YSU professor receives Mon Valley Initiative Community Partner of the Year Award
Dawna Cerney, a broadly trained geographer and professor at Youngstown State University, has received the Mon Valley Initiative Community Partner of the Year award for her extensive efforts to revitalize and maintain community environments.
Nominated by the Swissvale Economic Development Corporation, she is being acknowledged for having significantly contributed to “advancing the recovery of post-industrial communities within the Mon Valley through rebuilding or creating community infrastructure or linking people and employers.”
Having worked with various communities and environments across North America as well as abroad, Cerney is currently working with Swissvale, a small community on the east side of Pittsburgh. Like many other post-industrial areas, Swissvale has experienced years of disrepair. Recently, that industrial blueprint has attracted external investment, threatening the community’s "heart and soul,” as Cerney describes it.
The Seed for Swissvale project aims to maintain and proliferate the community’s values and unique culture. To aid in her efforts, Cerney recruited co-nominee Susan Lucas, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh in the urban and regional studies program with a background in city planning. Together, they help with procuring grants and implementing community outreach plans that promote the satisfaction of human needs and desires, economic stability and environmental sustainability. When asked about these plans, she used the metaphor of forest fires:
“When a forest fire comes in, all the seeds that are in place over hundreds of years welcome that fire because it allows the serotinous cones to open and a new forest is regenerated, but it’s regenerated under the conditions at the time of the fire and thereafter. So, if it’s warmer or colder or wetter or drier, the new ecosystem is adapted to those current conditions as the product of diverse seed and soil resources from the former forest.”
Through the adaptation of the community’s values and priorities, Cerney and Lucas seek to enhance the value of the area both monetarily and culturally. They start by mapping and modeling vacant land in Swissvale; the first step in identifying what properties are/will be available for community development, and in establishing a plan on how to best utilize those properties so that it aligns with community values with adherence to environmental risks. With that modeling in place, they then identify the best practices for sustainable community design that support stability and safety. This entails creating walkable neighborhoods, implementing greenspace, and considering the natural hazards and limitations of the area. Lastly, they push to develop and support community engagement opportunities to create resident cooperation in community development and design planning.
Ultimately, their aim is to execute these steps in tandem with the distribution of basic needs across the community. Not only do they hope to create a significantly greater level of sustainability and livability for Swissvale’s current residents; they have their sight set on building a better tomorrow for generations to come.
“I think that’s [the award] validation of the work that we’ve been doing...the value of being awarded by an outside agency sort of brings it full circle to those who don’t understand what you’re doing, and that then leverages opportunities to do more of that work somewhere else,” she said.