Pittsburgh in 2050 could mean climate justice and equitable change
What do you want Pittsburgh to look like in 25 years? What type of city do you want your grandchildren to live in?
Jamil Bey, Pittsburgh’s director of city planning, reflects on these two questions as he helps draft the city’s 2050 Comprehensive Plan.
Pittsburgh’s plan is a vision for growth, sustainability and equity by 2050, Bey told NEXTpittsburgh. Its creation has prioritized both data and the lived experience of residents to address environmental, racial, economic, structural, housing, zoning and a host of other issues the city faces.
“We’ve been managing decline for a long time without a plan, and so this was an opportunity for us to assert our values, our interests and capture what is the city? What do we want to be? Who do we want to be?” Bey said.
The plan’s five priorities are:
- Addressing past harms
- Improving current conditions
- Uplifting the assets we value
- Directing equitable future change
- Planning with opportunities where all Pittsburghers can have a voice.
The city’s webpage for the plan specifically references racist land use policies that have left a legacy of segregation and the health consequences associated with Pittsburgh’s smog-filled industrial past.
“One of the reasons we haven’t grown is because we have not had this conversation,” Bey said. “We’ve not thought about how these things fit together.”
A comprehensive plan serves as a guiding document for city leadership, according to Christine Mondor. Mondor is a co-chair of the plan’s strategic committee and is principal of sustainable architecture firm evolveEA.
“It sets up the infrastructure for good and agile decision making,” Mondor said. “We need to set a north star that’s durable and then talk about ways we can move in the short term and the direction we want to go in the long term.”
Many Pittsburgh neighborhoods completed comprehensive plans — like Downtown’s 1999 “blueprint for the 21st century” or the 2019 Manchester-Chateau Neighborhood Plan — but the city as a single entity has never had one.
The Pennsylvania Municipal Planning Code, enacted in 1968, requires state municipalities to produce comprehensive plans every 10 years, but excludes its first- and second-class cities — Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, respectively.
Shirking the traditional 10-year plan for a 25-year runway allows the city to include more ambitious goals like housing affordability and public transportation access — neither of which are achievable short term, according to Bey.
“We’re building it so that … we’re going to have to check in,” he said. “There’s not going to be an unveiling in 2050. We have to, up until then, create that.”
The plan’s priorities stand in stark contrast to the current national trend of avoiding terms like equity or addressing topics like climate change.
The University of Pittsburgh and Giant Eagle have removed webpages — and even entire departments — that included “diversity” and “equity” from their sites since President Donald Trump took office in January.
Sharonda Whatley, assistant director of strategic planning for the department of city planning, called the plan’s foregrounding of equity and sustainability a community stance for its values.
“We are not pushing any of these narratives of equity and sustainability on anybody,” Whatley said. “These are the concepts and the ideas that are coming from residents, … stakeholders and experts in these fields. Yes, we have a national politic and large organizations and entities that have fallen sway to that rhetoric, but I think that the people of Pittsburgh are being very bold and courageous in saying what they want for themselves.”
Since May, the plan’s engagement team has been gathering community feedback. As part of its engagement process, $1,000 mini-grants were awarded to 90 local organizations to cover operating costs for events that would inform the public about the plan and collect input.
On Tuesday, Sept. 9, the Green Building Alliance’s first-ever Innovation Expo grafts the Pittsburgh region’s recent sustainability accomplishments to its future goals.
The last event in the so-called “Summer of Engagement” brought architecture and design firms, manufacturers and local government organizations to South Side’s Highline to show off sustainable products and developments created in and for the region, according to Jenna Cramer, the alliance’s president and CEO.
“People don’t always realize these models of success that we have around green building and sustainable development that the whole world looks to in many different ways,” Cramer told NEXTpittsburgh. “It helps elevate the profile of our region, and to recognize and meet some of the people behind those projects can be inspiring because you realize it’s still a practical way forward.”
evolveEA’s Mondor was a keynote speaker at the expo. After her presentation, she told NEXTpittsburgh that engaging the network of sustainability-forward organizations that are connected by the alliance is crucial to ensuring the built infrastructure of Pittsburgh’s future matches the housing and environmental goals laid out in the plan
“Imagine that you tell yourself that you want to head in that direction, but your one leg goes this way and your other leg goes that way,” Mondor said. “All we’re trying to do is just get everyone aligned to go in the same direction.”
“We need the green building community to come together with the housing justice community to come together with the green space community and have that conversation.”
With the expo concluding the community engagement phase, the comprehensive plan’s team is now starting its “Scenario Planning” phase to explore different futures for Pittsburgh and the pathways that could lead to them.
The final draft is expected to be complete by August 2026.