In the News - Good Government & Responsible Development

Out of the mouths of babes. Well, in this case, tweens. Young participants in an environmental summer camp took their quest for clean air to the West End Overlook on Thursday, hoping to persuade City Council to enact tougher measures.

Seventy-eight middle-school students are taking part in the nine-week Pittsburgh Cares E-Serve camp, which is designed to teach them about the environment and what individuals can do to help make the world cleaner, greener and healthier.

When Denzie White started to learn about air pollution, the 12-year-old Bellevue girl thought she should do something about it.

"Why live in a place that has air pollution?" Denzie said.

She and 50 other kids decided to "do something about it" atop West End Overlook park Thursday afternoon.

Holding posters and shouting, "Clean air now!" and "Pollution is wrong!" the children urged City Council to pass the Clean Air Act, which aims to reduce diesel emissions.

City Councilman Bill Peduto plans to introduce today legislation requiring publicly funded developments to meet more stringent environmental standards to help improve the city's air and water.

The measures would mandate that developers who take city subsidies reduce storm water runoff and would require construction vehicles at these sites to reduce diesel emissions by retrofitting the equipment or using newer ones.

A series of new realities about the places Americans live "further put to rest the old perceptions of cities as declining, poor, minority places set amid young, white wealthy suburbs" announces a new study by the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. Bringing together a wealth of new demographic data, the report documents how the nation's suburbs have become more diverse and have seen a new increase in poverty, while central cities have gained population from the suburbs since the housing market crash.