Starting in 1943, even before the War was clearly going to be won, Pittsburgh's academic, business and civic leaders came together out of concern for the city's future and created the Allegheny Conference to concentrate on four key areas:
. cleaning the air
. cleaning the water
. taming the water (flood prevention)
. urban redevelopment
The widely heralded Renaissance 1 in the 1940s and early 1950s largely achieved those goals but at a price, as urban renewal cleared vast swaths of the city leaving scars to this day. At one point, the Urban Redevelopment Authority controlled about 40% of the entire city.
Downtown Pittsburgh's Gateway Center marked the first time a city used eminent domain for such a large-scale development in a case that went to the Supreme Court in 1950. It was the nation's first privately funded urban renewal project.
Public sector intervention into what the private market couldn't or wouldn't do has been a Pittsburgh hallmark that endures as the city continually remakes itself.
