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Steel City Stories · Urban Renewal

4 stories tagged “Urban Renewal”

History8 min read

The Neighborhood Pittsburgh Erased for Progress

Lower Hill urban renewal cleared a dense Black neighborhood for a redevelopment vision whose promised replacement city took decades to materialize.

2026-08-11
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History8 min read

The Mall That Pittsburgh Built to Save East Liberty—and Nearly Killed It

East Liberty’s Penn Circle and pedestrian-mall experiment tried to compete with suburban shopping but disrupted the street network and commercial ecosystem it was meant to save.

2026-08-11
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History8 min read

The Neighborhood Pittsburgh Almost Erased—and the People Who Fought Back

Manchester and Chateau show two sides of urban renewal: clearance and industrial conversion on one side, preservation and resident organizing on the other.

2026-08-11
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History20 min read

The Neighborhood Pittsburgh Erased to Build Its Renaissance

How the Lower Hill was declared blighted, cleared by public power, replaced by one of America's most futuristic arenas—and left Pittsburgh arguing for generations about what progress is allowed to cost.

2026-08-12
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Urban Renewal · Steel City Stories