Pitt Conference on Modernity

Pitt is hosting a conference next weekend (November 4 - 6) that is titled "Modernity and Contemporaneity: Antimonies of Art and Culture after the Twentieth Century. I have nothing to do with the conference, and I won't be around Pittsburgh that weekend, but I'm sorry that I'll miss it: The conference features an incredible all-star international lineup of critical academics. Institutions at both ends of Oakland are absolutely cooking these days.

Pitt Blogging on Virtual Life

A Pitt course on Digital Discourse that has a course blog here has prompted some interesting commentary on the ethics of observing players in on-line role playing games, over at the Terra Nova blog.

One of the questions is whether "observing" players in an online game environment raises ethical questions that differ from the ethical questions raised by watching people in "real life." I tend to think that it does, but that doesn't make either kind of research problem-free. One obvious difference is that online gaming, unlike RL, is usually governed by an End User License Agreement (EULA) or Terms of Service agreement. As a lawyer, I'm skeptical about whether EULAs and ToS agreements are always valid, and I'm skeptical about whether all of their terms are valid. No one, at least, should simply take them at face value. (Nor should we automatically assume that RL interactions don't come with an implicit ToS -- they do. When you cross a social line in RL, that's an implicit ToS violation, even if you can't sue anyone over it.) But they do complicate things.

Pittsburgh Blogfest Tonight

Pittsburgh-area bloggers are gathering tonight at Finnegan's Wake on the North Shore. Join us.

CMU Most Entrepreneurial

Congrats to Carnegie Mellon for making the top 10 on Forbes Magazine's list of the most entrepreneurial campuses in the U.S.

Creative Nonfiction

Via Cindy at My Brilliant Mistakes, note the upcoming Pittsburgh Creative Nonfiction Literary Festival in Oakland.

Killing the Entrepreneur

Why Pittsburgh lags behind: Local entrepreneurs get advised to stay away from "risk-averse" investors, like venture capitalists.

I used to represent VCs. I know first-hand that they can suck the blood out of a vampire, and I know that they don't have much interest in making sure that the person who came up with the idea and nurtured it for years on a shoestring gets a "fair" cut of the proceeds when the public offering ship comes in.

But in a lot of cases -- and real entrepreneurs know this -- the venture community is the very best source of both money and much-needed managerial expertise. Most academics-with-an-idea don't have a clue about running a real company. Friends and family money will only take you so far. Banks won't be much help. Neither one will take a spot on your board and force you to make hard but necessary decisions. For most startups, the choice is internal growth that leads to death-by-a-thousand-cuts, or a venture deal that cuts out the founders prematurely but gets the idea, and the company, into a real marketplace. You want growth? There are no guarantees. There is only risk. Pittsburgh needs to make the venture community a welcome and visible part of the business culture.

Silver Jubilee

I just missed celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute.

Four Years Ago

Yesterday's Post-Gazette had a lot to chew on, even if a lot of it was off the mark. The paper asked four local leaders to comment on whether the region is better off today than it was four years ago. We had mostly enthusiastic agreement from three (Charles Gregory of Sony, Mariann Geyer of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, and Harold Miller of the Allegheny Conference), and a determined "no" from the only one without a direct stake in the matter, Sabina Deitrick of the University Center for Social and Urban Research, at Pitt.

From her piece:

The growth machine -- local elected officials and most nonprofit, economic development agencies -- strongly rejected such advice [to guide the development of what was becoming a place of smaller scale], eschewing the notion of "managing decline." If you're in the business of promoting growth, managing decline is defeat.

Instead, they continued with policies promoting growth, and issued long-term debt to pay for them. In the city, new expenses exceeded new revenues each year. The idea was that the new economic developments would generate enough revenue in the future to more than cover the difference. Call it what you may, but our public officials turned their backs on decades of evidence of decline, willed growth from high above and rolled the dice.

And what happened? The city's nearly insolvent. Its debt payments consumed more than 20 percent of the operating budget this year. It's beholden to a state legislature that's been a partner in these growing problems.

So what's their solution? More gambling. Public officials gambled with our future and lost. Now they're betting our bets can pay off their debts.

Wait, those are our debts.

Suburbanites Killing the City?

