Shady Liberty in the NYT

I know this is a couple of days old, but the New York Times had a story on the redevelopment of East Liberty. I've got to say, the pictures make the city look incredibly drab, but I guess it is March.

I've got a couple of lines in the article that I think are worth commenting on.

"In the decade since, the city has replaced 1,400 high-rise public housing units with 450 new mixed-income units."

I'm awful at math, but I think that means a net decline of 950 housing units, and an even greater decline of low to moderate income housing. Very few people would tell you that the public housing was a good idea for the neighborhood. But when you lose that housing, people need to go somewhere (read Chris for more on that). Displacement is and has always been a component of urban renewal/revitalization.

"The development, called Eastside, stretches east along Centre Avenue, linking the Hillman Cancer Center of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, national and local retailers, and express bus lanes — known to Pittsburghers as a busway — to downtown."

This whole sentence is fascinating to me. "Eastside" is a great example of those neighborhoods where a name change is meant to signal a change in the makeup of the neighborhood (I suppose it sounds better than "Shady Liberty"). In my gentrification seminar, we talk about the use of names like SoHo and NoMa and DoWiSeTrePla to essentially create a new history and identity for a neighborhood. While Murder Heights it isn't, the name "East Liberty" signals different things to people than "East Side" does. Also, it's a Busway. You guys are getting one up there in the Big Apple soon, so you should probably learn about them.

"Railroad tracks and the adjacent busway remain “an institutional barrier” for the neighborhood, he said."

The busway and the railroad tracks are some of East Liberty's best assets, if they can be leveraged correctly. The issue isn't the structures themselves, it's how they relate to the neighborhood.

The place is not particularly pedestrian friendly, and it's going to stunt growth or become no more than a Waterfront-type development in the city. Big boxes and urban areas can play nice (It's fascinating to me that Baltimore got Wal-Mart to agree to a second floor store; regardless of your opinion of the company, it at least demonstrates that they acknowledge their one-size-fits-all store doesn't always work), but it involves proding by public and community entities.

Ink in a newspaper of record is always a good thing. But it's important to remember the rest of the story.