The city's next twenty five years, made legible to the people who have to live in it.
Brand and Communications System
Branding
Content Creation
Marketing & PR
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
The city's next twenty five years, made legible to the people who have to live in it.
A brand and communications system for the City's long-range plan, built to make a thousand-page document feel like a conversation a Pittsburgher can actually have. Outreach, identity, plain-language storytelling, and produced and underproduced video across neighborhoods.
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
Overview
We handled the communications layer: the identity the plan wears in public, the language it uses when it talks to people who are not planners, and the video that carried it into neighborhoods. The plan's own engagement target was thirty thousand residents, roughly one in ten Pittsburghers. Nothing about a thousand-page technical document gets you there on its own.
The 2050 plan is the furthest Pittsburgh has ever gotten toward a citywide comprehensive plan. Twenty-five years of direction on land use, housing, mobility, green infrastructure and the economy, funded with six million dollars from the City and another seven hundred and fifty thousand from the Heinz Endowments. Earlier attempts had stalled before reaching this point.
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
The Challenge
A comprehensive plan is a legal and technical instrument. It is also, if it works, a promise to people about the street they live on. Those two things are written in completely different languages, and the gap between them is where public plans usually die.
There was also a trust problem to work around. The residents with the most at stake in a twenty-five year plan are frequently the ones least likely to have been in the room for the last one. Reaching them meant going where they already were rather than asking them to show up to a hearing.
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
The Solution
We built an identity and a plain-language system for the plan, so the same idea could hold its shape whether it showed up on a poster at a block party, on a slide at a community meeting, or inside the document itself. The goal was legibility, not simplification. Residents deserve the actual stakes, in words they do not need a planning degree to parse.
Then we took it into the neighborhoods on video. Some of it produced, some of it deliberately underproduced, because a finished film and a conversation shot on a porch do different jobs and a citywide plan needs both. Different neighborhoods, different voices, the same plan underneath.
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
Performance Results
The plan set out to reach thirty thousand residents. It reached 32,300, with 173,500 more exposed to it along the way, 23,700 taking part in events and 125,350 reached on social. The Digital Hub passed eighty thousand visits. For a document most cities cannot get anyone to open, that is an unusual amount of daylight. The Comprehensive Plan itself is still underway, with a final draft and adoption process ahead, and these numbers will keep growing with it.
Residents Engaged
Citywide, against a thirty thousand goal
Social Media Reach
Across the plan's channels and toolkits
Surveys in One Night
Ages 20 to 35, collected at Slappers N Bangers in Homewood
Our share of that was the engine underneath it. Marketing strategy across traditional and digital, social media management and content creation, graphic design, and social toolkits built for the City and its partners so every event could carry the plan in its own voice. Hundreds of pieces of content. Photography and video at convenings and town halls, because the plan needed a record of itself. We coordinated with the City, with Common Cause Consultants, and with a range of community teams running outreach on the ground.
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
Final thoughts
A thousand-page plan, translated into a language the whole city could answer back in. The numbers say Pittsburgh did.
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
Credits
Michael Carroll
Founder, Charlotte's Webb
Previous Project
Next Project
The city's next twenty five years, made legible to the people who have to live in it.
Brand and Communications System
Branding
Content Creation
Marketing & PR
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
The city's next twenty five years, made legible to the people who have to live in it.
A brand and communications system for the City's long-range plan, built to make a thousand-page document feel like a conversation a Pittsburgher can actually have. Outreach, identity, plain-language storytelling, and produced and underproduced video across neighborhoods.
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
Overview
We handled the communications layer: the identity the plan wears in public, the language it uses when it talks to people who are not planners, and the video that carried it into neighborhoods. The plan's own engagement target was thirty thousand residents, roughly one in ten Pittsburghers. Nothing about a thousand-page technical document gets you there on its own.
The 2050 plan is the furthest Pittsburgh has ever gotten toward a citywide comprehensive plan. Twenty-five years of direction on land use, housing, mobility, green infrastructure and the economy, funded with six million dollars from the City and another seven hundred and fifty thousand from the Heinz Endowments. Earlier attempts had stalled before reaching this point.
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
The Challenge
A comprehensive plan is a legal and technical instrument. It is also, if it works, a promise to people about the street they live on. Those two things are written in completely different languages, and the gap between them is where public plans usually die.
There was also a trust problem to work around. The residents with the most at stake in a twenty-five year plan are frequently the ones least likely to have been in the room for the last one. Reaching them meant going where they already were rather than asking them to show up to a hearing.
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
The Solution
We built an identity and a plain-language system for the plan, so the same idea could hold its shape whether it showed up on a poster at a block party, on a slide at a community meeting, or inside the document itself. The goal was legibility, not simplification. Residents deserve the actual stakes, in words they do not need a planning degree to parse.
