Greening Legacy Cities to Build Economic Opportunity for All

In legacy (or-post industrial) cities, the need for access to open space and recreation can take on acute and unique challenges and opportunities. This panel will explore approaches in Pittsburgh and Euclid, OH to make green connections that also offer more equitable access and economic opportunity. The City of Pittsburgh and the ONEPGH Fund are piloting a program with funding from the Trust for Public Land for the 183-acre Hazelwood Greenway. Historically a vibrant working-class community, Hazelwood lost roughly 65 percent of its population following the decline of the steel industry and the final closure of the mill located on its riverfront in 1998.

Panelists will discuss how communities can create equitable growth through a focus on making outdoor environments safer and more welcoming places. Speakers will also tell the story of Euclid’s award-winning Waterfront Improvement Project, which opened up public access along a three-quarter-mile stretch of privately owned shoreline in a majority-minority community, in which only 6 percent of the lakefront was publicly owned and accessible, in a county where nearly 90 percent of lakefront is privately owned. They will describe a unique partnership, under which private landowners and the city provided public lakefront access in exchange for investment in shore protection designed to restore eroding shorelines.