Transformed tells how civic leaders in Pittsburgh-once the world's steel capital-brought new uses to five derelict industrial brownfield sites. Polluted and largely abandoned Herr's Island became Washington's Landing, with upscale housing, a marina, rowing center and riverfront trails. LTV's shuttered Pittsburgh Steel Works became the Pittsburgh Technology Center, a home to academic and commercial R&D. USX's Homestead Works, once the largest steel mill in the world, became the Sandcastle water park and the busy Waterfront, with big box stores, restaurants and riverfront housing. The Duquesne and National Works were reborn as the City Center of Duquesne and the Industrial Center of McKeesport. Transformed explains how this happened, and suggests lessons others can learn from Pittsburgh's experience.

Evan Stoddard earned a bachelor's degree in English and a master's degree in sociology from Brigham Young University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in Public and International Affairs. During the administrations of mayors Pete Flaherty, Richard Caliguiri, and Sophie Masloff, he worked in the city of Pittsburgh's departments of City Planning, City Development, and the Urban Redevelopment Authority, where he served as director of the Department of Economic Development from 1986 to 1993. From 1994 to 2015 he was associate dean of the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts at Duquesne University, where his favorite classes to teach were the Honors Seminar: Community and University, and Policy Implementation in the Graduate Center for Social and Public Policy. Evan and his wife Janet Gardner Stoddard are parents of six grown children and still live in the same South Side row house they bought when they first came to Pittsburgh in 1971.