Sabina Deitrick

New Urbanism in the Inner City: A Case Study of Pittsburgh

Abstract This article argues that community development efforts can be significantly improved through careful attention to urban design. One potential design application is New Urbanism, which offers promising principles for integrating affordable housing into inner-city neighborhoods. These points are illustrated through a case study of four New Urbanist projects in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Here, New Urbanists have been involved in community-based, inner-city revitalization efforts for more than two decades. This is often overlooked in a critical literature that focuses only on New Urbanist communities in the suburbs. While it is too early to pronounce final, comprehensive judgments on these Pittsburgh projects, they illustrate an important new direction that is worthy of close study by urban planners, community development officials, scholars of urban affairs, and urban designers. Like the best-selling first edition, this report offers specific design guidance to planners, developers, and others involved in laying out, regulating, and reviewing proposals for “traditional neighborhoods.” For this edition, Arendt revised the model ordinance and subdivision regulations to make them easier to implement. Illustrations on the CD-ROM are directly tied to the provisions of the regulations. The CD-ROM also includes the authors running commentary on the regulations.

Collaborative Strategies for Reindustrialization: Sheffield and Pittsburgh

Governmental actors in regions faced with stagnant or declining economies often involve various groups in the common pursuit of a reversal of fortunes. Such collaborations recognize that economic development is as much an organizational and political as an economic activity. This article reviews the economic development collaborations that formed in Sheffield (England) and Pittsburgh (United States) during the 1980s in order to turn those regional economies away from reliance on a rapidly disappearing dominant industry. The purpose of this comparative analysis is to develop lessons for policymakers who are contemplating or currently undertaking such approaches to regional economic development.

Gender Wage Disparity in the Pittsburgh Region

This article analyzes the gender wage gap in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, region and possible explanations for the disparity in earnings between women and men. Today, women’s labor force participation rates in Pittsburgh mirror national averages, but the gender wage gap in the region remains larger than the U.S. average. The article places women’s role in the workforce in Pittsburgh in the context of the regional economy and its changes. The major changes in the role of women in the Pittsburgh regional economy occurred during a period of major economic restructuring of the regional economy beginning in the 1980s, lagging women nationally. Economic restructuring in an older industrial region, such as Pittsburgh, changed both where people worked and who worked. The research then compares possible explanations for the gender wage gap in Pittsburgh to the United States using the Oaxaca decomposition. The results find that in Pittsburgh, women are not as concentrated in low-paying occupations compared to the United States, but are much more likely to be working in low-paying industries compared to the United States. The authors find that the legacy of Pittsburgh’s highly specialized industrial structure and its impacts on women’s labor force participation rates still exert a force today as the regional economy continues its restructuring process.

The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military Remapping of Industrial America.

Since World War II, Americas economic landscape has undergone a profound transformation. This economic restructuring, the authors argue, is a direct result of the rise of the military industrial complex (MIC) and the formation of a new industry based on defence spending and Pentagon contracts. This book chronicles the dramatic growth of this vast complex.