The city of Pittsburgh’s “first official comprehensive and interactive public parks, recreation and trails website,” called CitiParks, launched last week after years of sitting on the bucket lists of several city employees. And many had a role to play.
Old photos came from the City Archives. The Department of Public Works cataloged shelters and permits more meticulously than ever before. Parks and Recreation handled information about city-owned pools. And one Innovation & Performance Department employee, and his 4-year-old Weimaraner mix, did the leg work.
From August 2020 through March 2021, Matt Jacob, senior enterprise applications administrator, spent evenings and weekends walking all 160 miles of city trails with Porter, the pup, and a Trimble R2 GPS unit to map every inch. The result is a citywide trail map that gives elevation, distance and trail name information as the online user’s cursor hovers over each trail.
“Porter’s got a ton of energy, and I had to get him out of the house, otherwise I don’t think he would’ve let me work from home. So, if it weren’t for him, I don’t know if the project would’ve happened,” Mr. Jacob said with a laugh.
While he was interested in the mapping portion of the project, executive assistant to the mayor and CitiParks project manager James Hill had more overarching goals for the Parks and Recreation’s website.
“It’s pretty insane to think the second largest city in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania had essentially no presence for its beautiful, beloved public park system,” he said, referencing the old site’s difficult-to-use PDF maps and the wealth of city parks information that previously was unavailable to the public.
The CitiParks site, which officially launched on Aug. 16, serves as a dashboard for citywide recreation — spray parks, pavilions, trails and kids’ activities — and more essential services, such as food programs and ways to report park maintenance needs.
“This critical information had been missing for far too long,” Mayor Bill Peduto said in a news release. “We have always known the social, health and economic impacts of having access to park and recreation space, but during the pandemic, we all saw firsthand how much we relied on our parks.”
The new site is one of the “knockout things,” as Mr. Hill put it, for the mayor’s team, whose tenure is coming to a close. “It’s one of those things you think about for years, but you always think you have more time,” he said, explaining some of the project’s motivation.
“I very much believe in having left the city a little bit better than where we found it. It’s little things like this that make the difference.”
View the site at pittsburghpa.gov/citiparks.
Abby Mackey: amackey@post-gazette.com, Twitter @AnthroAbbyRN and Instagram @abbymackeywrites.
First Published: August 27, 2021, 10:00 a.m.
Updated: August 27, 2021, 10:16 a.m.
