Sustainability Indicators

2004 Indicators Report

This report is Sustainable Pittsburgh’s second comprehensive assessment of regional sustainability trends for the six-county region of Southwestern Pennsylvania. This revised and updated edition improves significantly on the first assessment, first published in 2002, and is the product of hundreds of people’s contributions, all focused on an attempt to answer this central question: are we going in the right direction?

And the answer? In some ways, yes ... but in too many ways, the answer must be a resounding “No”.

We can celebrate our relative successes in areas like employment stability, affordable living costs, improved water quality. We have positive trends to build on.

But other areas, ranging from poverty and a deeply entrenched equity gap, to increasing fossil energy consumption, to declining rates of recycling, raise troubling questions about our future. They suggest the need for renewed, spirited, and concerted action to turn these negative trends around.

The report’s purpose is to help guide and inspire such action for positive change throughout our region. Its findings are meant to serve as a foundation for strategic thinking, priority setting, and action—not just by Sustainable Pittsburgh, but by anyone with an interest in the future of Southwestern Pennsylvania. Taken together, the indicators reported on here suggest four key challenge areas where Southwestern Pennsylvania needs to take stock of its long-term sustainability, expressed here as four overarching strategies for advancing toward that goal:

(1) Slowing, stopping, and then reversing the increasingly inefficient - and increasingly wasteful - use of land and resources. We can use urban redevelopment, environmental revitalization and new technology as an economic driver.

(2) Building on our relative economic advantages to improve the vitality and dynamism of the region - attracting talent, stemming the outflow of the next generation to other cities, and improving the security of the region’s poorer citizens.

(3) Investing in education, social engagement, social equity, and social capital - all of which are excellent strategies for improving economic performance as well.

(4) Looking deeper into the factors that relate to a high quality of life - ranging from a healthy environment to equitable opportunities for advancement—to understand how we can develop them for all our citizens, in an accelerated fashion.

Download the .pdf version of the 2004 Indicators report.