It was not that long ago when few people would venture into the Penn Avenue corridor between Bloomfield, Garfield and Friendship. Real estate in East Liberty could not be given away. And Manchester, like many Black neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, was still considered “blighted” and redlined by banks.

But this began to change in the 1980s as activists bucked the forces of deindustrialization and outmigration to forge a new, resilient city that planners had failed to accomplish in the 1960s. It is a story that was shared by many former industrial cities across the U.S. and Europe.

But one in particular, Lyon, France, has a story of rebirth relatable to Pittsburghers.

From the ground up

Lyon may seem like a world away from Pittsburgh, but the two cities share remarkable recent histories. In

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