We all love to hate potholes. Pittsburgh has plenty, and whether you are on a bike or in a car, it is no fun to hit one. While the city doubled its paving budget to $11 million this year, this will still only cover a fraction of the potholes that have sprung up in the 400 miles of city streets.

Pittsburgh potholes can currently be phoned in by concerned citizens to the city’s 311 help line. New technologies aim to help Pittsburgh and other cities to find and prioritize street repairs. Last year, a team at Carnegie Mellon University launched the RODAS (Road Damage Assessment System) Project. RODAS uses cell phone photos, which are correlated with GPS coordinates, to map potholes. The site currently lists 939 potholes.

New York City’s Department of Transportation maintains “The Daily Pothole,” a Tumblr which includes a form for reporting potholes and a running tally of the number of potholes repaired.

The City of Boston’s Office of New Urban Mechanics is taking a different approach with a smartphone app called Street Bump. Building off the premise that most people won’t make the effort to report potholes themselves, Street Bump uses the gyroscopes in smartphones do the reporting instead: community involvement without people!

photo via flickr user MSVG.

cityLAB’s president, Eve Picker,  was quoted in yet another article in the Springfield, Illinois State Journal-Register about her work there this week with the AIA Sustainable Design Assessment Team.

Comparing the issues facing downtown Springfield to issues that downtown Pittsburgh struggled with for decades, including “retailers moving out, loss of residents and workers, and convincing developers to invest in an older section of the city,” Eve emphasized multiple measures to encourage investment, including marketing. As Eve said, “A marketing effort helps, especially for first-time residents. There are a number of small things that can happen right away.”

Read more about the SDAT and Springfield here.

photo via flickr user straightedge217.

cityLAB’s Eve Picker has had some more press coverage about her upcoming trip to Springfield, Illinois from The State Journal-Register and from WUIS Public Radio in Springfield. Drawing on her expertise as architect, urban designer, and real estate developer, Eve will strategize along with the other members of the AIA Sustainable Design Assessment Team about ways to repopulate downtown Springfield’s residential and commercial buildings. The team will hear from Springfield residents at a town hall meeting on May 7th and, after two days of intensive workshopping, will present their findings at a second public meeting on May 9th.

Bon travail, Eve!

photo via flickr user straightedge217.

cityLAB’s CEO, Eve Picker, has been named to the Springfield Sustainable Design Assessment Team, which will study ways to make downtown Springfield, Illinois more livable. Springfield architect Chuck Pell said of the team in this article: “These are very interesting and creative people who are certainly going to be able to help us.”

Read more about this project and about Eve’s involvement here.

In late February, cityLAB toured the empty Rogers School building in Garfield with a group including representatives from the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation, the Garfield Jubilee Association, and two artists who work on Penn Avenue. Built in 1914 and used as a school until 2009, the Rogers School building is very big, beautiful, and uncannily quiet.

Click here to see some photos from our visit.

A quick update about our 6% Place experiment:

Since the new year, we have been working with CMU’s Urban Design Build Studio to make sure that the students’ work on the 6% Place incentives is ready to show to potential funders, planning a strategy for the 6% Place with the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation and UDBS, and meeting with potential funders to get some of our 6% Place projects off the ground.

We hope to have good news to share soon!

Micah Toll, a mechanical engineering student at the University of Pittsburgh (and former cityLIVE! panelist), is getting national media coverage for a Pittsburgh start-up he founded with two of his classmates. Pulse Motors designs and produces a two-wheeled electric vehicle called the Personal Electric Vehicle Zero, or PEV0, which can drive 100 miles on $0.25 of electricity and aims to provide an alternative for city commuters. Pulse is accepting applications for PEV0 Beta Testers on their website through the spring of 2012, and plans to expand their business internationally over the next couple of years.

Learn more at Pulse’s website, or read more about them over at Inc. magazine.

On Friday, The Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation held a ground-breaking ceremony for forty-five new homes in Garfield. As this article in the Post-Gazette describes, this effort is the “last leg of a decade-long, $24 million scattered-site effort that has coincided with a 45 percent drop in crime” in the neighborhood.

Read more about the BGC’s efforts and Garfield residents’ reactions here and here.

photo via Marquette University’s Flickr stream

Six days from now, Eve Picker, cityLAB’s intrepid CEO, will be meeting at the White House and wants to hear from you:

“Help wanted! 6 days from now I’ll be at the White House, in a meeting with the administration and other Pittsburgh business and civic leaders.They want to hear how they can help spur job creation and economic development in Pittsburgh.They want to hear our ideas about what they could be doing more or, or less of.

While I have ideas, I’ll bet all of you have more. Send them to me and I’ll write them up and take them along!”

