Greenways for Pittsburgh 2.0

In 1980 the “Greenways for Pittsburgh” program was established to consolidate steeply sloped, unbuildable land for the purpose of protecting hillsides and preserving passive open space. evolveEA led a refresh of the program, focusing on policy and stewardship recommendations to clarify and improve the greenway designation and stewardship processes. The new plan reflects the City’s Resiliency Plan goals, its limited financial resources, and current standardized processes.

Through extensive research, community engagement, a review of existing greenway programs, and a series of workshops with various City Departments, the team developed a policy guide including recommendations to improve policies around the stewardship, design, development, and management of greenways in the City. This guide proposes a clarified five-stage greenway designation and stewardship process, and considers steward identification and retention, revised zoning, form templates, roles and responsibilities, streamlined processes, and more.

Related to the policy guide, a public-facing resource guide was created, which informs community members interested in designating and stewarding their greenways about the proposed process. This guide steps community members through the process, and describes funding resources, greenway components, legal and liability requirements, typologies, and other information. The resource guide also includes customized community engagement toolkits for city planner to use to inform, engage, and activate residents to become greenway stewards and advocates.

Additionally, the project included a City-wide greenway vision and framework to plan for growth of existing greenways and to improve the functioning of other types of open space. This included the development of special open source computational tools that assists planners in prioritizing greenway and open space development.

Awards: PA-DE ASLA 2018 Honor Award, Analysis and Planning; APA-PA Chapter 2018 Planning Award