Brian o'Neill's column in yesterday's Post-Gazette accuses suburban legislators of "effete baloney" in their campaign to head off any kind of commuter tax.

His column is based on this letter to the ICA (Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority) that sets out a long set of arguments for cost reductions and other structural steps that the city should take to get itself going in a more sound direction. (That's a pdf link) There is no doubt that the letter is disingenuous at two levels when it talks about a possible increase in the $10 OPT (Occupation Privilege Tax). It's disingenous to argue, as the letter does, that non-residents already pay their fair share through "vibrancy and economic activity" and through other taxes (the amusement tax, the parking tax, and the 1% RAD sales tax). This is transparently untrue, and even more so since the letter recommends cutting back both the amusement tax and the parking tax. It's also disingenuous to suspect that suburbanites aren't willing to kick in more than the $10 annual OPT. A significant number of us would be willing to go to the $145 OPT proposed by the Act 47 team, particularly if that increase were part of a broader package that limited or eliminated proposed payroll tax increases.

But in some other respects, and particularly in its arguments that the City's problems are tied directly to debt service obligations, the letter is right on. We can't blame the Legislature for letting Pittsburgh slide into the sunset. This is a home-grown problem.

Wired or Unwired?

Duquesne University shows up at number 7 on The Princeton Review/Forbes Magazine's recent poll of "Most Wired Campuses" in the U.S.

That's nice, but it would be more impressive if this weren't such a meaningless and manipulable statistic. One of the most heavily weighted factors in Forbes's survey is the number of student-accessible computers that the university owns, divided by the number of undergraduates. Since a lot of the savviest institutions are getting out of the hardware business -- students bring, and prefer, their own -- the numbers are likely to be skewed in favor of schools buying machines in order to play catch-up with more cutting-edge campuses.

In the cutting-edge spirit, then, congratulations to Carnegie Mellon for showing up at number 6 on Intel's survey of "Most Unwired Campuses" in the U.S., measuring wireless computing access.

A Temple of Gastronomy?

The Post-Gazette certainly likes Eleven, Big Burrito's new restaurant in the Strip. Is it really that good?

Bloggers In Person -- Let's Get Small!

Pittsburgh-area bloggers are gathering in person next Thursday evening at Finnegan's Wake.

If someone brings a record player, I'll be bringing my Steve Martin "Let's Get Small" LP.

Cafe Scientifique

Apologies to the organizers of the Cafe Scientifique Pittsburgh for not blogging this sooner. The lineup of speakers looks terrific. Eat. Drink. Talk Science!

The CSM Likes What It Sees In Pittsburgh

The Christian Science Monitor is out with a long feature on culture and the arts in Pittsburgh, and the newspaper likes what it sees:

By adding a hip overlay, Pittsburgh hopes to put to rest forever the lingering negative image of Steeltown USA - a rusty, postindustrial city eviscerated by job losses. The city has cleaned up its notoriously sooty skies and rivers and now wants to rebrand itself as a happening place for culture.

The writer did a lot of homework, talking to a who's who of arts and culture institutions in Pittsburgh:

• Deane Root (Music) at Pitt,
• Jerry Coltin (Arts Management) at Carnegie Mellon,
• Barbara Luderowski of The Mattress Factory,
• Mark Weinstein of the Pittsburgh Opera,
• Tinsy Lipchak of the Greater Pittsburgh Convention and Visitors Bureau,
  
• Elizabeth Bradley (Drama) at Carnegie Mellon,
• Kevin McMahon of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust,
• Council Member Bill Peduto,
• Tom Sokolowski of The Warhol,
• Laura Hoptman at the Carnegie Museum,
• Professor Hilary Anne Frost-Kumpf (Arts Management) at the University of Illinois-Springfield, and -- last but not least --
• Carol Brown, the former leader of the Cultural Trust.

The Good Ones

A question for a gray day in Pittsburgh, where the only little bit of good local news is that the proposed firefighter's referendum won't make it onto the ballot.

Are there public officials in the region who serve with the kind of thoughtfulness, openness, and honor that we should expect of all of them? Elected or unelected; local, state, or federal; any party or no party. Who are the good ones? There must be some.

Changes Coming to the Region

Dramatic pay cuts for US Air's unionized workers. Pittsburgh firefighters are upping the financial ante on the city. The Port Authority is pushing its doomsday plan for service cuts.