Leave your ideas as comments here or send them to info@citylabpgh.org.

UPDATE: read Eve’s thoughts about her trip here.

cityLAB recently received an email from a long-time Pittsburgher who now lives in Harare, Zimbabwe. He writes:

Dear Garfield Neighbors,

Please find my contribution to your community creating its future: Invest. Brand. Plan.

Good luck with the process!

Mike Staresinic
Harare, Zimbabwe
Pittsburgh from 2012

Garland Clubs. Recovery takes time. Start small start now: combine joined parcels for gardens, greenways, community vegetable gardens and the like, as a viable investment strategy to attract neighborhood investment clubs. For the price of acquisition, tax, fencing, and some weed whacking, each patch of green neighborhood pulls the rest up. Over time, the surroundings come up due to these Garlands. As new housing picks up, it has green neighbors. Those who hold the green get their investment back as a neighborhood develops around them (eventually selling or developing their land), while residents walk the garlands  in an upcoming, natural, strengthening neighborhood. I am prepared to organize the first Garland Club.

Garland Brand. Garfield needs a new brand. Named for an inconsequential President who nobody remembers (quiz: ask meeting participants for that president’s first name), please play with options: 25% Garland. Gardens. 20% vacant can be readily made into a wonderful number when it = 25% FREE, 25% SPACE TO BREATHE, 25% NATURAL 25%. Natural material is the neighborhood’s natural strength. Pump it up to 25% Garlanded Garfield.

Holistic, Full-Cycle Planning. Pittsburgh should not be proud of its speed of demolition, rather speed of redevelopment. Figuring out the full cycle before buildings unfortunately go down transforms demolition from a loser into a winner.

Thanks for contributing your ideas, Mike!

view of Harare by Flickr user Simon Kelly

cityLAB’s 6% Place book has been written up in the Bloomfield-Garfield Bulletin. In the article, Rick Swartz, executive director of the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation, says, “The book is an impressive piece of work that should fuel conversation and planning discussions for years to come.”

Read the article below and read more of the January issue of The Bulletin here.

Thanks to the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation and to The Bulletin for their support and for the mention.

Watch the full version here.

Watch the full version here.

cityLAB’s experiments create a buzz and seed change in cities. Your donation would help us to DO more next year, and that would be a holiday gift for all of us!

Click here to donate. Your tax-deductible donation will help keep us doing great experiments in the city!

November 17 2011 | New Hazlett Theater | 6.30 P.M.

Can algebra be an organizing principal for a civil rights movement?  Robert Parris Moses thinks so!  As the founder of the Alegbra Project, a revolutionary educational tool, Dr. Moses will show how mathematics can be used as an organizing tool to guarantee quality public school education for all students. As a result of his efforts, Dr. Moses received the Heinz Award from the Heinz Family Foundation for making math instruction available to children of all backgrounds.

Carey Harris, Executive Director of A+ Schools, an independent advocate for improvement in public education, will highlight local efforts and trends to provide opportunities to public school students and will also moderate the discussion, which we’ll kick off with some questions from Pittsburgh Public School students.

Be there or be square.

The Carnegie Museum of Art and the Community Design Center of Pittsburgh are sponsoring a free screening of the film Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of Rural Studio at 2:30 PM on November 12, 2011. The screening will be held at the Carnegie Museum of Art Theater at 4400 Forbes Avenue in Oakland. Read more about the screening here, read more about the film here, read an interview with the filmmaker about the film and Rural Studio’s work here, and watch the trailer below.

The AIGA Pittsburgh will be screening the new Gary Hustwit film, Urbanized, at the Harris Theater on November 8th at 9 PM and November 9th at 7 PM. Read more about the screenings here and watch the trailer below.

The new Pittsburgh CONNECTS Lab in Garfield has a series of great workshops coming up, including sessions on computer and software training, free computer repair, writing invoices for non-profit organizations, and information about how to apply for heating assistance this winter. Read more about their November events here. In October, they are offering:

“Microsoft Excel Basics” on October 27th 2:00 PM;

“Invoicing for Non-Profits” on October 29th 6:00 PM;

And a PNCIS Information Session on October 27th at 6:00 PM.

RSVP or find out more about the workshops by calling 412-456-0858, by writing BGC.ENEC@gmail.com, or visiting their website.

Can algebra be an organizing principal for a civil rights movement?  Robert Parris Moses thinks so!   As the founder of the Alegbra Project, a revolutionary educational tool, Dr. Moses will show how mathematics can be used as an organizing tool to guarantee quality public school education for all students. As a result of his efforts, Dr. Moses received the Heinz Award from the Heinz Family Foundation for making math instruction available to children of all backgrounds.

