Neighbors Collaborate on a Neighborhood Identity

Recently evolveEA led the final community meeting in a three-part Identity and Visioning project for Pittsburgh’s Brookline neighborhood. Residents, local business owners, and community leaders came together to build on the work of past meetings and further develop a vision for a future Brookline.

Drawing from a variety of ideas generated at the community meetings, as well as from the online community at OurBrookline.com, we presented three potential identities for Brookline: International Marketplace, Fun & Fit, and Friendly & Accessible. These three identities were distilled from recurring themes in meeting discussions and the website.

The second half of the meeting was dedicated to generating project ideas for Brookline that would support these identities. The creativity and resolve of Brookliners was on exhibit as five teams presented their ideas for a better Brookline. The ideas ranged from mobile farmer’s markets to fitness walking paths with mile markers along Brookline Blvd. A King of the Mountain cycling race along Edgebrook Ave. generated excitement from many of the participants, and an idea to brand smaller districts along the Boulevard brought the identity visioning exercise to another level.

We were lucky to have a motivated group of creative community members for this last meeting and will be continuing the engagement with OurBrookline.com. evolveEA will also be producing a report based on our findings and recommendations for Brookline in the coming month.