Pittsburgh's urban renewal was played out in a series of reactions to perceived crises that themselves deeply scarred the city. Urban renewal displaced many families, disproportionately poor minorities, in the purportedly moral interests of combating blight and renewing the vitality of the city. The reality was one of catastrophic upheaval and the destruction of not only physical place, but also of communities.
As early as 1940, Pittsburgh city government had their sights set on urban redevelopment. That August, 26 buildings were leveled, including the Allegheny General Hospital, in order to create space for a large new Sears, Roebuck, and company store. renewal project seemed drastic for the time, it merely set the stage for Pittsburgh's future of a demolition and construction cycle that continued for another 60 years. By 1943, Pittsburgh had become a heavily industrial city, producing much of the nation's steel and aiding U.S. defense efforts for World War II. A desire to revitalize the American city was spawned in the post-war economic boom, which would be the driving force behind the reshaping of Pittsburgh and many cities across the nation.
Beginning in the 1950s, with the intention of curing the ailing American city, a policy of urban renewal leveled homes to make way for new modernist housing projects, public parks, and pedestrian shopping plazas. Political discourse touted these huge undertakings as methods of removing the source of urban blight. The definition of blight often extended well beyond the condition of an area and considered racial demographic as a marker of property value. The mapping of blighted areas to be subject to urban renewal then became an issue of race relations. As more land was cleared for development, more people were forced from their homes and told to find a new place to live.
Residents of areas that have experienced urban renewal began to view their cities as entities over which they have no control, being torn down and rebuilt over and over again. The region of Pittsburgh, which encountered significant economic and social decline, is a collection of central historic neighborhoods known as the Hill District. With a large population of Haitian immigrants and descendants, the Hill District was once a bustling city center that revolved around African American culture and the celebration of jazz music.
Before World War II tensions began to show, this area was regarded as Little Harlem due to the raging nightlife and jazz club scene that prevailed. Frank E. Bolden was a reporter for the Pittsburgh Courier and a resident of the Hill District during its boom in the 1930s. Although his claim to fame is reporting on World War II from the jungles of Burma, Bolden began his career by interviewing individuals on the streets of the Hill District.
after night, but the following week you couldn't invite us downtown. Meanwhile, the neighborhood of East Liberty, a community at the junction of major commercial and transit corridors, was enjoying its place as Pittsburgh's second downtown. The wealthy suburb was home to the Economic Center, which was one time the third largest in Pennsylvania, only behind the downtowns of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh itself.
East Liberty's bustling economy enabled the neighborhood citizens to have access to the most modern conveniences of the time, such as a system of streetcars which helped to move the people of Pittsburgh into the commercial center. This sustained consumer traffic made East Liberty the... of some of the first major department stores to open in Pittsburgh. These anchor stores operated alongside locally owned businesses to great success until the onset of the Second World War. By 1943, the Hill District had depreciated greatly from its former luster.
Poverty and segregation became staples of Hill District life as state government worked to push through a plan for redevelopment. Work opportunities for blacks were limited by Pittsburgh's worsening steel industry and post-war racial tensions, while the undulating layout of the Hill District separated each neighborhood and crippled its society's ability to organize. Hill District of Pittsburgh is probably one of the most outstanding examples in Pittsburgh of neighborhood deterioration. Approximately 90% of the buildings in the area are substandard and have long outlived their usefulness, and so there would be no social loss if they were all destroyed.
After World War II stunned to the growth of East Liberty, the neighborhood rebounded at a remarkable pace. It seemed that East Liberty was important enough to the people of Pittsburgh that it was firmly seated in the permanent fabric of the city. Then, in the late 1950s, East Liberty experienced its first commercial vacancies.
Whereas not long before two-thirds of the cars in Pittsburgh were registered to wealthy citizens and East Liberty, the automobile had become so accessible and ubiquitous that the layout of East Liberty began to cause frustration and congestion. Rather than fighting traffic to shop at the locally owned businesses, the people of the wealthy neighboring community simply drove somewhere more convenient, the more modern suburban shopping malls. By this time, the need for monumental change was clear to politicians and business interests. Only a few years later, the Urban Redevelopment Authority would be tasked with restoring East Liberty through a master-planned redevelopment effort. The one-size-fits-all solution of urban renewal touted in this era intended to bring back the consumers by constructing apartments on a pedestrian commercial plaza, as well as converting the boundary streets into a one-way loop road.
The government approved Evans'Lower Hill Redevelopment Plan in September of 1955, with destruction commencing the following summer. The project included the clearing of 95 acres and 1,300 buildings, 413 of which were businesses. The plan also displaced more than 8,000 residents of the hill. Of the more than 1,500 families that were forced to relocate, only 312 were white families. The majority of the remaining nearly 1,200 black families moved into public housing communities in nearby areas such as Homewood and East Liberty.