Carey Harris, Executive Director of A+ Schools, an independent advocate for improvement in public education, will highlight local efforts and trends to provide opportunities to public school students and will also moderate the discussion, which we’ll kick off with some questions from Pittsburgh Public School students.

Be there or be square.

Missed this event? Catch the full video here or the short version here.

Last night’s cityLIVE! event was written up in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review this morning. Moderated by Melanie Harrington, CEO of Vibrant Pittsburgh, the event featured D. Raja and Rich Fitzgerald, candidates for Allegheny County executive. Read the Pittsburgh Tribune Review’s coverage of the event here.

Pittsburgh is less diverse than 98 out of 100 of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States, according to the 2010 census …”whiter even than the Amish country around Lancaster, the Mormon population center of Salt Lake City, Midwest agrarian capitals such as Des Moines, Iowa, and far more isolated places like Boise, Idaho,” says Gary Rotstein of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. “How does a region built on immigration, albeit from previous centuries, come to have in 2011 such a small share of people of color?”

On October 18, cityLIVE! and Vibrant Pittsburgh will host a conversation between candidates D. Raja, Rich Fitzgerald and you, the audience, on the status of foreign born talent and diversity in the region. Economic development is at the heart of this discussion.  For instance, 25% of U.S. business owners in the technology and engineering sector are foreign born, as are the owners of 24% of patent applications filed.  Moderated by Melanie Harrington, CEO of Vibrant Pittsburgh, we will hear how our future leaders plan to tackle these issues in their future role as Allegheny County Executive.

This is an important conversation.  Be there, or be really square.

Missed this event? Catch the full video here or the short version here.

On Tuesday night, cityLAB held a brainstorming session to work through the 16 incentives for our 6% Place in Garfield.  Community members worked with the Carnegie Mellon architecture students who are researching and designing the incentives this semester.

After a presentation about the 6% Place and student progress on the projects, we organized into break-out sessions. CMU students and community members worked together in 8 groups to make the incentives as good, as strong, and as viable as possible.

Read more about the background of the experiment here and watch this space to hear more about the 6% incentives in the coming weeks.

We’ve had some great press coverage about our 6% Place experiment and the brainstorming meeting we will be holding tomorrow in Garfield.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review posted a short article about the meeting yesterday, and The Bulletin, a publication of the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation, just published a great piece about the experiment, the 16 ideas for Garfield, and our upcoming meeting. Read their coverage here, and read more of their October issue here.

Thanks to the Tribune-Review and The Bulletin for this great coverage!

P.S. R.S.V.P. to tomorrow’s brainstorming meeting here!

Please join us tomorrow night to brainstorm about 16 fantastic ideas for Garfield. 70 architecture students are working on these ideas right now and need your feedback! Garfield residents, adults, youth, stakeholders, and community leaders alike, anyone who is excited about Garfield’s future, should attend tomorrow’s meeting at the BGC Community Activity Center at 113 North Pacific Avenue.

The evening will begin at 6 PM with a repeat presentation of the 16 ideas and images of the students’ work so far, followed by the brainstorming session at 7 PM. Please join us to make an exciting change in Garfield! (And: cookies will be served!)

R.S.V.P. here.

Come help us connect the dots! Your ideas for Garfield are needed at a brainstorming session!

Help us brainstorm for change in Garfield on Tuesday, October 4th at the BGC Community Activity Center, 113 North Pacific Avenue. We’ll explore 16 fantastic ideas for Garfield’s future with 70 architecture students.

Hear the 6% Place presentation at 6 PM (a repeat performance) and join in with your ideas at 7 PM.

Be there or be square!

R.S.V.P. to the 6% Brainstorming Meeting here.

The next phase of our 6% Place experiment got off to a strong start last Wednesday at our community meeting at the St. Lawrence O’Toole Activity Center in Garfield.  Garfield residents, along with neighbors from Friendship and beyond, listened to cityLAB present 16 projects for the 6% Place, all designed to reach our 6% goal.   We listened to comments, organized committees and are preparing for the next phase – the DO phase.

Details to follow!

Get the word out! cityLAB will be holding a community meeting for our 6% Place experiment on September 7th in Garfield – and we need YOU to come and GET INVOLVED!

The community meeting will be held from 6 to 7:30 PM on Wednesday, September 7th at the St. Lawrence O’Toole Activity Center on 140 N. Atlantic Avenue in Garfield.

cityLAB will be unveiling the ‘toolbox’ for our 6% Percent Place experiment and what comes next. We need your input – there will be 90 CMU architecture students there to work with you!

Munchies and drinks will be served.

R.S.V.P. to the 6% Percent Place Community Meeting here.

