Experimenting with infrastructure provision: Comparing ecodistricts in the Pittsburgh metro region

Keywords: Sustainability experiment, social infrastructure, urban sustainability, community development
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 35

Abstract

Urban sustainability is increasingly driven by diverse coalitions of civic, private, and government actors who seek to develop and scale new ways of meeting social needs via small-scale, project-based “experiments.” While some such experiments are lauded for developing and “scaling up” innovations that support sustainable development to broader geographic or governance levels, others fail to do so or are criticized for promoting narrow interests and uneven development. There is a need to better understand what affects the potential for sustainability experiments to promote sustainable development at and beyond their project scales. Because many experiments focus on developing and/or re-purposing infrastructures, it is particularly important to understand how these processes shape both these novel governance configurations and the infrastructures themselves. This research compares how two neighborhood “ecodistrict” experiments in Pittsburgh, PA, shape and are shaped by their defining infrastructure projects. While both ecodistricts are creating or re-designing infrastructures to better serve the social needs of their respective communities, the infrastructures function at different scales, provide different services, and bring together different networks of governance actors. The Uptown Eco-Innovation District was catalyzed by community resistance to and efforts to re-design a large-scale BRT system proposed by the state and is led by a network of non-profit and institutional actors. The Millvale Ecodistrict was catalyzed by the resident-led development of a community library and is led by a network of community groups and volunteers. These differences have implications for the governance, infrastructure provision, and scaling mechanisms that each ecodistrict develops and employs.