Pittsburgh became a 20th-century titan because it had proximity to an important natural resource (the most abundant coal deposits in the country), the entrepreneurial spirit to use that to produce a widely needed commodity (steel), as well as superb transportation resources (great railroad connections and its three-rivers location) to get coal into the city and steel out.

But by the 1970s, the city and its people had paid a heavy price for all that. The riverfronts were essentially a wasteland, closed off to residents by industrial sites, railroad lines, and highways that lined the waterfronts along each side and made the rivers inaccessible to people. The areas near the rivers were dangerous, polluted, blighted. “Be home before dark and stay away from the rivers,” parents are said to have warned their kids on summer afternoons.

A tentative, early nod in the direction of paying more respect to Pittsburgh’s waterways and riverbanks had come after World War II with the creation of a park on 36 acres of land at the point where the Allegheny and Monongahela converge to form the Ohio, replacing an industrial slum and rail yard that occupied the land. It took decades of work to transform the area. Point State Park finally opened in 1974 with a now-iconic fountain at the very tip, a symbol of what the city could do to revive itself more broadly if it had sufficient will.

It took another 25 years for the next big step on behalf of the rivers. And that came with the creation in 1999 of what was then known as the Riverlife Task Force (since 2008 known simply as Riverlife), an advocacy organization that is responsible for much of the good that has occurred along the riverbanks in the past fifteen years.

The Riverlife Task Force "combusted into being," says Lisa Schroeder, President & CEO of Riverlife, and brought together in a public-private partnership a broad array of actors committed to the transformation of the waterfront: local political leaders, philanthropists, business people, property owners, and advocates for planning and design. They all saw what Schroeder describes as a "once-in-a-century opportunity" to do something big and good for the city.

The opportunity—the combustible material—was a major urban initiative, at the time already well along in the planning and design stage, to replace the old Three Rivers Stadium on the North Shore with two new stadiums (one for the Steelers and one for the Pirates) and to build a new convention center on the South Shore. If done right, these projects could transform a big downtown stretch of the Allegheny. But if done poorly, they could keep these large stretches of riverfront essentially sealed off from public use for another hundred years.

The very first time the task force convened was on a river boat tour. David McCullough, the author and historian – and Pittsburgh native – was brought in as a featured guest to speak to the group. His remarks are still memorable to those who were there, and this passage in particular stays with many who heard him:

Don’t make it like other places, because Pittsburgh was never, ever like other places. Make it a place where people want to bring those they love...Make it a place for music and sunshine and trees by the water. Make it possible to walk out of an office building down to the river, or to bring your family to a picnic by the river. Think of it on as large, as ambitious, a scale as you possibly can.

And they did. The task force, at the urging of then-mayor Tom Murphy, got heavily involved in the planning and design of the North Shore projects, but because all that was already well underway, it took a lot of creative thinking and advocacy on the part of the Riverlife Task Force to move the development grid back off the rivers to provide a whole new level of greenspace, tiered promenades, boat landings, family-friendly amenities, and access passageways every 400 to 600 feet connecting the riverfronts with the neighborhoods beyond.