I am part of the group devoted to revamping the Hill District. The Hill District is a very poor and rundown part of the city. Most of the people I know are intimidated to walk around or even just walk through the Hill District, alone or in small groups. Considering the proximity to both Pitt’s campus and downtown Pittsburgh, it’s very unfortunate that the Hill District feels so impassable. Our group plans to come up with projects that could really help to improve way of life in the Hill District.

We specifically shied away from saying that our plan or idea was gentrification. The reason for this is because the Hill District has been “gentrified” before. A little known fact is that the Hill District used to actually be a pretty well-off, middle class area. But at some point there was a group who decided to try to gentrify it even more. Their plan was to demolish some of the smaller local shops and replace them with a large business. This led to lots of loss of jobs and income for the people who owned the now demolished “mom & pop shops” and, eventually, led to the state that the Hill District is in now.

Because of this previous attempt, we decided to go more towards public safety than for giving the Hill District an economic boost. The biggest idea we talked about was increasing peace of mind by placing blue lights (like those on Pitt’s campus) throughout the district. The idea is that wherever you are, there is one of these in sight and you should get police response in a matter of minutes at most. This idea, combined with putting in more/better streetlights, would be two small steps towards making walking around the Hill District feel much safer.