CD Collaborative

The CD Collaborative is a voluntary coalition of private and governmental organizations whose missions include the revitalization of Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods and communities. Current members include the Urban Redevelopment Authority, the Department of City Planning, the Mayor’s Office, the Community Technical Assistance Center, the Community Design Center of Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group, NeighborWorks Western Pennsylvania and the Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighborhood Development. These organizations, along with the community-based organizations that they serve, represent the critical members of the “system” of community development in the City of Pittsburgh.

The purpose of the CD Collaborative is to work with communities to craft comprehensive and transformative market-based strategies that move communities forward and provide necessary resources to implement these strategies. Currently, the CD Collaborative is focusing in four target areas: the Allegheny City Corridor, the East End Corridor, the Greater Uptown Corridor and the Southern Hilltop Corridor.

Allied in their understanding that improving the market conditions of a community result in positive quality of life changes for the citizens of the City, the members of the CD Collaborative agree that working together accelerates the pace of change. They are therefore committed to uncovering opportunities to coalesce their diverse resources, which include staff, land, planning, information, intelligence and capital. To that end, they commit to developing a work plan for the joint work of the CD Collaborative in consultation with the community. Part of this work plan may include the need to develop new resources to improve the sustainability of their objectives.

CD Collaborative members recognize each organization may have a specific focus that others in the coalition may not share, and may choose not to collaborate on individual projects and goals. Nonetheless they understand that strong communication among the organizations about their individual work is critical to the success of their collective endeavors and prevents the possibility of working at cross purposes, therefore they commit to keeping CD Collaborative partners informed of their resource investments.

The members of CD Collaborative recognize that other partners, not currently involved in the CD Collaborative, may be natural allies in transforming communities and will work to find and integrate new voices in the coalition as strategies emerge.
 

Core Values

• The core values of the CD Collaborative are fairness, access to opportunity and participation. We are committed to community-based efforts that transform city neighborhoods into vibrant mixed income communities that build economic opportunity for residents.

• We are committed to enabling neighborhood transformation step by step. We acknowledge that every neighborhood is unique and is starting from a different point. Some will take longer than others but each neighborhood can and will be improved upon, according to each neighborhood’s needs and opportunities, in a fair equitable way.

• Members of the CD Collaborative are coming together to align decision making in multi-neighborhood targeted areas around a market and data driven approach. This information is enhanced by the “on the ground” working experience of our community partners. The targeted areas include: the Allegheny City Corridor, the East End Corridor, the Greater Uptown Corridor, and the Hilltop Corridor.

• We are committed to working with our community partners in developing and implementing work plans. This is not a top down process.

• In a responsible and collaborative manner, we are seeking to leverage decision-making, funding and impact. We believe that by working together, we accelerate the pace of positive change. We believe that working together brings more resources to bear on our collective challenges.

• As public agencies, private technical assistance providers and intermediaries, we will continue to direct services to neighborhoods outside of the four targeted areas. Lessons learned from our work will be shared as best practices.

• By working together formally, the public agencies, technical assistance providers and intermediaries hope to find new ways to work together.
 

Collaborative Member Organizations

Community Design Center of Pittsburgh (CDCP)
Community Technical Assistance Center (CTAC)
NeighborWorks of Western Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group (PCRG)
Pittsburgh Department of City Planning (DCP)
Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighborhood Development (PPND)
Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA)