complex tensions emerged between long-term residents and property developers/managers, specifically in regards to areas in which there is not necessarily alignment or disagreement, but an uneasy area of mutual interest. Developers benefit financially from the revitalization of these communities which often leads to the displacement of long-term residents. At the same time, low-income areas need funds for the renewal of their neighborhoods so that they do not fall into disrepair, as well as the need for new affordable housing. The complex relationships surfaced in our stakeholder map reflect the tension between renewal and removal.

Insights

Through the course of the stakeholder mapping exercise, several key insights emerged:

• Residents and property developers/managers both want to positively impact the city and make money, but have conflicting methods and opinions about what that means.
• Air quality is not seen as the main concern of either property developers or residents, yet its health affects both of them.
• The environment becomes a priority for property developers because of public demand, not just because it’s the right thing to do.
• The hopes of the air are disconnected from the other stakeholders. During our team’s discussion, we considered whether this gap needed to somehow be reconciled in the map by drawing very weak connections. However, we ultimately decided that this disconnect was an accurate, if unfortunate, representation of the current key stakeholder relationship. The hopes of the air, while critically important to the health and wellbeing of the other stakeholder groups, are largely invisible and disconnected.

Conclusion

Overall, the stakeholder mapping process helped us gain a better understanding of the actors involved in the wicked problem of gentrification in Pittsburgh. We can now conceptualize how their hopes and fears may influence their ability to collaborate towards positive change. As we continue to explore this space over the next few months, our understanding of the perspectives and complex relationships between stakeholders will set the stage for the development of sustainable systems interventions.