In 2023, Pittsburgh’s Department of City Planning will begin work on a new comprehensive plan intended to guide the city for years to come.
“We need to know where we’re going. We need a direction,” said Karen Abrams, who leads the department. “And for that to happen, we need a plan.”
And the goal of that effort is the creation of a sweeping agenda that will help guide how the city grows and changes for the next 25 years.
The word “comprehensive” appeared repeatedly in the transition report released to Mayor Ed Gainey in July.
The transition team argued that the “absence of a comprehensive approach to land-use planning in Pittsburgh has allowed for decades of piecemeal decision-making driven by outside developer interests rather than community input.” By contrast, a resident-driven, city-guided comprehensive plan would proactively “set standards” for affordable housing, transportation and infrastructure. The report also made recommendations for a comprehensive approach to youth mental health, public safety, food security — and, critically, for the city as a whole.
Abrams expects it will take three to five years to complete such a plan.
Early next year, City Planning will create a strategic plan for the department so staff has the time and resources to launch the comprehensive effort. It’s not yet clear how the work on the comprehensive plan will affect the day-to-day work of the department. But Abrams said that staff will not take on any new neighborhood master plans, which have traditionally guided development in specific areas of the city.
After some work to research the history of land use in the city, the bulk of the department’s focus will be on community engagement: meeting with residents, businesses and community organizations in all 90 neighborhoods to talk about what they envision for themselves, and for the city as a whole.
“That will take, obviously, a long time,” Abrams said, noting that Chicago spent nearly half of its comprehensive plan budget on outreach and community engagement. “We want to have everybody’s voice in the conversation, particularly young people.”
Work on the comprehensive plan was a major part of DCP’s budget request for 2023; Abrams expects to hire six more people to work on what she anticipates to be a $4.5 million project.
An essential part of the initiative is an overhaul of the city’s zoning code, Abrams said. Those are the regulations that govern everything from how tall a building can be to where a restaurant or daycare can open.
“How our city is built is based upon zoning code,” she said. “And that's fundamental to a lot of the barriers that a lot of our communities, particularly [that] our black residents and black communities are facing.”
Abrams did not get into specifics, noting that uncovering and unraveling those structural barriers is part of the task ahead. But staff in other city planning departments, such as in Louisville, KY — with which Pittsburgh staff has been in contact — trace the impact of defining “blight,” and follow segregation ordinances through time.
Talk of a comprehensive review of land use and zoning may sound familiar: In September 2020, Mayor Bill Peduto launched a comprehensive planning effort called Forging PGH. That, too, promised significant community engagement to shape a new vision for the city. Abrams said the effort had largely stalled, citing the coronavirus and the change in administration. However, she said great work was done on a housing needs assessment, an overview of economic development and preliminary work to update the zoning code. Those efforts, she said, give the department a head start.
Ultimately, she said, the comprehensive plan is intended to create a just, equitable city for all – one that answers the question “How do we unlock opportunities for people who've been left out of our economy? How do we unlock a lot of the ingenuity and innovation happening in those places where people have been locked out of the economy?”
Abrams stressed that the comprehensive plan is the city’s, and not just that of the planning department. She said she and her staff will work with City Council, city commissions and other agencies to create a plan that everyone can support.
