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Events

Resources

Sustainability Assessment Tool - Southwestern Pennsylvania

Guidance for Municipal Leaders, Developers and Concerned Citizens

Sustainable Pittsburgh recently released a Sustainability Assessment Tool with local government officials in mind. Guiding growth and development in your municipality is a big responsibility. Planning for the long term impacts of development is both a challenge and one of the most enduring ways to enhance quality of life in your community. This Sustainability Assessment Tool includes a memorandum outlining the many provisions contained in the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code (MPC) providing local government offi cials with the legal authority to implement sustainable development in their land use ordinances.

SP's intent is to provide tools and models to help you usher in development that delivers economic, social and environmental value... simultaneously and long into the future. Indeed, this defines sustainability. This Sustainability Assessment Tool strives to help you know sustainable attributes when you see them and to evaluate and plan for your community’s sustainable development. We also recommend incorporating requirements for sustainability in your zoning and subdivision/land development ordinances. Click here to view the Sustainability Assessment Tool.

Resources Continued

“Hard to Recycle” Collection

Saturday, May 31
10:00 am - 2:00 pm
Allegheny County Health Department Offices (39th and Penn Avenue, Lawrenceville)
Fees vary
Contact: Sarah at 412-431-4449 ext. 236 or email at saraha@ccicenter.org
For more information, including a listing of fees, visit www.prc.org.

The Pennsylvania Resources Council (PRC) along with the Allegheny County Health Department will be collecting freon and non-freon appliances, e-waste, televisions, tires without rims, ink and toner cartridges and cell phones at this event. There will be a fee charged for some items dropped off. All materials will be recycled and refurbished. Volunteers are needed between the hours of 9am and 3pm to help set up and cleanup, unload cars, take money, and direct traffic. Volunteers will be provided with a lunch and refreshments. All volunteers will also receive a coupon for one free hour of kayaking for Kayak Pittsburgh courtesy of Venture Outdoors!

Practicing Sustainable Community Development: Tools, Strategies, Case Studies

Tuesday, June 3
9:00 am - 12:00 pm (8:30 registration)
Millvale Community Center, 416 Lincoln Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15209
Fee: $35 (includes registration, handouts, refreshments and certificate of attendance)
Members of the NEOC Alumni Association receive a $10 discount
Pre-registration is required.
Register online at www.localgovernmentacademy.org
Contact: Anita D. Lengvarsky, Director of Programs, alengvarsky@localgovernmentacademy.org

This seminar will review practical tools, strategies and case studies for pursuing the process of sustainability in municipal government in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Attend this session to learn about:
- Principles of sustainability and their merits.
- Using sustainability principles as tools to support local government decision making.
- Strategies for introducing and adopting sustainability guidelines for your municipality and the community.
- The benefits of implementing policies and programs to advance sustainable development.
- The latitudes the Municipal Planning Code allows municipalities to foster sustainability.
- Tools and strategies for sustainable approaches to energy, resource management, waste and recycling, green procurement, human resources, and for enhancing governance systems including the budget and capital improvement process.
- How to get started, measure progress, address issues, and increase a community's agility to perceive trends and seize opportunities.

Lobby Day for Great Green Jobs

Tuesday, June 10
10:00 am - 4:00 pm (lunch provided)
Join for as much time as you have available.
Pennsylvania State Capital
Meet between 10:00 - 11:00 a.m. in Section B, Cafeteria
Press Conference, Capital Media Center, 1:30 p.m.
Click here to RSVP for this event. Car pooling will be organized.

Help support legislation that will save money, fight global warming, and create Great Green Jobs for Pennsylvania. Two bills before the State Senate, the Energy Savings Bill (House Bill 2200) and the Clean Energy Funding Bill (Special Session House Bill 1), would give families and businesses the tools and information they need to cut costs and their energy bills, fight global warming, and create Great Green Jobs in Pennsylvania. The bills passed in the House earlier this year, so all efforts are aimed at the Senate. Join this lobby effort to be part of the solution! Legislation must be passed before the legislature breaks for the summer. Meetings will be scheduled with senators throughout the day.

Finding Hidden Opportunities: Understanding Infill, Redevelopment and Replacement

Tuesday, June 17
8:00 am – 4:00 pm
Radisson Hotel Pittsburgh Green Tree, 101 Radisson Dr., Pittsburgh, PA 15205
Fee: $50
Register Online at www.palocalgovtraining.org or send registration and fee (checks made payable to ‘PSAB’) to: The Pennsylvania State Association of Boroughs2941 N. Front StreetHarrisburg, PA 17110

This course covers three important topics for ensuring coordinated community growth: infill, redevelopment, and replacement. This intensive, six (6) hour course will provide an interactive and practical approach to understanding and applying the principles and relevant information needed to begin (or continue) discussions of updating community development codes: making certain that new building styles, types, and development patterns are appropriate and compatible with surrounding buildings. Numerous “real-world” examples from throughout the Commonwealth will illustrate specifics including facts/statistics in comparison to required standards.

