The Importance of Designing Urban Spaces Enhancing The Connection with The River

“People protect what they love. How can people protect what they don’t understand?” - Jacque Cousteau as quoted by his grandson Fabien Cousteau in his TED Talk What I learned from spending 31 days underwater.

Designing our urban spaces to enhance and encourage the connection with the river and land surrounding them is vital to the health and well-being of a community and its members. Water has the unique ability to make a person happier, healthier, and more connected to the world around them. However, during the industrial revolution the urban waterfronts were dominated by railroads and industry limiting, and in some cases eliminating, access to the river. For the neighborhood of Manchester in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania which sits near the confluence of the Ohio River, this relationship was further severed in the 1960’s when it was divided in two by the construction of a raised, walled highway, Ohio River Boulevard (PA Route 65/US-19) with limited access to the other side. The industrial waterfront was redeveloped and renamed, Chateau. This thesis seeks to examine how we can redesign our post-industrial waterfronts to improve and reconnect people with their rivers while serving as a model for the redevelopment of these important cultural spaces where we meet nature.

This linear site runs along the Ohio River for a little less than a mile and a half with no marked public access to the river’s edge. Residents of Chateau were forcibly moved during construction of the raised highway and others have abandoned the industrial waterfront. Residents of Manchester, if never moving beyond the walls would not be able to tell there was a river anywhere close to them despite three rivers within blocks of them. As Pittsburgh grows, land along the water becomes valuable and will be sought out by developers.

Currently segregated from the rest of Pittsburgh, the lack of opportunities for youth living in Manchester is understandable. The Child Opportunity Index (COI) is calculated based on Education, Health & Built Environment and Neighborhood Social & Economic Opportunity indicators rank Manchester as Low for overall opportunity, Educational opportunity, and Social & Economic opportunity; Ranks very low for health & environmental opportunity. “Unlike utilizing a single indicator, such as neighborhood poverty rate, the chief assumption underlying a composite index is that multiple neighborhood factors have a combined influence on children. Some characteristics (e.g. poverty, high unemployment, and a lack of healthy food choices) have detrimental effects, while others (e.g. access to health care, good schools, and quality early childhood education) are advantageous. The COI reflects the combined contributions of these positive and negative effects”.

With the ability to redesign a neighborhood we are given numerous challenges and opportunities to improve the lives of the residents in and around it. Manchester and Chateau, once a single, united neighborhood, thrived in the industrial age. Redevelopment in the mid-20th century divided this mixed industrial, commercial and residential neighborhoods into two. The riverfront became dominated by industry and severed the relationship with the residents of Manchester and the Ohio River. Re-imagining Chateau provides a unique opportunity to reconnect Manchester with the riverfront and to develop the site in such a way that benefits the environment and the health and well-being of both current residents and future residents of Manchester and Chateau, as well as, the entire city of Pittsburgh.