The former Penn Plaza site has been empty since 2017, when the complex was torn down to make way for a commercial and retail development.
MARGARET J. KRAUSS / 90.5 WESA
Who has land, what do they do with it and how does that power shape cities
In 2015, residents of the Penn Plaza apartment buildings in Pittsburgh, Pa. learned that they’d have to leave their homes to make way for a new development. The news arrived like a pronouncement: this neighborhood, East Liberty, isn’t for you anymore.
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Fred Vigeant
MARGARET J. KRAUSS / 90.5 WESA
The former Penn Plaza site has been empty since 2017, when the complex was torn down to make way for a commercial and retail development.
Listen for Land & Power, produced by WESA-90.5 Pittsburgh Saturdays at 4:30pm beginning January 2 on WITF.
You’ve probably heard this story before, or stories like it, about people being pushed out of neighborhoods they’ve called home for years. About government officials leaping into the fray. About how cities try to balance growth and equity.
But usually these stories are told from places like New York City and Los Angeles, Miami and Nashville. Places where there really aren’t enough homes for everyone who wants to be there. But Pittsburgh is a city built for twice as many people. We lost half our population in the 1980s when manufacturing collapsed, and those people never came back. How can a city with thousands of vacant homes push people out?
It turns out, it’s not just about scarcity, it’s about choices. It’s about who’s at the table and who’s calling the shots.
In this 5-part series Land & Power, we’ll go beyond what happened in East Liberty to explain how it happened. This story is one of big gambles, unlikely wins, hubris, misunderstandings and a bid to remake the city.
So often in these stories, developers are the bad guys, activists are the good guys and residents are the victims. But it’s never that simple.
Land & Power explores how one place becomes another, and what that means for the people who used to call it home. How even when everyone thinks they’re doing the right thing, people still get hurt. That hurt sticks around. And that shapes our cities, too.
Hear Land & Power on WITF 89.5 & 93.3, through your Smart Speaker and at WITF.org Saturdays at 4:30pm through the month of January. More information on this series, as well as audio on-demand is available here…
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