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Morgan Block: Conducting Property Surveys in West Homewood

At Operation Better Block, we are continuously conducting property surveys throughout the rest of the summer. According to our survey map, many of the homes surveyed are owned by either the City of Pittsburgh or the Urban Redevelopment Authority, which is an interesting find for anyone thinking about the future of Homewood. A stark contrast […]





Morgan Block: Examining Homewood’s Housing

The past month at Operation Better Block has served as a great learning experience. Some of my assignments have been surrounding the topic of housing in Homewood. Housing is a major issue in many, if not all, Pittsburgh neighborhoods, and housing contains significant value in sustainable cities. Interestingly, the City of Pittsburgh owns many vacant, […]


Camilla Cook: Tree Inventory Update #2

Since my last blog post, I have completed fieldwork for Block 1-5, which can be referenced in the map given in this post. Even though we have surveyed Helen S. Faison Arts Academy school, we are still having trouble identifying if the school has American Sycamore or its cultivated version, London Planetree in and around […]


Lauren Pepperman: Working on a new Storm Water Management course

For my internship, my primary focus will be planning and managing the creation of our green infrastructure course that we are (hopefully) offering to Chatham students and high school Homewood residents in the Fall. The class will be called “Storm Water Management in Urban Developments,” and will observe methodologies to reduce flooding in Pittsburgh, particularly […]


Camilla Cook: Tree Inventory Update #1

Hello everyone! As my research project was mentioned in my introduction provided by Sherrie, I will get right into the work I have done so far!  My inventory consists of collecting data on location (street), tree species, diameter at breast height (dbh), degree/percentage + distance (to calculate tree height), soundness (condition) of the bark, and […]


Meet our Homewood Community Project Team!

Thanks, Bank of America! Thanks to the generous grant funding by Bank of America, Chatham University professor, Iris Grossmann, Ph.D., of The Falk School of Sustainability and Environment, was able to recruit a team of students and other faculty members to work on what we hope to be a multi-year community-based sustainability project in Pittsburgh’s […]