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Events

Wishing you and yours the very best this holiday season

Sustainable Pittsburgh thanks its newest 2012 members for their support and commitment to building a more sustainable region.

Won't you consider joining us? Visit www.sustainablepittsburgh.org for more information. Happy Holidays!

Resources

SAVE THE DATE! Green Workplace Challenge mid-year celebration

January 27
Details TBA

As part of its monthly workshop series, Green Workplace Challenge organizers are hosting a leader celebration, including a keynote speaker, competitor panel, and update on the Green Workplace Challenge’s impact.

Sustainable Development Academy: Save the Dates!

Webinar on Woodsmoke Regulations
January 25, 2012
12:30 pm – 1:30 pm

Webinar on Idling Laws
February 15, 2012
12:30 pm – 1:30 pm

Recycling Renaissance
March 15, 2012
8:00 am – Noon
Cranberry Municipal Building

The Sustainable Development Academy is a partnership between Local Government Academy and Sustainable Pittsburgh. The Webinars will be presented by GASP and Recycling Renaissance will be presented by the Pennsylvania Resources Council. For more information including registration, please visit www.localgovernmentacademy.org

Neighborhoods and Housing Markets
Comprehensive Community Development in the Metropolitan Context

Friday, January 23
11:00 am - 3:30 pm
Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Pittsburgh Branch
717 Grant Street, Downtown Pittsburgh 15219
More information and registration

You are invited to participate in the second event in the Connecting to Markets Series. You will view a national panel presentation, streamed live from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. A question and answer session among participants and panelists at both sites will follow the presentation. After a brief break, a regional panel discussion, will take place at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland's Pittsburgh branch.

Foreclosures have hit inner city, suburban, and exurban neighborhoods alike.
· What does this pattern of distress portend for future development patterns throughout regions?
· Has the exurban development model failed?
· Has the foreclosure crisis erased all the gains that city lower-income neighborhoods have made in recent years?
· Many cities are investing in new or substantially upgraded rail corridors. Do these improvements promise to bring new investment into previously distressed neighborhoods?
· What do patterns of demographic change, including immigration or the entry of new age cohorts into the home buying market portend for patterns of regional development?

This panel will explore ways in which neighborhoods within metropolitan areas are linked to one another through flows of population and investment from neighborhood to neighborhood, and how regional policymakers and community developers can work together to influence these flows to produce better neighborhoods and regions.

New data tabulations that explore some of the inter- and intra-metropolitan differences in housing markets will help provide a framework for both the national and regional discussions.

Sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and the Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighborhood Development

Reed Smith Spring 2012 Lecture Series: Upcoming lectures

Wednesday, January 25
The Supplemental Poverty Measure
Kathleen Short, Social, Economic, and Housing Statistics Division, United States Census Bureau

Wednesday, February 22
Inequality and the American City: Implications of the Neighborhood Effect
Robert Sampson, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences; Director of the Social Sciences Program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University

Lectures are from noon to 1:30 pm in the School of Social Work Conference Center, 2017 Cathedral of Learning, at the University of Pittsburgh. More information will be available at www.crsp.pitt.edu

Resources

Sustainable Insight: Pittsburgh TODAY's regional indicators

This week: Another record high month.
- Total nonfarm job numbers for the Pittsburgh region in November were the highest level for any November ever. As you may recall, a record high for October was set last month.
- The job growth rate of 2.05 percent was stronger than all benchmark regions except Boston (also 2.05 percent).
- Pittsburgh numbers were particularly strong in goods producing, wholesale trade, education and health services, and natural resources, mining and construction.

Think sustainably. Contemplate the possible linkages and systems at play.

"Smart Growth" Conference Discusses Sustainability, Innovative Financing

Growing in "smart" – that is, sustainable – ways is not just a feel-good cliché. Incorporating sustainability into business operations offers important returns: it attracts an innovative and committed workforce; strengthens beneficial connections with community and regional assets; and lowers long-term operating costs by working in harmony with environmental systems. . . Check out the video below to learn more about how Millcraft Industries has found ways to develop sustainably built and managed mixed-use projects in Downtown Pittsburgh despite a challenging economy. In the second video, Rob Stephany, executive director of the Urban Redevelopment Authority, discusses why sustainability is important for a region that has grappled with the costs of not-so-smart growth – a region now seeing population growth and economic expansion after decades of decline.

More

Stand Strong for Fuel Efficiency

This fall, President Obama proposed increased fuel efficiency standards of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 for new cars and light trucks. Adopting these standards will save the average consumer up to $6,600 in fuel costs over the life of a model year 2025 vehicle. A 60-day public comment period opened Dec. 1, 2011, and ends Jan. 30, 2012.

The president needs to hear from you.

Without your comment, special interests could water down this proposal. Tell President Obama to keep the standards strong so Americans can save money at the pump, our country can import less oil, and our environment can be cleaner.

Send your comments to the president now—protect the 54.5 average mpg fuel efficiency standard!

EPA acts to make air cleaner

In one of its most significant initiatives in 20 years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced final health-based rules Wednesday for controlling mercury, acid gases and other air toxics from oil- and coal-burning power plants.

The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards will save 11,000 lives and prevent 4,700 heart attacks and 130,000 childhood asthma attacks a year by 2016, according to the EPA, while reducing respiratory ailments, birth defects and cancers.

And, according to the Electric Power Generation Association of Pennsylvania, while the new standards may contribute to the retirement of eight to 10 small, old, coal-fired power plants in the state, it likely will not cause any power blackouts and should open the way for development of more natural gas-fueled power plants.

BPA: a threat to health that's hard to avoid

As concerns grow over the use of bisphenol A, or BPA, in consumer products ranging from water bottles to food cans, it's already being phased out of certain items. But that doesn't mean the average American can get through a day without exposure to BPA, a chemical that could cause a range of health issues, including reproductive problems, cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity and behavioral issues. The 2003-04 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found detectable levels of BPA in 93 percent of 2,517 urine samples from people 6 years and older.

Zurich, the World's Best Transit City

Transportation expert Norman Garrick reports on the amazingly effective transit system of Zurich, Switzerland. Garrick says the system is one of the factors that makes Zurich one of the most livable cities in the world.

Special Holiday Blogposts from Allegheny Conference highlight region's sustainability

These posts highlight some of the special events, people and places of our region’s winter holidays, but go a bit deeper to show how the Pittsburgh region is building a sustainable future by drawing on its traditional strengths as well as its knack for innovation.

Initiating the series is a post by Phil Cynar. For the Holidays, You Can’t Beat “Hope, Sweet Hope:” East Liberty and the Cathedral of Hope connects the magnificent East Liberty Presbyterian Church to the hopeful story of that neighborhood’s regeneration.

Other posts appear through Dec. 22 will:
•showcase our region's outdoor amenities and organizations that help people get outside--even in the winter
•reveal how Pennsylvania wind energy this year is powering both iconic and new Downtown decorations;
•explore how the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens is green beyond the “reds and greens” of its Winter Flower Show;
•discuss diversity, epitomized by the Cathedral of Learning’s holiday-festooned Nationality Rooms, as more than superficial gilding.

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Sustainable Pittsburgh affects decision-making in the Pittsburgh Region to integrate economic prosperity, social equity and environmental quality bringing sustainable solutions to communities and businesses.

Sustainable Pittsburgh benefits from support ($1,000 and up) in 2011 from:

Alcoa Foundation
Allegheny County - Dan Onorato, County Executive
Bayer Corporation
Bayer USA Foundation
Buhl Foundation
Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation
BNY Mellon
Dollar Bank
FedEx Ground
The Heinz Endowments
Highmark
Elsie H. Hillman Foundation
Richard King Mellon Foundation
Pashek Associates LTD
Pittsburgh Quarterly
PNC Financial Services Group
Port Authority of Allegheny County
UPMC


Special thanks to the SP Members

Sustainable Pittsburgh
425 Sixth Avenue, Suite 1335
Pittsburgh, PA 15219
(412) 258-6642
fax (412) 258-6645
E-mail SP