Some of this is real. Some of it is bullying. But change is in the air in Pittsburgh this morning.

Movies at the Southside Works

I'm getting a lot of hits from people who search Google for "Southside Works movies." Apparently, an older Pittsblog item about the development comes up as the third Google item for that search string. I'm not complaining, but it's a little odd. Does this mean that there's hope for that part of the South Side?

Social Justice for the Disabled

Why was I sitting at lunch yesterday with David Thornburgh? The entire Thornburgh family, including former governor Dick Thornburgh, was at the law school as part of the inaugural Thornburgh Family Lecture on Disability Law. The Lecture series is funded by a gift from the Thornburgh family, money that Dick and Ginny Thornburgh received as part of the Henry B. Betts Award from the American Association of People with Disabilities.

The inaugural lecturer was Professor Peter Blanck, who teaches law at the University of Iowa, who runs the Law, Health Policy & Disability Center there, and who is a national leader in advocacy for social justice for the disabled. Peter gave a moving talk, describing his efforts and those of his colleagues to secure equal rights for all Americans.

All of this is worth blogging partly because Peter is a friend of mine, and because his work and that of the AAPD, among others, is highly worthy of recognition -- even in this very small way. It's also worth blogging because the lecture was co-sponsored by Pitt's School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, which is an amazing jewel of a program and part of a vibrant community of the disabled here in Pittsburgh. For reasons unknown to me, there was no word of the lecture in the Post-Gazette or the Tribune Review, even though it came close on the heels of the death of Christopher Reeve.

That invisibility, of course, is precisely the problem that the disabled face. Spread the word about the existence of this community here and about the support network that exists and is accessible via the Rehabilitation Sciences program at Pitt. If you believe that you or someone you know have been discriminated against on account of your disability, do not hesitate to contact Peter, in Iowa, via the Center linked above. He's a great listener, and a powerful advocate.

Living Well in Pittsburgh

My colleague in the History and Philosophy of Science, Peter Machamer, has published a guide to living and eating well in Pittsburgh. The book is "Eating, Drinking, and Living Well in Pittsburgh," and it's available via this website as well as at various shops and restaurants (listed on the website) around the city.

How Outsiders View Pittsburgh

I had the good fortune at lunch yesterday to be seated at a table opposite David Thornburgh, who is the executive director of the Eastern Division of the Pennsylvania Economy League, an economic development organization, in Philadelphia. (Equal time disclosure: The PEL's Western Division, headquartered in Pittsburgh, has a website here.

He made an interesting observation. For all of the hand-wringing locally about the stagnation of Pittsburgh's economy, and particularly about downtown, this *region* is widely viewed elsewhere as doing pretty well in terms of institutional cooperation that supports *regional* development. The various groups involved in development efforts here are in close contact with one another, and all things considered, they work pretty well together. Philadelphia, by contrast, has a downtown that is the envy of many major cities, but its regional economy is doing poorly -- partly as a result of a complete failure of the kind of cooperation that exists in Western PA.

Is it possible for a mid-size or small city to have *both* a thriving downtown *and* a growing regional economy? If so, what does it take to get there? If not, which should we prefer?

More on the Metro Commentary

Jim DeAngelis replied to me privately regarding the exchange below. Following my last point ("The alternative is permanent stagnation," he wrote:

Oops, Mike I missed this. Where's the information? We're not in a court where each side expresses itself and a judge/jury makes decisions as to who is right? All I've read are questions that no one can deal with, as noted above. . . . The mechanisms for discourse are limited (there's no courtroom or hearing). In this region, the political and civil leaders are in control of the conversation, and even some of the analysis that's making it into the public domain (i.e., Rand's stuff) is not as well grounded as some of us might hope. We're not in good shape. Accordingly, I think you're making a dichotomy our of analysis and logic, as presented in my e-mail, may be interpretated by some as an acceptance of the inevitable -- no change, we'll be okay, things will take care of themselves, our leaders are doing the best they can, etc.

