ReClaim Ambassadors vacant lot designs come to life

As Ambassadors design, there are two ways to approach vacant land projects. Haven't met our Ambassadors yet? Check out the Northsiders and McKeesporters who are participating in the ReClaim program year! ReClaiming a vacant lot takes a lot of imagination, time, and careful thought before you even break ground. That's why our Ambassadors have been attending classes since last October. They’ve learned about how to transform vacant land into activated, green community spaces, the processes that come before and the partnerships that need to be…

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Preserving a Piece of Pittsburgh’s Incline History

Pittsburgh is the only city in the United States that still has two operational inclines — you know them as the Duquesne and the Monongahela. Back in the heyday of steel milling and coal mining along the three rivers' shores, dozens of inclines connected downtown with the housing on the hills. Not only did they serve as people carriers, they also hauled freight, horses and buggies and, later, cars. One such incline that is no longer in use is the Knoxville…

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Building Art from Trash in Homewood.

It was a cloudy, drizzly, predawn Sunday morning when the ReClaim team arrived on a vacant parcel located on the corner of Frankstown Avenue and North Lang,which adjoins the Marathon route. While nearly 30,000 individuals lined up Downtown to start their 26.2 mile trek to the finish line, we prepared for a marathon of reuse - using found, donated, and recycled materials from Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse and the streets of Homewood to build a collage with the neighborhood of Homewood.…

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Community Sunflower Harvest in Homewood

This past Saturday beneath the shadow of an old warehouse that advertises, "We Buy Aluminum & Cans, Copper, Brass" old and new converged as all 11,000 square feet of Pittsburgh's largest sunflower garden in a community were harvested by over 150 volunteers in the Homewood on Frankstown Avenue and Collier Street. The volunteer group was made up of individuals from Operation Better Block  (OBB), The University of Pittsburgh's Jumpstart program, which is a national early childhood literacy program that trains and…

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