This publication presents drawings and projects developed by Master of Urban Design students at Carnegie Mellon University in Spring 2022. The proposals are focused on issues of community health, food access, art, ecology, and the future of the Edgar Thomson steel plant. They are based on conversations with community members and a map-making workshop in March, organized in collaboration with NBRFOF, FracTracker Alliance, and the Braddock Carnegie Library Association. They are centered on community desires, histories, and agency as distilled from conversations, research, and on-the-ground engagements. Against modes of extractive institution-community relationships, we have aimed to make some space for scholars, designers, and students to be allies to communities, and to create supportive relationships and mutually enriching, creative outcomes.
We are grateful to North Braddock Residents For Our Future and FracTracker Alliance for helping shape the concerns and questions that students examined in their work; to Lauren Beachom and the Braddock Carnegie Library staff for hosting the map-making workshop, and to community members for sharing their time and insights.