I started by thinking that I’m interested in basing my thesis in Pittsburgh. Approaching it ‘broadly’, I thought, “What and how could Architecture solve in Pittsburgh?” I started thinking about the connectivity among Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods, or lack thereof. I catch myself thinking that whatever I do, Pittsburgh “could never be as connected as New York.” New York is my natural comparison because it’s the city I grew up with, and I sometimes forget that not every city sets its aspirations to be like it. I appreciate Pittsburgh for its authenticity – it isn’t like New York and it doesn’t aim to be. A proud yet humble solidarity saturate the city and its citizens; cohesiveness that New York would never expect.
So I stop directly correlating Pittsburgh to New York City; other than their similar shape in plan, the history, intent, and thus evolution of the two cities are on different tracks. Although New York has its infinitely diverse centers and nodes scattered throughout, Manhattan Island is the core, a well-connected core, from which urbanity radiates. The focal point of the entire tri-state area is Manhattan Island, its two rivers forming the moat that protects its worth. Similar to the Bronx in New York, minorities and poverty have been pushed out to the East End in Pittsburgh, as far as they can be from Downtown. Nonetheless, Pittsburgh’s more extreme topography and the vestiges of its industrial past throw the distribution off balance. Superimposing New York’s subway map onto Pittsburgh (maintaining the same scale) actually yields a transit system that coincidentally touches upon all of the hubs in Pittsburgh, and whose area of most frequency and intersections (what would be the village in NYC), perfectly covers the Hill District. This aspect shouldn’t be coincidence, because rationally the Hill, with its central location and advantageous urban views, fits as prime real estate.
I realize that I am describing an expectation for gentrification of the area because I don’t understand (logically, not historically) why it wasn’t a more pivotal neighborhood in the first place. Can the Hill District rely solely on time before it recovers as a vibrant core for city life, or is there a major effort that external administrations must invest to revive the area, most critically the transportation systems? On one hand, unfortunately current residents would passively be displaced and economically pressured to move, but on the other hand gentrification is inherent in the natural cycle of cities, and perhaps the potential gentrification of the Hill could contribute to a rehabitation and rehabilitation of the mostly vacant East End. Where does Pittsburgh stand in its current renaissance, how far will it go, and from where can I branch off?
Below: an existing proposal of subway lines for Pittsburgh, which still ignore the Hill District.
