Clean and Green

GREEN AND CLEAN:

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl is further transforming Pittsburgh’s image from the “smokey city” to the black, gold and green City.  The Mayor has invested in a 21st-Century workforce that is transforming neighborhoods with greening strategies, investing in clean energies of the future, and improving the quality of life for residents.

Greening Up. Under the Mayor, Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods are a strong partner in the the City’s green transformation. As the Mayor aggressively takes down dangerous vacant structures, he is making sure that the left-over land is used as a green asset. The Mayor’s Green Up program is working with communities to turn blighted, vacant lots into gardens and green play-spaces. The Mayor deployed a “Green Team” to aid neighborhoods in this effort. Now, demolished buildings offer an opportunity for communities to stabilize their streets with beautified lots.   To date, the program has transformed more than 60 lots with the help of more than 400 adults and children who are fostering community pride while improving their neighborhood.

The Mayor improved the City’s Sideyard program, which seeks to sell vacant property to adjacent homeowners at a cheap cost. By actively marketing the program to adjacent homeowners, sideyard sales have more than tripled. Now, more residents are taking ownership of their neighborhood and leaving behind less blighted lots.

The Mayor hired a sustainability coordinator, an urban forester, and a bicycle pedestrian coordinator to improve neighborhoods’ quality of life through green initiatives:

• Clean Energy. Replacing the City’s 800 traffic lights to LED efficient lights is saving taxpayers more than $325,000 per year. Clean-burning bio-diesel fuel is being used in most City diesel vehicles. City garbage trucks are using carbon-emission capturers. Pittsburgh is going solar. One of only 13 America Solar Cities encouraging solar energy in government and in neighborhoods. The  Mayor announced the installation of solar panels at a City firehouse this summer.



• Single-Stream Recycling in all City neighborhoods. Most recyclable items can now be placed together in the same blue bag.  Since the Mayor has taken office, the total recycling tonnage has increased 24 percent.



• Planting Urban Trees. One-thousand trees have been planted along City streets and 300+ have been planted in parks and trails.



• Focus on Cycling.  Mayor Ravenstahl is encouraging bicycling as an alternative form of transportation.  With the City’s first bike/pedestrian coordinator, the Mayor has introduced new initiatives that address traffic, engineering and infrastructure improvements to make the City friendly to cyclists.  He has simplified the application process for business owners to install bike racks and laid stripes for the City’s first inter-neighborhood bike lanes.

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