Urban Mining in the Rust Belt: Lessons from Pittsburgh’s Deconstruction Pilot Project

The deleterious effects of globalization, population loss, and decades of insufficient reinvestment are visible in many rust belt neighborhoods and cities. Pittsburgh currently has 1,848 condemned structures and most will eventually be demolished due to imminent danger to public safety. Public records indicate that the city razed 170 buildings in 2021 and 2022 at a public expense of $7.5 million (an average of $44,377 each)1 and produced approximately 45,900 cubic yards of construction debris.2 To reduce this waste while simultaneously creating jobs, the former mayor issued an executive order to establish a deconstruction pilot project, which identified 30 city-owned properties to be deconstructed. This research is testing an array of deconstruction technologies by comparing conventional field measurements with scans generated with a LiDAR-equipped Faros model S-120, a KAARTA Stencil 2, and an Apple iPhone 13 Pro. Despite the Faro and KAARTA scanners producing high-density point clouds, the iPhone’s lower-density point clouds prove advantageous due to fewer occlusions, colorized representations, swift scanning times, and lower costs. These scans were then converted to BIM and the quantities of materials were extracted from take-off schedules and adjusted to match the quantity units commonly used by the reseller. These estimates were then compared to the actual quantities recovered by the deconstruction team. The surprising difference between the estimated and recovered material quantities resulted from several factors including water damage, the ineffective demolition means and methods, and the vague and overly optimistic contractual language. These initial findings will help to streamline the sociotechnical procedures for the remaining deconstruction projects in the city. The scale of this project can help improve material recovery of condemned properties, create new jobs, and provide a database of reused materials that architects can specify and contractors can source throughout the rust belt.