Navigator Award Finalists: Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and Team
In Pennsylvania's second-largest city, a growing tech sector is driving the wheels of innovation. But so is city hall.
This is the 25th in a series of profiles on the 50 finalists for Route Fifty’s Navigator Awards program. The first 10 finalists were from the Government Allies and Cross-Sector Partners category. Finalists 11-20 were from the Agency and Department Leadership category. Finalists 21-30 were from the Executive Leadership category. Finalists 31-40 were from the Next Generation category. Finalists 41-50 were from the Data and IT Innovators category. Explore our complete list of 50 finalists.
There’s no denying that Pittsburgh is an engine of innovation. That’s even moreso now the case thanks to a growing technology sector and, in particular, continued investment in autonomous vehicle technologies.
Uber’s decision to build a robotics research hub in Pennsylvania’s second-largest city has helped lead to the San Francisco-based company’s testing of autonomous vehicles on Pittsburgh’s streets.
To meet the challenges from the introduction of new transportation technologies, the city of Pittsburgh recently announced that it was developing a new Department of Mobility and Infrastructure to help implement the expanded use of autonomous vehicles, smart traffic signals, bus rapid transit and ridebooking innovations.
For a city that once symbolized the Rust Belt, Pittsburgh’s transformation into a tech hub has been impressive. So too has been the work inside the City-County Building, which has had its hands full with a variety of exciting projects to transform municipal government, many of them featured on Route Fifty since we launched last year.
Pittsburgh’s prioritization of emerging technologies, while trying to make them accessible to everyone, has helped defined Mayor Bill Peduto’s two-plus-year tenure in office.
In September 2015, Peduto announced Steel City’s Roadmap for Inclusive Innovation, a “living document” encompassing more than 100 projects from collaborating on the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center to extending broadband internet into disadvantaged communities.
Although the city, which was a finalist in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge, ultimately lost its bid to Columbus, Ohio, the Peduto’s administration has been pressing forward with an impressive policy agenda to improve mobility options across all areas of the city.
“We want to be able to reconnect the neighborhoods,” Peduto told Route Fifty in June. “It’s not so much about simply transportation mobility, as it is about social mobility.”
The equitable modernization of public infrastructure has the potential to close digital divides in Pittsburgh, especially when citizens’ opinions are taken into account.
Complete Streets is a citywide program engaging the public on the multi-modal transportation options they want to see in their communities.
Peduto’s administration has also allowed select startups to pilot new technologies with city departments at the PGH Lab launched in April, as well as invested in greater resilience efforts. Ten percent of the city’s operating and capital budget spending now goes toward flood management, infrastructure and facilities improvements to combat climate change.
“This pledge builds on our already fiscally-sound budgeting practices, and allows us to further target city resources toward making our neighborhoods and financial structures even more resilient,” Peduto said in a statement last October.
Route Fifty is pleased to include Peduto and his municipal team as finalists for our Navigator Awards in the Executive Leadership category.
Dave Nyczepir is a News Editor at Government Executive’s Route Fifty and is based in Washington D.C.
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