The Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center launches “Parcels N’At”

“Parcels N’At is a powerful step forward in our commitment to transparency, innovation, and equitable development,” said Mayor Ed Gainey. “By making property data more accessible to residents, community organizations, and developers, we’re empowering our residents with the tools they need to make informed decisions and build a stronger Pittsburgh for everyone.” 

The Parcels N’At data explorer displays information about land and properties throughout the city, collected at the individual parcel level from Allegheny County sources like property assessments, filed assessment appeals, historical assessment appeals, property sales transactions, mortgage foreclosure records, tax liens, conservatorship filings, and for City properties, permits and code violations.   

The data can be visualized in the data explorer for any parcel in Allegheny County. City parcels have the additional feature of permits and code violations. Each of the data elements are downloadable in a set for individual or a set of parcels, neighborhoods, and municipalities in the bulk download tool.   

Data elements displayed include construction and demolition permits, permit ID, issue date, permit type, work type, total project value, contractor name and work description. Data also includes a variety of code violations such as the investigation history (findings and outcome), closed/open status, the nature of the violation, date opened, last investigation date, code section and instructions to remediate.  

“This is the kind of government innovation that we need - Parcels N’at allows users and concerned residents to better understand the properties around them and take action to make sure the City has been able to price parcels for sale quickly and sell them to enable redevelopment,” said Heidi Norman, Director, Department of Innovation and Performance. “We are pleased to work with WPRDC to cross government silos and provide meaningful information to people who are doing research, working on policies, and making life better for our residents. Parcels N’at does exactly that for the Pittsburgh region.”  

“One of the biggest challenges the Finance Department encounters is pricing vacant parcels, said Jen Gula, Director, Department of Finance. “We have to use multiple sources of data to find recently sold parcels to use as comparable sales, which can take hours of research. Having the use of Parcels N’at allows the staff to research comparable sales for vacant land in five minutes or less, which is extremely impactful, since most of the sales, and City-owned inventory for that matter, are vacant land. My staff is so thankful they can do this work more efficiently.” 

Upon finding information they’re looking for, users can use the bulk downloader tool to download data at large scales, across neighborhoods, municipalities or any other custom geographic area. 

“For the past ten years, Allegheny County, the City of Pittsburgh, and the University of Pittsburgh have worked in partnership to make data available and accessible through the Regional Data Center,” said Bob Gradeck, from the University of Pittsburgh. “Projects like Parcels N’At show what can happen when institutions work together to support the information needs of people working to make our community a better place to live.” 

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About the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center:

The Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center is a partnership of the University of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County and the City of Pittsburgh that makes civic data open, accessible and useful. The WPRDC has been sharing open data from partners and publishers for nearly 10 years. Our mission is to make local data publicly accessible, machine-readable, and free to use, modify, and share.