Resources

2008 Western PA Environmental Award Winners Announced

Five environmental programs were the winners of the 2008 Western Pennsylvania Environmental Awards, announced this week by Dominion and the Pennsylvania Environmental Council. . .The Western Pennsylvania Environmental Awards recognizes and honors outstanding achievements of organizations, businesses, and individuals in a wide range of environmental initiatives throughout the region and pays tribute to those that have demonstrated a commitment to environmental excellence, leadership, and accomplishment in their respective fields.

Vandergrift Main Street moves ahead

"I like what they're doing. They're very pro-active. Before they came along, I thought it was stagnant. Now, they're trying to do things. I can see other people trying to do things also," he said. Allan Walzak is president of StrongLand Chamber of Commerce, which represents Vandergrift among other municipalities, backs the VIP. "It's very important to us that every community within the chamber has an opportunity to move forward, to grow and develop," he said. "We are here to help them."

More

Private Sector: It is time for a new regional vision

The Pittsburgh region needs a new vision. Now is the time to ask ourselves deeper questions about who we are, who we want to become and what we want to stand for in the world...To seriously evaluate this, we need to conduct a new form of comprehensive asset mapping dealing with both our natural and human capital resources. We also can begin to consider other items such as who we want to trade with based on human rights or environmental issues as determined by what our region stands for. Do we really want profit margins, a very simple way of making decisions, to decide our course of action?..As we celebrate our 250 years of experience and look back at what worked and what did not work, let us be resolved to apply this wisdom and work together to develop a new vision for our region, set it in action as an example for others to follow, and share it with the rest of the world.

Welcome to the Regional Economic Revenue Study

There is a growing recognition among community leaders in our region that unending competition between local governments for real estate, income and other tax revenues significantly hinders the ability for the region to compete nationally and internationally. The current system hinders our capacity as a region to attract and retain business economic development, encourages inappropriate and wasteful development patterns, and creates inefficiencies in government operations. Revenue sharing has proven to be an effective means for reducing inter-governmental competition in a number of regions across the nation. This Study will examine existing revenue sharing programs in other regions of the nation to identify best practices, closely examine the structure of local government, local revenues in Ohio, and determine the applicability of examples from other regions to the situation in Northeast Ohio...For too long, communities in our region, large and small, have competed with one another, let alone the rest of the world, for economic growth, new employers and jobs, and maximum use of resources. This results in an inefficient and competitive environment, where services are duplicated and valuable resources and funds are diminished. Other regions in the nation have proven models of success, and it is critical Northeast Ohio actively pursue some type of regional cooperation to compete on a national and international level.

PolicyMap launched

TRF officially launched PolicyMap, a website that combines sophisticated technology and the best analytical tools to deliver a new level of accessibility to data – more than 4,000 indicators related to demographics, real estate markets, money and income, education, crime and more. TRF is a non-profit community development financial institution that works across the Mid-Atlantic. TRF has spent the last twenty years financing affordable housing, schools, businesses, supermarkets and other projects that build wealth and opportunity for the people and places that need it the most.

Driven to the Brink How the Gas Price Spike Popped the Housing Bubble and Devalued the Suburbs

The collapse of America’s housing bubble—-and its reverberations in financial markets—-has obscured a tectonic shift in housing demand. Although housing prices are in decline almost everywhere, price declines are generally far more severe in far-flung suburbs and in metropolitan areas with weak close-in neighborhoods. The reason for this shift is rooted in the dramatic increase in gas prices over the past five years. Housing in cities and neighborhoods that require lengthy commutes and provide few transportation alternatives to the private vehicle are falling in value more precipitously than in more central, compact and accessible places.

Community Revitalization Desktop Guide

The Community Revitalization Desktop Guide provides a comprehensive model for community revitalization. The Guide is based upon city and town revitalization efforts over the past thirty years. This Desktop Guide shares a detailed three-step process for attracting private investment within a redevelopment area to spur new economic growth. The guide includes four detailed case studies of cities and towns that have attracted their first high impact private investment in decades and interviews private developers who share how they choose an urban site for investment. The guide also includes interviews with Pennsylvania Mayors who have taken action to prepare their city to welcome new investment.

Coping With Vacant Big Boxes

To deal with the problem of vacant big-box stores that have proliferated across the country, one Milwaukee suburb is levying a fee on developers to help pay for demolition. Other cities are exploring similar options.

Energy Efficiency: Overlooked and Misunderstood

U.S. energy consumption at the end of 2008 is expected to total half of the energy consumed in 1970, according to a new report. . .“This report shows that energy efficiency is among the most cost-effective solutions available to consumers, businesses, policymakers, and investors. Energy efficiency has made great strides, but we need to look at picking up the pace."

For information on becoming a Member of Sustainable Pittsburgh, please visit our website.

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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 in 2008 from:

Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation
Dollar Bank
The Heinz Endowments
Elsie H. Hillman Foundation
Roy A. Hunt Foundation
Richard King Mellon Foundation
University of Pittsburgh



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