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Pittsburgh joins ‘resilient’ city roster

Pittsburgh joins ‘resilient’ city roster

Floods. Riots. Attacks by the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Pittsburgh has garnered help from the Rockefeller Foundation in preparing for just about any threat you can imagine, Mayor Bill Peduto’s administration announced Thursday.

Pittsburgh joined the foundation’s “100 Resilient Cities” initiative, a $100 million program to help cities thrive amid rising uncertainty. Grant Ervin, the city’s sustainability manager, explained a resilient city is one that can address sudden “shocks” — such as flooding — and chronic “stresses” such as air pollution and aging sewers. The goal, he said, is to “not only bounce back, but bounce forward” from such challenges.

Compiled with input from a roundtable of business and nonprofit leaders, Pittsburgh’s application was one of 35 selected from a pool of 331; 33 other cities were picked last year. “For us, this is like winning the Super Bowl,” Mr. Peduto said.

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It’s not clear how much money Pittsburgh will receive, though Mr. Ervin said the funds will pay for a “chief resilience officer” for two years. The job, according to Rockefeller materials, involves assessing the city’s prepared responses to various threats, then “incorporating them into a single strategy while filling in the gaps.”

Officials acknowledged that resilience can be a difficult concept, partly because it means preparing for unexpected threats. Mr. Peduto joked that when he imagined such dangers, he envisioned the climactic battle with a marshmallow mascot in the 1984 film “Ghostbusters.”

But roundtable participant Andrew Butcher, the CEO and co-founder of GTECH Strategies, said climate change was a core concern. Resilience may mean new infrastructure to handle increased rainfall, he said, but also enhanced social networks to, say, ensure neighbors’ safety during heat waves.

Compared with climate strategies elsewhere, Mr. Butcher added, “Pittsburgh has some catching up to do.”

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First Published: December 5, 2014, 5:00 a.m.

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