Academic Year 2012-13    

· Fall 2012 · 
Gibbs  ·  Wilber  ·  Keating  ·  Mercurio  ·  Colbert-Gibson

"Sustainable Social Housing:  A Comparison of Experience in the US and UK"

Len Gibbs, CEO

Friday, September 7, 2012
Noon to 1:15pm, 3343 Forbes Ave

Slides

Len Gibbs, CEO of Empowering People Inspiring Communities (EPIC), Stoke on Trent and Ged Lucas, Former director of housing at Sandwell Council and Deputy Chief Executive at Stockport Council

"Under the Suface:  Fracking, Fortunes, and the Fate of the Marcellus Shale"

Tom Wilber, Author
Friday, September 17, 2012
Noon to 1:15pm, Posvar Hall

Running from southern West Virginia through eastern Ohio, across central and northeast Pennsylvania, and into New York through the Southern Tier and the Catskills, the Marcellus Shale formation underlies a sparsely populated region that features striking landscapes, critical watersheds, and a struggling economic base. It also contains one of the world´s largest supplies of natural gas, a resource that has been dismissed as inaccessible - until recently. Technological developments that combine horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") have removed physical and economic barriers to extracting hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of gas from bedrock deep below the Appalachian basin. Beginning in 2006, the first successful Marcellus gas wells by Range Resources, combined with a spike in the value of natural gas, spurred a modern-day gold rush - a "gas rush" - with profound ramifications for environmental policy, energy markets, political dynamics, and the lives of the people living in the Marcellus region. Under the Surface is the first book-length journalistic overview of shale gas development and the controversies surrounding it.

"Re-Thinking the Future of Community Development Corporations"

W. Dennis Keating, PhD
Friday, October 5, 2012
Noon to 1:15pm, 3343 Forbes Ave

W. Dennis Keating, Ph.D., Professor & Director of MUPDD Program, Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH.

Cleveland is considered a national model of community development with several very successful community development corporations (CDCs) and two local intermediaries - the Cleveland Housing Network (CHN) and Neighborhood Progress, Inc. (NPI).  Over the past three decades, the emphasis in neighborhood revitalization has been on affordable housing. With the mortgage foreclosure crisis hitting Cleveland hard, beginning around 1999, the housing market crashed with many of the city´s neighborhoods flooded with foreclosed abandoned housing. As of February, there were about 16,000 vacant housing units in Cleveland with hundreds being condemned and awaiting demolition and thousands more destined to suffer this fate, leaving thousands of vacant lots. Housing prices are at 1999 levels. This has virtually put the CDCs out of the housing sector, at least temporarily until the economy recovers. This has led to a process of rethinking the future role of these CDCs beyond providing affordable housing. This was the main topic of a Neighborhood Solutions Summit held on May 17,2012.

"Where the Streets have Four Names:  Building Address Standards in Allegheny County's Municipalities"

Matt Mercurio
  Friday, November 16, 2012
Noon to 1:15pm, 3343 Forbes Ave

Slides

Allegheny County GIS Manager and Rebecca Reinhold, City of Pittsburgh GIS Analyst

"Modeling the Impact of the Port Authority´s Service Cuts"

Kathleen Colbert-Gibson
  Friday, December  7, 2012
Noon to 1:15pm, 3343 Forbes Ave

Slides

Kathleen Colbert-Gibson, Data Analyst, Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission and Chuck Imbrogno Models/Data Analysis Manager