Carnegie Mellon U and Pittsburgh

I finally put up the photos from Pittsburgh. I focused on Carnegie Mellon University, as it is one of the most "green" campuses in the country. I had a mission: to find out where students gather. I do believe that greening goes hand in hand with creating spaces that people want to use, and I found this effort to have mixed-results on campus.


My tour started at the relatively new building, the University Center, which serves as a kind of student union for the students. It was a beautiful day, but where is everyone? The seating and shading of this courtyard is great, but I think the tall walls around each side of it serves more as a barrier to sitting than it does as a privacy screen.

Some more students here:


here:


and here:

...but not what I would call solid "gathering."

I stumbled onto this spot which had more student concentrated in one spot than I've seen all day:





It was adjacent to a new cafe that was heralded as a "green" cafe, but not many people sitting in here:



Just goes to show that food helps, but doesn't create, a successful public space. I have more pictures of where students sat together, you can check out my Flickr page.

My favorite picture of the bunch is in an adjacent neighborhood, where this couple was waiting for the bus. Apparently Pittsburgh has a really great public transit system with its buses, to the extent that this couple, who appears to be the kind of couple that might care about how they look getting from one place to the next, would ride it. Yes, a gross generalization, but I can only wish that I will look this elegant waiting for the bus.