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Pittsburgh's Hill District Was Cleared Once for an Arena. It Got a Veto Before the Second One Was Built.
Pittsburgh lost more than half its population after 1950, and the regional steel industry shed roughly 23,000 jobs in just five years starting in 1977 -- the visible, citywide version of the region's collapse. But the sharpest version of what actually rebuilt Pittsburgh happened at the scale of one neighborhood. In 1956, the city's own urban renewal authority demolished the Lower Hill District to build a Civic Arena, displacing 8,000 residents -- a fifth of the neighborhood -- and severing it from downtown, a wound that became the recurring subject of August Wilson's plays. Fifty-two years later, when the Pittsburgh Penguins needed a new arena on nearly the same ground, the Hill District was not cleared again. Almost 100 community groups, organized as the One Hill Coalition, negotiated a binding agreement first: $8.3 million in community investment, and veto power over the neighborhood's own master plan. Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, launched the same year Pittsburgh's steel job losses were accelerating, rebuilt the region's economy from the top down. The Hill District proved the other half of the same city could rebuild the same way twice and get a different result, because this time the people who lived there had the power to say no.

Start with the numbers that made Pittsburgh a national symbol of decline, because they're real. The city's population peaked at 676,000 in 1950 and has fallen to roughly 304,000 today -- more than half gone.[1] The regional steel industry lost approximately 23,000 jobs in the five years between 1977 and 1982 alone, the leading edge of a collapse that hit the entire Rust Belt at once.[1] Pittsburgh, unlike Cleveland, Detroit, and Buffalo, eventually stabilized -- but the citywide story of universities and tech investment replacing steel is only half of how that actually happened.[2]

676,000 → 304,000Pittsburgh's population, 1950 to today -- more than half gone
8,000Hill District residents displaced in 1956 to build the original Civic Arena -- a fifth of the neighborhood
$8.3M + veto powerwhat the same neighborhood won, in writing, before the second arena broke ground in 2008

The top-down version of Pittsburgh's recovery is real, and it started the same year the region's job losses were accelerating. Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute launched in October 1979 -- the first academic department in the world devoted exclusively to robotics -- built on a $3 million Westinghouse Corporation grant and a five-year, five-million-dollar commitment CMU's own president secured after taking his case directly to the Pentagon and the Office of Naval Research.[3] By 1988 CMU was the first university anywhere offering a PhD in robotics.[3] This is a real engine, and it is the story most people already know: universities and health systems replacing steel, one institution deciding to rebuild an industry from above.

The version this site is actually pointing at happened at the scale of one neighborhood, and it happened twice on nearly the same ground. In 1956, Pittsburgh's urban renewal authority began demolishing the Lower Hill District to build a Civic Arena. Roughly 8,000 residents -- a fifth of the neighborhood's population -- were displaced, hundreds of businesses were destroyed, and the arena physically severed the Hill from downtown Pittsburgh.[4] That single act of demolition became the recurring wound in the plays of August Wilson, who grew up in the Hill and wrote Fences, Two Trains Running, and Jitney against its memory.[4]

People rebuild where they want to be -- not where a plan puts them Every region this site has traced rebuilds around what a government, a university, or a company decides to build. The Hill District is the case where the actual decision-maker was the neighborhood itself, negotiated in advance, in writing, with veto power attached -- not granted from above, won directly by the people who had already been displaced once and organized so it would not happen to them the same way twice.

A third version of the same choice was already running in the background the entire time, and it predates the steel collapse. Art Rooney Sr. founded the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1933 and grew up on the city's North Side, part of the same industrial working-class world the mills built.[5] Through the 1950s and '60s, other cities actively courted the Rooneys to relocate the franchise -- and the family turned every offer down, choosing to make the team work through Pittsburgh's hardest economic decades instead of trading the city for a better deal elsewhere.[5] The Rooneys have owned the Steelers continuously since 1933, the identical span of time this piece has been tracing collapse and rebuilding -- not because leaving wasn't an option, because staying was a choice the family kept making.

Fifty-two years later, the same ground came up for redevelopment again, and this time the neighborhood didn't wait to be told what would happen to it. When the Pittsburgh Penguins needed a new arena to replace the aging Civic Arena, the Urban Redevelopment Authority gave the team development rights to the 28 surrounding acres.[6] Almost 100 Hill District community groups organized as the One Hill Coalition and negotiated a binding Community Benefits Agreement before construction began -- not a request, a signed contract with the Penguins and city and county agencies.[6] The agreement delivered $8.3 million in direct community-development funding and non-monetary commitments, and it gave the Hill community a steering committee with real veto power over the master plan for all future development in the neighborhood.[6]

The same city ran the same play twice, fifty-two years apart, and got two different outcomes for one reason. In 1956, the decision belonged entirely to the urban renewal authority, and the neighborhood found out what was happening to it as the demolition started. In 2008, the decision belonged, by contract, partly to the neighborhood itself. Carnegie Mellon's robotics engine and the Hill District's veto power are not competing explanations for how Pittsburgh rebuilt. They're the same city solving the identical problem -- what do you do with ground that used to hold something else -- at two different scales, with two different answers to the one question that actually decided the outcome: who gets to say what happens next.

The takeaway Pittsburgh lost more than half its population after 1950 (676,000 down to roughly 304,000), and the regional steel industry shed about 23,000 jobs in just five years starting in 1977. Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, launched in October 1979 with Pentagon-backed funding and a Westinghouse grant, is the well-known top-down version of how the region rebuilt. The sharper version happened at the scale of one neighborhood. In 1956, Pittsburgh's urban renewal authority demolished the Lower Hill District to build a Civic Arena, displacing 8,000 residents -- a fifth of the neighborhood -- a wound that became the recurring subject of August Wilson's plays. Fifty-two years later, when the Pittsburgh Penguins needed a new arena on nearly the same ground, the neighborhood was not cleared again: almost 100 community groups, organized as the One Hill Coalition, negotiated a binding Community Benefits Agreement first -- $8.3 million in community investment and veto power over the neighborhood's own master plan. Same city, same kind of project, fifty-two years apart -- the outcome changed because who got to decide changed.
Sources
  1. Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Rust and Renewal: A Pittsburgh Retrospective
  2. The Conversation, Pittsburgh's Post-Steel Economy Is a Success -- and a Warning for Other Cities
  3. CMU Robotics Institute, History of the Robotics Institute
  4. Heinz History Center, Crossroads of the World: How Urban Renewal Changed the Hill
  5. NFL.com, Dan Rooney Left Indelible Stamp on Pittsburgh Steelers and NFL
  6. PowerSwitch Action, Historic CBA Signed in Pittsburgh