We hope to see you there!

Hot off the presses! cityLAB will be holding a community meeting for our 6% Place experiment on September 7th in Garfield – and we need YOU to come and GET INVOLVED!

The community meeting will be held from 6 to 7:30 PM on Wednesday, September 7th at the St. Lawrence O’Toole Activity Center on 140 N. Atlantic Avenue in Garfield.

cityLAB will be unveiling the ‘toolbox’ for our 6% Percent Place experiment and what comes next. We need your input – there will be 90 CMU architecture students there to work with you!

Munchies and drinks will be served.

R.S.V.P. to the 6% Percent Place Community Meeting here.

We hope to see you there!

We are looking for some superheroes…

to come to a COMMUNITY MEETING being held from 6 to 7:30 PM on Wednesday, September 7 at the St. Lawrence O’Toole Activity Center on 140 N. Atlantic Avenue in Garfield.

cityLAB will be unveiling the ‘toolbox’ for its Six Percent Place experiment and what comes next. We need your input – there will be 90 CMU architecture students there to work with you!

Munchies and drinks will be served.

R.S.V.P. to the Six Percent Place Community Meeting here.

We are excited to announce that we will be holding a community meeting to give an update on our Six Percent Place experiment and unveil our toolbox and what comes next.

The community meeting will be held at Garfield’s St. Lawrence O’Toole Activity Center on 140 N. Atlantic Avenue on Wednesday, September 7 from 6 to 7:30 PM.

Come GET INVOLVED! (There will be 90 CMU Architecture students there to work with you.)

Munchies and drinks will be served.

Find out more about our Six Percent Place experiment here.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette‘s City Walkabout blog, written by Diana Nelson Jones, mentioned our last post about Pittsburgh’s demographic jump in twentysomethings. In fact, they mentioned it twice! Thanks for spreading the word, City Walkabout and Post-Gazette! And stay tuned for more from cityLAB and Six Percent Place.

This trend has been reported, but, looking at the how dramatic the increase is, it feels like the headline has rather been buried — though the conclusion remains the same: that we must incentivize more twentysomethings to move to Pittsburgh and to keep them here for good. Six Percent Place’s focus on planning for human investment aims to do exactly that.

Pittsburgh has an abundance in unusual place names, from Squirrel Hill to Panther Hollow, from Asterisk Way to Woolslayer Way. It is a delightful experience to stumble onto a beautiful, unexpected, or strange name on a street sign – a unique name can take you by surprise and even make you look at a place with new eyes.

One of Garfield’s two parks, Kite Hill Park is a small park with a great name: forthright, declarative, evocative. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a sign to tell its name – the only thing in Kite Hill Park that says “KITE HILL PARK” is a trashcan on its basketball court.

Kite Hill Park needs more than a sign in order to be a place that people want to be — but maybe something as little as a sign would make Kite Hill Park more visible and more valuable, both to current and potential residents of Garfield, as well as people in neighborhoods around the city.

We’ve posted a lot of information about our Six Percent Place experiment on this blog.  It’s a long way back to the beginning for late-comers to our site, so we thought we’d catch you up quickly.

Ten months ago we launched our Six Percent Place experiment.  Our objective was to find an interesting but needy place and test out the following hypothesis: that a worker population that includes just 6% of “creatives” can turn a neighborhood into a hotbed of creativity, and become an attractive place for future residents; and that such a population can turn a place into a thriving community.

Since then we have carefully explored the tri-neighborhood area of Penn Avenue, Garfield and Friendship.    We are finishing up gathering data and are in the process of documenting it.   Watch these pages as we tell you more about what we have discovered.

image via techstep‘s flickr stream.

“I often imagine a world in which the only motor vehicles on the road are ambulances, trolleys and/or buses, special needs cars and delivery trucks — all powered without fossil fuels. I can see most of us walking, bicycling, driving golf carts or, when merited, riding in a sedan chair on the backs of brawny studs.”

Diana will be at cityLIVE! on June 13, to hear what Gil Peñalosa has to say.  And if that isn’t reason enough to come, this event is Jason’s #1 pick on thisishappening.com.

You’d better be there …

There’s a bike-sharing demo in Market Square tomorrow (June 9) between 10 and 2. Don’t miss it!  While you are there, check out the Farmer’s Market as well.

B-cycle, one of Fast Company’s 10 Most Innovative Companies in Transportation, brings bike-sharing to US communities.   Tomorrow they’re going to give it a whirl in Pittsburgh.   You can check out a bike and test ride it.

Fun!

We took a look at gas shutoffs in order to measure the number of vacant properties.  In Garfield, we found seventy, while in Friendship we found nineteen.