Group with passion for hard-luck cities holds conference
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As the tour bus rumbled along Grant Street, guide Chris Koch called attention to the U.S. Steel Building and explained that the sidewalk is brown, like the building, because rust bleeds.
"Steel is supposed to rust, isn't it?" a rider called out.
Nothing wrong with rust. It's the quality that binds all the young tourists who were in town for three days through Saturday for the Great Lakes Urban Exchange, or GLUE, conference. There the label "Rust Belt" was worn with pride, even as some acknowledged the need to burnish its image.
Since it was founded four years ago, GLUE has gathered about 2,000 people in the network. Co-founders Sara Szurpicki of Detroit and Pittsburgher Abby Wilson had met in New York and decided to return to their hometowns to work on a project to encourage other young adults to stick to their less-than-fashionable hometowns and help raise the status of post-industrial cities among other young people.
The conference attracted about 120 people. They went on tours of the city and to specific sites, including the Burgh Bees Apiary in Homewood and Grow Pittsburgh's Braddock Farms.
In conference sessions, they heard about the Rust Belt's legacy of segregation; the challenge of eliciting minority voices in planning processes; innovations in community building such as GTECH Strategies' soil-remediating fields of sunflowers; and how rain gardens can benefit the old water-sewer infrastructure.
And although visitors voiced admiration for much of what's going on in Pittsburgh, they asked probing questions about how decisions are made.
For example, panelist Alix Levy, a consultant with South Side-based World-Class Industrial Network, described the transformation of the Connelley Vocational and Technical School into an Energy Innovation Center. Anchored by the likes of Eaton Corp., Bayer, and Johnson Controls, it also has union backing and will include an incubator for green energy start-ups.
First Published September 18, 2011 12:00 am
