Pittsburgh Urban Chicken Coop Tour

I have written previously about "urban farming" (especially in Pittsburgh) - the trend in many large cities to encourage farming of abandoned or empty lots and even to incorporate such plans into the larger goal of urban consolidation.

In Pittsburgh last week, hundreds attended the "Pittsburgh second annual chicken coop tours."
This story is more significant than it might appear. The City of Pittsburgh and local residents have made a concerted effort for several years to devote more space to urban farming. This trend may grow as more properties become abandoned due to tighter lending restrictions on investors, title defects resulting from tax sales, municipal regulations and fees, and the collapsing real estate bubble in general. We may see a time when the most profitable use of certain urban space will be agricultural.

The following video is from the 2011 Pittsburgh Urban Chicken Coop Tour (courtesy of Transition Pittsburgh).

Real estate tax incentives and a potential new skyscraper in Pittsburgh

The City of Pittsburgh has provided tax breaks for real estate development in recent years, but that program is now in jeopardy because City Council has delayed the extension of those tax incentives. In response, residents and the Mayor have publicly attributed much of Pittsburgh's recent development to this abatement program:

Delilah and Randy Rains gave up their Mt. Lebanon home to move downtown to a once vacant but now rehabilitated condo along Penn Avenue in the Cultural District — with a special 10-year reduction in property taxes.

“The basic attraction for us down here was to live in the Cultural District and to be downtown, but the incentive or the benefits of having the tax abatement just made the decision that much easier,” said Randy Rains.

The Otto Milk Building in the Strip, now 60 condo units, is another example of why [Mayor] Ravenstahl hopes council will extend these tax breaks.

“They’ve been critically important. The tax abatement program, for example, has allowed 13 developments to happen,” added [Mayor] Ravenstahl.

h/t KDKA TV

Maybe other municipalities should learn the relation between tax reductions and economic activity.

In related news, Oxford Development will make a major announcement on Thursday. Observers have speculated that the announcement will involve a new skyscraper in downtown Pittsburgh, according to KDKA TV. Another possibility is that an existing large building will be renovated.

Urban farming spreading in Pittsburgh; Green Up Pittsburgh; Pepsi Refresh Project; Andrew McCutchen

The nationwide trend toward urban consolidation and urban farming has intersected with Major League Baseball amd Pepsi.

Earlier this month I commented on the urban farming trend that is beginning to take hold in major cities across the country, especially Pittsburgh. The previous article listed numerous urban farms taking root in Pittsburgh.

A new initiative by the City seeks to take advantage of a grant competition sponsored by Pepsi for the purpose of creating another urban farm in the Homewood section:

The competition is sponsored by Pepsi, which is offering 15 Major League Baseball teams the opportunity to receive a $200,000 grant as part of the Pepsi Refresh Project, designed to help improve communities.

The proposed initiative will fund the education, tools and support to cultivate an urban garden, which would be used to grow fruits and vegetables that would be donated to various nonprofit organizations to feed the hungry, including the youths participating in various programs at the Homewood-Brushton YMCA.

The idea was supported at a press conference yesterday featuring Mayor Ravenstahl and Pittsburgh Pirate center fielder Andrew McCutchen. The competition is clearly not intended to be an isolated event:

The urban garden idea is an extension of the Green Up Pittsburgh program that was introduced in 2007 to combat the increasing problem of overgrown vacant and abandoned lots in city neighborhoods.

While there is no guarantee that Pittsburgh will win the competition and be the recipient of Pepsi's grant money, 15 different cities are competing and the urban farming concept will advance a little further in one of those cities.

The competition is to be decided by online vote. The Post-Gazette article contains information on how to vote.
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update

The other cities competing for the Pepsi grant have proposed ideas unrelated to urban farming.

Here is Andrew McCutchen's promotional video.









The video and the press conference did not make clear how big the garden/farm would be, but at a cost of $200,000, it had better be a very big garden.

Urban farming in Pittsburgh; Grow Pittsburgh; Urban farming as a motivator for urban relocation/consolidation.

From today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette comes a story that might predict the future of urban planning across the country:

The urban farm -- a novel, even whimsical, idea a few years ago in Pittsburgh -- is now a movement so fully fledged that a neighborhood without one seems almost an anomaly.

The movement has gone beyond mere small backyard gardens:

Grow Pittsburgh's sites include the Larimer Farm and Gardens, a quarter acre at Larimer Avenue and Mayflower Street; Lawrenceville Gardens at Allegheny Cemetery, about 150 square feet; and a garden the size of four city lots on Lincoln Avenue in Lemington called Higher Ground Community Garden.

The above list is in addition to a 3/4 acre lot in Braddock and others throughout Pittsburgh. What makes this trend significant is the nationwide nature of the movement and the near-utopian vision of its proponents (as I noted in March):

Near downtown, fruit trees and vegetable farms would replace neighborhoods that are an eerie landscape of empty buildings and vacant lots. Suburban commuters heading into the city center might pass through what looks like the countryside to get there. Surviving neighborhoods in the birthplace of the auto industry would become pockets in expanses of green.

(citing the Washington Times discussing Detroit)

The Post-Gazette article cites examples in other major cities.

The urban farming movement is rapidly taking shape as the motivator behind the urban relocation/consolidation movement nationwide. If urban farming takes root in conjunction with municipal efforts to destroy rundown neighborhoods and relocate (and consolidate) residents, the movement will be one of many factors at the center of legal battles over eminent domain, title and environmental issues. Food crops will not be the only things growing out of the ground in urban areas.