Steel Industry Pollution Legacy Major mill sites operated along the Mon and Allegheny rivers from the 1870s through the 1980s. Their closure eliminated over 150,000 jobs region-wide. Soil contamination, heavy metals, and coke-oven emissions persist in surrounding neighbourhoods — directly correlating with the elevated PM2.5, lead, and asthma rates visible in the environmental layer.

Highway Construction (1950s–1970s) I-579 / Crosstown Boulevard was built beginning in 1956, simultaneously with the Civic Arena demolition. The construction destroyed the western edge of what is now the Crawford-Roberts neighbourhood — the area historically known as the Lower Hill District. Crawford-Roberts is the officially designated neighbourhood that encompasses both the Lower Hill and part of the Middle Hill; the two names are used interchangeably to describe the area connecting Downtown Pittsburgh to the rest of the Hill District. Over 8,000 predominantly Black residents and 413 businesses were displaced from 95 acres. The Hill District population fell from 53,648 in 1950 to under 10,000 by 2013.

Explore the Lower Hill District StoryMap →

I-376 / Penn-Lincoln Parkway East enters Pittsburgh via the Squirrel Hill Tunnel, follows the southern edge of Schenley Park through Oakland, then tracks the north bank of the Monongahela River through Uptown and Downtown to the Fort Pitt Tunnel. I-279 / Parkway North further fragmented North Side communities including California-Kirkbride, Marshall-Shadeland, and Brighton Heights.

⚠ The I-579 corridor shown traces the historical demolition path along the western edge of Crawford-Roberts. Like the HOLC redlining overlay, this historical boundary does not align exactly with today's neighbourhood polygon.

Urban Renewal Displacement (1950s–1970s) Federal urban renewal programs gave cities the power to condemn and demolish entire neighbourhoods classified as "blighted" — a designation applied overwhelmingly to Black and low-income communities. In Pittsburgh, two projects stand out for scale and consequence.

Lower Hill District (1955–1961) — 95 acres demolished to build the Civic Arena. Over 8,000 predominantly Black residents and 413 businesses displaced. The community that had produced jazz musicians, civil rights leaders, and the cultural fabric of the Hill District was erased. The land was never returned to community use.

Explore the Lower Hill District StoryMap →

East Liberty (1960–1973) — At 254 acres, the largest urban renewal project ever attempted in Pittsburgh. The URA demolished more than 1,200 homes and displaced 3,800 residents and 500 businesses, replacing them with high-rise public housing towers and Penn Circle — a four-lane one-way road deliberately designed to encircle and isolate the Penn Avenue commercial corridor from surrounding neighbourhoods. The neighbourhood never recovered economically until decades of community-led reinvestment beginning in the 2000s.

Explore the East Liberty Urban Renewal StoryMap →

⚠ Boundaries shown are approximate, derived from published historical project descriptions and urban renewal plan documents. They do not align exactly with current neighbourhood boundaries.

Redlined Lending Zones (1937–1968) In 1937, the federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation drew maps of Pittsburgh's neighborhoods and graded them A through D. The grade determined whether residents could get a mortgage. Grade D neighborhoods — colored red on the map — were labeled "Hazardous" and denied access to federally-backed home loans. Most were majority-Black communities.

This wasn't just a map. It was policy. Banks and mortgage lenders used these grades to decide who could buy a home and who couldn't. Families locked out of homeownership couldn't build equity, couldn't pass wealth to their children, and couldn't escape neighborhoods that received less investment in schools, infrastructure, and services because lenders had already declared them not worth saving.

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 formally made redlining illegal. But the data tells a different story about what happened next. In the neighborhoods that were graded D in 1937, mortgage denial rates for Black applicants remain significantly higher today — more than 85 years later.

Switch to the Racial Lending Gap Layer to see where the pattern continues.

Explore Pittsburgh's HOLC Maps — Mapping Inequality →

⚠ The boundaries shown are the original 1937 HOLC survey lines. They do not match today's neighborhood boundaries exactly — Pittsburgh has rezoned and renamed many areas since then. Where the red outline sits partially inside a modern neighborhood, that is where the historical boundary fell. The overlap is approximate, not precise.