And I replied:

I'm a lawyer, but I'm happy to move forward before a jury has reached its verdict. Lawyers often are. Do we have no information at all, or do we have incomplete information? I suspect that we agree that the latter is the case. Is the information we have sufficient for properly motivated people to take steps to move the region forward -- politically, economically, culturally -- even if we don't know precisely what the end-game is? I tend to think so, but there's plenty of room for disagreement. Do we have the right people, with the right openness and the right motivation, in control, who are willing to participate in a conversation about how to move forward? Clearly not. We agree on the fact that control of the political / civic discourse in the region has been concentrated for too long in the hands of people who have no interest in progress. > If anything that I may have said in reply to your email that could be read as implicit endorsement of acceptance of the inevitable, or of current leadership, . . . then I obviously erred almost catastrophically. (I can admit 3 mistakes before lunch!) Nothing could be further from my views!

The conversation continues!

New Pittsburgh Blog

Take a look at Pittsburgh Jack.

Local Government Reform

An excerpt from Jim DeAngelis's most recent Metro Commentary:

For myself, I find the argument -- that a more effective and efficient delivery of local government services (including public education, garbage, police, etc…) combined with more coordinated inter-municipal ordinances, procedures, fees, etc.. will be more valued by potential investors and homeowners when they make their complex decisions about where to be or whether to stay put -- very appealing because its logic is strong. I also think the Louisville mayor’s points about consolidation are significant simply because he points out that in a consolidated situation, questions get asked and often answered that would never have been posed in the former fragmented government structure. This is powerful political and management reality. The research with which I’m familiar that has been done on the economic impacts of building new highways finds essentially that building a new highway MAY be a necessary BUT IS NOT a sufficient condition for investments being attracted to a metropolitan area – i.e., there’s much more to the story thus making the conclusions unclear! Social scientists can’t control enough of the variables to make definitive statements that would rise to the level of “science.” So, if we can’t even make an objective case for a significant public investment like a highway, how are we going to address the potential impacts of local government reform “objectively,” I think we’re left with arguing logic like the Louisville mayor!.

Here's what I wrote to Jim:

I suspect that the choice between "objective" or "scientific" support for a connection between local governmenet reform and sustainable prosperity, on the one hand, and arguing from "logic," on the other hand, is a false dichotomy. If firm evidence of a connection is the threshold, then we won't see local government reform in your lifetime, or mine, or that of my grandchildren-yet-to-be-born. The standard is just too high. The political and government worlds can't be run according to the evidentiary standards of rigorous social science, and it doesn't need to be run by logic alone. There must be intermediate thresholds. We (like our elected and unelected representatives) are dealing with probabilities and risk. Given what we know, and given what we don't know, what is the *likelihood* that local government reform *in this region* will have beneficial effects on the economy? On investing? On entrepreneurship? On tax rates? On social services? On social structure? What is the comparative likelihood that reform will have no effect? That it will have a negative effect? The character of these effects may be strong, it may be weak, and/or it may be nonexistent. The effects may be felt in the short term or only in the long term, if they are felt at all. The effects may be indirect rather than direct. Local government reform might affect investment and relocation decisions not because local government actually becomes more efficient, but because local government reform may have a signaling function in certain communities. Government reform may signal the existence of a welcoming business climate, even though nothing has changed in the local business community.

Not all of these questions have answers; not all of them even have probabilities associated with them. But I strongly suspect that some do have answers, and many of them have probabilities. This region -- any region -- can move forward from this sort of information base. It has to. The alternative is permanent stagnation.

R. Crumb at the Carnegie International

Via BoingBoing, a link to local cartoonist Don Simpson's satirical review of R. Crumb's appearance at the opening of the Carnegie International in Oakland.

Mayor's Race

In 2001, Tom Murphy won the Democratic primary for mayor with just over 32,000 votes. Any candidate with a modest organization should be able to turn out that many people next year -- more than 20,000 new Democrats have registered in the county leading up to the presidential election , meaning that in theory, at least, the mayor's race should be wide open.

Community Development

Today's links are to two community development organizations: the Lawerenceville Corporation and the Northside Leadership Conference.

Do these organizations, and others like them, have any influence over which businesses are welcome and which are not in their respective parts of the city? I don't know. I hope so.

Downtown Retailing

The Post-Gazette reports that the deal to sell the old Mellon Bank building (which has housed Lord & Taylor) has been approved, clearing the way for local developer J.J. Gumberg to take over the space.

Not entirely reassuring tidbit number one: The building won't house slots . . . unless the URA approves.

