With partial support from a Small & Simple Grant from Neighborhood Allies, the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh (URA) launched the Urban Matters Pilot Project. Urban Matters is a URA arts and education program rooted in social justice. Its primary goal is to cultivate a more civically educated and engaged group of young people in Pittsburgh’s most distressed and predominately African-American communities.

Urban Matters participants use research, interviews, and art to create tools to help 1) demystify urban policies and 2) increase participation in decision-making processes that impact and share their communities.

Participants ask basic questions about how the city works and answer them within a 6-8 week summer course. Program participants will make site visits and conduct interviews while working with URA staff, artists and other partners to produce a visual representation of what they learned to their peers, community groups, elected groups, elected officials and other stake holders. Each topic is relevant to projects or developments occurring in the community, or a highly charged issue in which the students have expressed and interest.

Here’s what they found out about Land Banking: