A Chatham University blog about the work funded by Bank of America
Recently, Dr. Grossmann’s master-level course, Building Sustainable and Resilient Cities took a field trip to Homewood to have a tour of Cluster 4 with Operation Better Block’s (OBB) Gabby DeMarchi. The current Homewood grant project team members are in this class along with other first and second year Falk School of Sustainability graduate students. Gabby […]
More people need to come to Homewood to see what it is like. Too often, Pitt students are sheltered by the comfort of Oakland to venture out and witness what the city truly looks like. I think if more people witnessed Homewood, more people would demand action, and more action would ensue. I learned SO […]
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 […]
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, […]
When our team talks about working in specific Cluster in Homewood, you can see where we are working on this map, thanks to Operation Better Block. “Cluster Planning Map: Contrasting with past neighborhood-wide planning efforts, the Homewood Cluster Planning process more effectively engages community members by focusing on one part of the neighborhood at a time,” […]
Through my first few weeks at Operation Better Block, I have been working on/following a green infrastructure project in Homewood’s Cluster 4. The green infrastructure project will be placed along Finance Street and aims to aid in reducing the storm water runoff that has plagued the street, cluster, and neighborhood. Port Authority is spearheading the […]
My first weeks I helped out by organizing information about the various projects OBB has done. Through access to meeting notes and emails relating to the projects, I now have a deeper understanding of how non-profits create projects and how they go about reaching out to their community. It’s very rewarding to help OBB keep […]
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 […]
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 […]