The influx of black families caused a culture shift in these towns and resulted in a version of white flight motivated by class status as well as race. As demolition turned their former homes into rubble, Lower Hill residents were unhappy with the pace and progress of renewal. They had been uprooted from their lives in favor of high-rise buildings, more shopping, and a brand new, ultimately failing, sports center, the Civic Arena. Clearing that much space split up the Hill District even further and pushed tens of thousands of residents out of the area.
Hill residents didn't like the idea of putting them out to make a place for white people to play. The Civic Arena means nothing to the Hill. You didn't hear anybody in the Crawford Grove raving about going to see the Penguins play.
They couldn't care less about going to see the Penguins play. Just as demolition was starting in the Hill District, the Urban Redevelopment Authority, which was working on the East Liberty Project, was faced with orders from elsewhere in City Hall to add low-income apartments to the proposed pedestrian plaza. These apartments, which came in the form of a new apartment, of modernist high-rises were called for in order to accommodate the displaced residents of the Hill District, many of whom had settled just north of East Liberty in an area known as Holmwood.
With this new addition, the project was approved by the city and the construction began. The protest began with the removal of a portion of Pennsylvania Avenue, the major transportation artery which ran through the middle of East Liberty's suddenly failing commercial district. This was done in the dual interest of creating a more inviting and walkable commercial center more reminiscent of the suburban mall. to which patrons had turned, as well as to more easily accommodate the sudden influx of automobiles, which had the potential to move consumers further than ever before, but made the ability to find a nearby place to park nearly requisite for any business district.
What happened in East Liberty after the completion of the redevelopment plan was far from the revitalization the city had set out to achieve. The diverting of Penn Avenue into Penn Circle around the commercial district only served to channel automobiles away. The housing project served their intended purpose of relocating numerous impoverished African American families and individuals, but this also contributed to hastening the decline of East Liberty. Low-income housing projects that were built with cheap and sturdy austerity mandated by the city to house these African Americans were seen as unsavory hives of criminal activity.
Their location on the commercial pedestrian plaza created an environment in which visitors felt unsafe. East Liberty's decline continued for the years following. Businesses closed, property values fell, and crime rates increased.
Pittsburgh's second downtown, it seemed, had died on the operating table. Both the Hill District and East Liberty had fallen victim to the ethic of city rebuilding. Since the execution of the Lower Hill Redevelopment Plan, life in the Hill District has never been the same. People were promised change that would not come.
By 1990, the hill had lost about 70% of its population, more than 38,000 residents and 400 businesses. The leveling of popular bars and clubs forced the remaining hill residents to adopt a new lifestyle, one far gloomier. Crime and conflict became regular occurrences as the hill plunged further into disrepair.
As recently as 2008, East Liberty was identified as an area of high crime by the city of Pittsburgh, when the economic power of the businesses within Penn Circle collapsed families left en masse, leaving the once vibrant neighborhood merely a vacant shell of what it had been before. According to 1996 census data, the most commonly addressed issues by the 50 social service agencies in the Hill District were teenage pregnancy, substance abuse, AIDS, and violence in general. However, as of 2011, reports show a lower crime rate in the Hill District than several other Pittsburgh neighborhoods.
Furthermore, disproportionate negative media concentration on minority groups gives the illusion that crime is worse than it actually is. East Liberty is finally recovering from the damage it sustained in the 1950s. Thanks to an independent entity created by the Chamber of Commerce, which has been tasked with guiding new development, crime rates have been dramatically reduced in recent years, and business has returned to this area, which in turn has brought residents back as well.
Fear of losing the commercial core of East Liberty and the rush to relocate large numbers of people displaced by the construction of the Civic Arena in the Hill District crippled both neighborhoods and fundamentally changed the fabric of Pittsburgh. The upheaval caused by urban renewal fractured communities and undermined the stability in the city. Although well-intentioned, it was this top-down approach to fighting urban decay which soiled the very neighborhoods it had promised to save.
Urban renewal lingered in Pittsburgh into the 1960s, later dubbed the Uptown Renaissance, the 1970s, and even throughout the 2000s. Longtime residents of the Hill District and the surrounding area have yet to re-experience the brilliance of their once great region. Since the first wrecking ball struck in Pittsburgh, people, primarily African Americans, have been forced to live in circumstances that could only be described as degrees of dilapidation. Pittsburgh is a prime example of why heavy-handed urban renewal is not always the best recourse for revitalizing a city.
Instead of attempting to force neighborhoods towards modernism in a few short years, the lower hill would have benefited from a slow, gradual upgrade process. Equally so, East Liberty's knee-jerk reaction to perceived blight illuminates the dangerous side effects of wholesale clearance. Mismanagement of the redevelopment efforts is what ultimately crippled the Pittsburgh area. As relief continues to come slowly, it is important to recognize the mistakes of the past and the shockwaves that still resonate through the urban landscape.