Robert Bingham Project Co-Director Associate Professor of Art, Carnegie Mellon; research includes public space aesthetics with citizen group participation Timothy Collins Project Co-Director Assistant Professor of Art, Carnegie Mellon; research includes water issues and municipal aesthetic values Reiko Goto Project Co-Director Professor of Art, Carnegie Mellon; research includes insect habitat and sound in urban environments John Buck Project Manager, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carnegie Mellon; area of professorial expertise is the reclamation and revegetation of drastically disturbed lands David Dzombak Associate Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carnegie Mellon; research includes water and soil chemistry and waste water treatment David Lewis Distinguished Professor of Urban Studies, Carnegie Mellon, and founder and partner, UDA architects; research includes urban design, art and nature John W. Stephen Regional Director, Pennsylvania Resources Council and co-founder, Friends of the Riverfront; is an environmental public interest attorney Joel Tarr Richard S. Caliguiri Professor of Urban and Environmental History and Policy, Carnegie Mellon; research interests are urban history, development of urban technological systems and history of the urban environment		The Nine Mile Run Project connects the expertise and concerns of artists, scientists, engineers, historians and planners in a broad-ranging interdisciplinary effort to address the challenges and opportunities faced in transforming an urban, industrial waste site to a sustainable environment of private housing and public greenspace. Work on the project is being approached with the general objective of developing a transferable process model for use in reclaiming other urban brownfield sites. A critical component of this process is expanding community understanding of the synergy among environmental, economic and artistic issues in such developments. The STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University is working in partnership with the City of Pittsburgh Planning Office and Pittsburgh's Urban Redevelopment Authority, Environmental City Initiative and Children's Museum to realize a number of objectives in relationship to the area known as Nine Mile Run. These objective include developing stewardship for the open space at Nine Mile Run identifying and modelling sustainable approaches to urban open space development utilizing contemporary methods and technologies to communicate about complex environmental problems promoting bio-diversity and native plant standards fro brownfields reclamation Nine Mile Run is a historic stream valley identified by Frederick Law Olmstead Jr. in 1910 for its beauty as well as its waste water problems. By 1928, the valley was selected by influential Pittsburghers for a city park but was subsequently purchased by a steel industry slag disposal firm. Between 1930 and 1970 it was used as a dumping ground for industrial slag from Pittsburgh area mills. The Nine Mile Run watershed is a natural drainage basin of the Monogahela River. Approximately 45% of the entire watershed is classified as underdeveloped land. In 1995, the City of Pittsburgh commissioned a master planning study of the 230 acre site, now owned by the Urban redevelopment Authority. The study proposed building 1200 residential housing units and the development of 100 acres of public space. The Nine Mile Run stream is the last visible stream of the original Pittsburgh watershed streams and the area is one of the few remaining large land parcels available for development in Pittsburgh. The site's entire surface area will eventually be surrounded by a contiguous public space along the stream's entire run from Frick Park to the Monogahela River. The Nine Mile Run stream and land mass provide a potential aesthetic and economic model of the benefits of open space reclamation in brownfields and the related impact on contiguous housing developments. The STUDIO for Creative Inquiry's involvement in the Nine Mile Run Project is supported by the Howard Heinz Endowment, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. The Heinz Endowment funding will be used to conduct a series of workshops, develop a website, create on-site and off-site public exhibitions, conduct on-site tours and publish a report. The workshop themes will include: History, Context and Public Policy Urban Stream Remediation Slag, Soil and Urban Habitat Green Design The project team of STUDIO artists, scientists, historians, planners and engineers offers a wide range of experience and expertise to the Nine Mile Run site. The Nine Mile Run project will delineate the interrelated elements of an aesthetic/cultural policy for reclamation projects. A series of artworks (some on-site) will emanate from the data and interdisciplinary relationships, and concurrently reconnect the community to its native landscape and waters.
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