Carnegie Mellon University
October 23, 2020

Armanios and Jones' paper highlighted by mayor

EPP Professor Daniel Armanios and EPP PhD student Samuel Jones' paper, Methodological Framework and Feasibility Study to Assess Social Equity Impacts of the Built Environment, was recently given the spotlight by Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto on Twitter. 

Armanios and Jones' study analyzed more than 20,000 bridges in Pennsylvania across 2,500-plus census tracts and confirmed what most of us know anecdotally: Much of U.S. infrastructure is built to connect affluent communities to business centers and services , bypassing neighborhoods where low-income communities and people of color live. In other words, structural racism is literally built into our cities. People in poor neighborhoods face barriers to physical goods, including food delivery, and greater difficulty in getting to and from work, education, and even critical services like hospitals.

Drawing from the findings of the paper, Mayor Peduto underlined the conclusions to promote his Avenues Of Hope program — a new program in Pittsburgh to invest in minority communities. One such community, The Hill District, was cut off from the downtown area when I-579 was constructed back in the 1960s and has subsequently fallen into an economic depression, but the mayor's office has plans to aid in the revitalization of The Hill. The 1-579 CAP Urban Connector Project is aiming to finally reconnect the Hill District to the Downtown. The “cap” over I-579 is a planned green space on top of the highway built to give residents safe and convenient pedestrian and bicycle connections to employment opportunities and education services in Downtown Pittsburgh.

Armanios expects empirical studies and methodological frameworks will add momentum to such efforts around urban redevelopment in Black and brown communities, especially now as cities plan their coronavirus recovery. “Governments can save money in the long term if they increase spending now to build their cities’ resilience,” he argues. The more restricted a community is, for example, the harder it is to socially distance during a pandemic, and the greater is the spending on healthcare and economic relief."