Pittsburgh community members are coming together to recognize the impacts of mass racial displacements in the Hill District and East Liberty.
Pitt is hosting a two-day symposium called “Race and Displacement in Pittsburgh” for the 75th anniversary of the Lower Hill demolition and 10th anniversary of the Penn Plaza eviction. Edward Goetz, director of the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs and a professor of urban planning at the University of Minnesota, delivered the keynote address about the history of race and urban displacement in U.S. housing policy on Thursday in the William Pitt Union.
In the 1950s, the city government demolished the Lower Hill area in the Hill District, a historically Black Pittsburgh neighborhood, to build the former Civic Arena — which is now a parking lot. The demolition was part of the city’s urban renewal plan. As a result, over 8,000 residents and 400 businesses in the area were forcibly displaced…