Good News, Bad News

by Carolyn Ristau

It’s been quite a exciting journey since I stepped full-time into Details Reviewed in June. Lots of sifting through project concepts, connecting and reconnecting with peer planners and urban historians, and new client projects started and on the cusp.

The bad news is that I do not have the capacity to continue with weekly blog posts, despite having multiple ideas that I want to share with you.

The good news is that the UrbanKind Institute and Details Reviewed were awarded a grant to “unearth inequalities” in Pittsburgh’s planning policies and practices of the last 100 years. With this grant, I will be diving into Pittsburgh’s archives to explore deeper into the issues I highlight in Residential Zoning by Race and to expand beyond the narrow parameters of that project.

Before we kick that off in January, I am attempting to complete a first draft of my book Zoning Bloopers and Curiosities (working title). This book is taking me down all the rabbit holes (and through the pigeon holes) I wanted to explore but did not have the time for as an employee in Pittsburgh’s Zoning Office. So far, I’ve encountered the miniature world of Tom Thumb, learned that war chickens from WWII started the fight for a comprehensive urban agriculture approach which was won in 2015, and discovered that while there may have been a moral element to regulating adult entertainment uses, these regulations may have started in Pittsburgh more to protect the safety of the community than its morality after several violent crimes at or related to these businesses. I look forward to sharing these stories and more with you when this project is published (tbd).

In the meantime, Alison Katz and I are continuing to work on Zoning Adventures: A Coffee Shop Two-Step. We hope to get this one over the finish line sometime in 2024. We’ll keep you posted!