Then we took it into the neighborhoods on video. Some of it produced, some of it deliberately underproduced, because a finished film and a conversation shot on a porch do different jobs and a citywide plan needs both. Different neighborhoods, different voices, the same plan underneath.
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
Performance Results
The plan set out to reach thirty thousand residents. It reached 32,300, with 173,500 more exposed to it along the way, 23,700 taking part in events and 125,350 reached on social. The Digital Hub passed eighty thousand visits. For a document most cities cannot get anyone to open, that is an unusual amount of daylight. The Comprehensive Plan itself is still underway, with a final draft and adoption process ahead, and these numbers will keep growing with it.
Residents Engaged
Citywide, against a thirty thousand goal
Social Media Reach
Across the plan's channels and toolkits
Surveys in One Night
Ages 20 to 35, collected at Slappers N Bangers in Homewood
Our share of that was the engine underneath it. Marketing strategy across traditional and digital, social media management and content creation, graphic design, and social toolkits built for the City and its partners so every event could carry the plan in its own voice. Hundreds of pieces of content. Photography and video at convenings and town halls, because the plan needed a record of itself. We coordinated with the City, with Common Cause Consultants, and with a range of community teams running outreach on the ground.
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
Final thoughts
A thousand-page plan, translated into a language the whole city could answer back in. The numbers say Pittsburgh did.
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
Michael Carroll
Founder, Charlotte's Webb
Previous Project
Next Project
The city's next twenty five years, made legible to the people who have to live in it.
Brand and Communications System
Branding
Content Creation
Marketing & PR
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
The city's next twenty five years, made legible to the people who have to live in it.
A brand and communications system for the City's long-range plan, built to make a thousand-page document feel like a conversation a Pittsburgher can actually have. Outreach, identity, plain-language storytelling, and produced and underproduced video across neighborhoods.
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
Overview
We handled the communications layer: the identity the plan wears in public, the language it uses when it talks to people who are not planners, and the video that carried it into neighborhoods. The plan's own engagement target was thirty thousand residents, roughly one in ten Pittsburghers. Nothing about a thousand-page technical document gets you there on its own.
The 2050 plan is the furthest Pittsburgh has ever gotten toward a citywide comprehensive plan. Twenty-five years of direction on land use, housing, mobility, green infrastructure and the economy, funded with six million dollars from the City and another seven hundred and fifty thousand from the Heinz Endowments. Earlier attempts had stalled before reaching this point.
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
The Challenge
A comprehensive plan is a legal and technical instrument. It is also, if it works, a promise to people about the street they live on. Those two things are written in completely different languages, and the gap between them is where public plans usually die.
There was also a trust problem to work around. The residents with the most at stake in a twenty-five year plan are frequently the ones least likely to have been in the room for the last one. Reaching them meant going where they already were rather than asking them to show up to a hearing.
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
The Solution
We built an identity and a plain-language system for the plan, so the same idea could hold its shape whether it showed up on a poster at a block party, on a slide at a community meeting, or inside the document itself. The goal was legibility, not simplification. Residents deserve the actual stakes, in words they do not need a planning degree to parse.
Then we took it into the neighborhoods on video. Some of it produced, some of it deliberately underproduced, because a finished film and a conversation shot on a porch do different jobs and a citywide plan needs both. Different neighborhoods, different voices, the same plan underneath.
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
Performance Results
The plan set out to reach thirty thousand residents. It reached 32,300, with 173,500 more exposed to it along the way, 23,700 taking part in events and 125,350 reached on social. The Digital Hub passed eighty thousand visits. For a document most cities cannot get anyone to open, that is an unusual amount of daylight. The Comprehensive Plan itself is still underway, with a final draft and adoption process ahead, and these numbers will keep growing with it.
Residents Engaged
Citywide, against a thirty thousand goal
Social Media Reach
Across the plan's channels and toolkits
Surveys in One Night
Ages 20 to 35, collected at Slappers N Bangers in Homewood
Our share of that was the engine underneath it. Marketing strategy across traditional and digital, social media management and content creation, graphic design, and social toolkits built for the City and its partners so every event could carry the plan in its own voice. Hundreds of pieces of content. Photography and video at convenings and town halls, because the plan needed a record of itself. We coordinated with the City, with Common Cause Consultants, and with a range of community teams running outreach on the ground.
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
Final thoughts
A thousand-page plan, translated into a language the whole city could answer back in. The numbers say Pittsburgh did.
Pittsburgh Comprehensive Plan 2050
Michael Carroll
Founder, Charlotte's Webb
Previous Project
Next Project
We build worlds. Yours is next.
Bring us your world. Pitch us a long shot. Or just say hello. We read everything.
A few of the worlds we have built.
We build worlds. Yours is next.
Bring us your world. Pitch us a long shot. Or just say hello. We read everything.
A few of the worlds we have built.
We build worlds. Yours is next.
Bring us your world. Pitch us a long shot. Or just say hello. We read everything.
A few of the worlds we have built.