Nurturing Pittsburgh's Vacant Lands with Grounded Strategies.
The rise and fall of Pittsburgh’s steel industry is a story well-known to its residents. However, there's a lesser-known, ongoing narrative caused by population decline that's affected the city: the proliferation of thousands of vacant lots. You may not think twice about them, but vacant lots represent a complex environmental and socioeconomic challenge.
In the face of this urban blight, Grounded Strategies, a small nonprofit based in Pittsburgh, is quietly leading the way to restore these spaces with the help of dedicated volunteer land stewards. Their goal is to improve community health, while simultaneously creating economic and environmental benefits for underserved neighborhoods.
Vacant lots disproportionately burden low-income communities and communities of color, explains Ariam Ford, the former executive director of Grounded Strategies.
“Restoring vacant land for productive use improves community health while creating economic and environmental benefits,” she says. Its mission is to address the impacts of vacant lots on communities, from increasing concerns about crime to weakening the local economy and threatening physical and mental health.
Grounded Strategies relies on community support to do its work. Since 2021, Duquesne Light Company (DLC) has donated $45,000 in grants and actively participated in 12 volunteer events, contributing a remarkable 576 hours to this cause. A program that has been particularly impacted by these contributions is the CommunityCare program in Homewood.
Homewood is home to more than 1,300 vacant lots. As part of the CommunityCare program, volunteer land stewards maintain vacant lots by cutting grass, cleaning trash, building community green spaces and doing outreach. Stewardship activities span from May to October, with training and education offered in the winter and spring. What’s more, the program offers meaningful financial incentives for volunteers to offset the time spent on stewardship activities.
Ford shares that "Grounded's stories are those of environmental restoration, improved quality of life, strides towards intergenerational wealth, and most of all, joy." Their recent campaign, "Flowers Heal," was a testament to this spirit. The "Lots of Wildflowers" project used wildflower meadows as natural infrastructure to support insect species of conservation concern, offering benefits like air purification, stormwater management and wildlife support. Importantly, the selection of species for these meadows is driven by the priorities of the local communities.
Are you ready to get involved? Grounded Strategies serves as a community leader, rejuvenating Pittsburgh's landscape one vacant lot at a time. But they need more volunteer stewards to make their work possible.
⚡ Take charge of vacant land in your neighborhood by becoming a volunteer land steward.