State of the Land Report: March

Welcome to the State of the Land Report! March 2022 The State of the Land Report is our monthly update where we will be educating and sharing out about everything you need to know about vacant land policy in the City of Pittsburgh!  Lots of Wildflowers - Meadow St, Larimer Advocacy Network Thank you for subscribing to our advocacy network, if you have not already done so please subscribe here. Grounded is working to improve the condition of vacant lots by…

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State of the Land Report: January

Welcome to the State of the Land Report! January 2022 The State of the Land Report is our monthly update where we will be educating and sharing out about everything you need to know about vacant land policy in the City of Pittsburgh! Advocacy Network Thank you for subscribing to our advocacy network, if you have not already done so please subscribe here. We must ensure that the process of land recycling and maintenance is conducted equitably, transparently, and through an…

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Hike through Homewood Recap

Recap as told by: Philip Lawson         On the second week of March this year, Grounded Strategies partnered with Venture Outdoors for an event entitled “Snow Trek: A Winter Hike through Homewood.” With the help of several Homewood stewards and community partners, we had the chance to iterate an oral history of the Homewood-Brushton neighborhood, highlight a few standout institutions, and “get up close and personal” with a handful of well-stewarded community spaces. The event was a…

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Healing Our Soils Together: Building a Culture of Soil Keepers

Join us for a workshop on building community-scale initiatives that inspire and support environmental stewardship in Wilkinsburg and beyond. Nance Klehm, author, speaker, and teacher, will share ways we can engage local residents, instigate ecological projects, and build regenerative systems in ourselves and communities through soil and soul. Come learn strategies for relating to our communities in ways that build positive, beautiful and ecologically-beneficial environments for our neighbors. Food and drinks provided.  Prior to Nance's lecture, Grounded will provide an…

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RVP Reflection Series: What did Masoud see?

Throughout my experience at the Reclaiming Vacant Properties (RVP) conference in Atlanta this year, I encountered a storm of new, fresh, and different ideas about how to address many of the concerns generated by cycles of disinvestment within 'rust belt' cities. Beyond these techniques though, I think the far more valuable treasure gleaned at this event comes in the form of contacts and relationships with other folks performing similar work in parallel with Grounded across this country. Their insights, challenges,…

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Permaculture Design: Ecological Solutions to Planetary Problems

For the purposes of sorting out the issues our world currently faces and quelling the fires which threaten to consume us there is one system of ethics that seems particularly well suited. This system, developed from the synthesis of indigenous wisdom about Earth systems and modern best practices in the management of human populations is called Permaculture. Coined by Bill Mollison, the term permaculture is a combination of the words permanent and agriculture (or culture). However, it is an approach…

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