While I have been looking forward to the Ireland/Carrigart consulting segment of the fellowship for quite some time, I have been slightly intimidated by the tall order that awaits us there. Today’s site visit to Connellsville PA (in Fayette County, about an hour south of Oakland) gave me a great idea of what to expect…
Category: Haller Global Honors Fellowship
Next Stop: Shadyside
Today, our objective was to research the main street of Shadyside to practice talking to individuals and local businesses. My group, the business development group, strolled through the town to discover what steps Shadyside had taken to maximize its development within its community and businesses. The easiest lens to spot was the businesses. Walking down…
The Strip District: Learning What Makes a Neighborhood Thrive
For today’s neighborhood scramble assignment, our goal was to explore a Pittsburgh neighborhood and size it up quickly using four lenses: businesses, civic assets, community organizations, and public resources. My group chose the Strip District, which felt like a place built for tourists and food lovers. The easiest lens to spot was definitely the businesses….
Learning to Read a Neighborhood Before Reading a Community
As part of our neighborhood scramble assignment, our class was asked to explore a Pittsburgh neighborhood using four different lenses: businesses, civic assets, community organizations, and public resources. The goal wasn’t just to learn about one neighborhood—it was to practice quickly understanding how a place functions. In a few weeks, my group will be traveling…
Millvale’s Murals: How a Small Town Tells a Big Story
Millvale may not officially be part of Pittsburgh, but it feels like one of the city’s neighborhoods. It’s compact, walkable, and full of its own character. One of the biggest reasons it stands out is the remarkable series of murals inside St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church, painted by Maxo Vanka in the late 1930s and…
Shadyside Scramble
Today, my team and I were assigned a “Neighborhood Scramble,” where we traveled to Shadyside and had to provide a summary of the neighborhood’s “main street” (Walnut Street) using four lenses: businesses, civic assets, community organizations, and public resources. Among these four, it was easiest to spot businesses. Many new stores have recently opened in…
Lessons From a Long Afternoon in Bloomfield
If the first few days of this program have been a whirlwind of orientations and classroom theory, today felt like being truly thrown into the deep end. As part of our Managing in Complex Environments coursework at Pitt, my consulting team and I were tasked with the Pittsburgh Neighborhood Scramble. The goal of this exercise…
Main Streets in Pittsburgh: Bloomfield’s Liberty Avenue
Today, me and my group visited a neighborhood as part of our “Neighborhood Scramble” activity, in which each of the three main Carrigart project groups study a local section of Pittsburgh. While visiting, my group went on a scavenger hunt to take several pictures of buildings or neighborhood features, including something that shows how the…
Neighborhood Scramble in Shadyside
This afternoon, the professors tasked us with the interesting challenge of analyzing a Pittsburgh neighborhood through the following four lenses: businesses, civic assets, community organizations, and public resources. My group (Business Development) chose Shadyside, an affluent neighborhood about ten minutes east of Oakland. The bus dropped us off at Walnut St, Shadyside’s main street. We…
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