Not entirely reassuring tidbit number two: Everyone concerned insists that the Lord & Taylor venture fell on its face because . . . of internal problems at L&T's parent, May Co. Demographic changes reducing the number of people downtown during peak shopping seasons? Nah. Development of regional malls north, south, east, and west of the city with abundant free parking? Nah. Limited and expensive parking downtown? Nah. A horrible renovation to the building itself, destroying a once glorious structure? Couldn't be.

None of that is my hoping that Gumberg can't pull this one out of the hat. It seems to me, though, that looking at the building as a stand-alone retail site (one store or several) is doomed to failure. Not only does Downtown need a mall, it needs a mall with a purpose, a mall with a plan. Try this: Develop the entire Smithfield Street corridor as an urban mall, using the Smithfield Street Bridge to connect it to Station Square. Pittsburgh has been obsessed with the east/west Fifth/Forbes corridor. How about looking at a north/south solution?

Art and Culture in Pittsburgh

The Carnegie International will be opening this weekend, along with the Pittsburgh Festival of Firsts. These are feasts for all those who love the arts, and reminders that -- despite the struggles of Pirates, Steelers, and (perhaps, someday) Penguins -- in matters of the heart and soul, Pittsburgh is a major league city.

Soros at Pitt Today

George Soros, financier, philathrophist, and now political activist, will be speaking at Noon today (Tuesday, October 5) at the Law School at Pitt, on his new book ("The Bubble of American Supremacy: The Cost of Bush's War in Iraq"), the war in Iraq, and the presidential election.

The event is free, but space is limited.

The Law School is located in Oakland, at the corner of Forbes and Bouquet. That's across the street from the Original Hot Dog Shop.

The lecture will take place in the Teplitz Moot Court Room, which is one floor below the main entrance to the building.

Planning

Via an email distributed to a constituency of people interested in matters Pittsburghian, Jim DeAngelis writes:

[Some writers] have targeted professional planners as part of the problem rather than as part of the solution. I would say emphatically that this suggestion is wrong. While any profession has members with a range of competencies, this profession’s members – who are certified by national examinations administered by ETS -- also are accountable to clients or, in the public sector, elected officials. It is usually these clients or officials who prefer not to take the environmentally astute courses of action that are almost always recommended by certified professional planners at some point, frequently off-the-record, in the planning processes. I wish that politically INDEPENDENT planning commissions were realities but this concept ended for all intents and purposes during the Post WWII period of urban renewal and suburbanization.

This is a complex subject, nationally as well as locally. Independent, professionalized planning, of the sort that had its heyday in first half of the 20th century, has largely disappeared -- though it's not only vested political interests who have been happy to see it go. Some of that older, professional tradition had a Progressive (capital P) "we know what's good for you" tone, and we should be glad when we see that the tone has gone away (where it has) and suspicious where it hasn't. City planning is a delicate business; as Jane Jacobs persuaded much of America more than 40 years ago, "independent" planners have damaged as much of the fabric of American cities as they have restored. As Jim notes elsewhere in his message, neighborhood organizations can be productive partners in planning processes -- provided that "progress" rather than "growth" is the benchmark.

Flood Follow-up

The P-G has run a couple of particularly good flood follow-ups. One is this opinion piece that reminds us that natural floodplains are parts of urban ecosystems, and that political pressures to eliminate them and create artifical channels for rivers and streams may end up doing more harm than good. This lesson gets taught in almost every major urban flood (and in many rural floods), but it is rarely learned. (The authors of the P-G piece open by citing Jared Orsi's recent book on the control of flooding in Los Angeles. John McPhee's The Control of Nature is a fabulous journalistic account of similar human/nature battles around the world.)

The second is this account of the efforts to save and now restore the Chatellier bakery in Millvale. Thanks to Jim DeAngelis for the pointer; this piece ran in the Food section, and many of us likely missed it.

91 Varieties

I'm obliged to post RAND, version 3, today's op-ed describing a piece of the Rand Corporation's vision of Pittsburgh's future. That vision is pleasant enough, as far as it goes. You might even say that it's charming. We (that is, the city) should focus on Pittsburgh's 91 neighborhoods, including downtown, rebuilding them in small steps and reclaiming some of Pittsburgh's former grandeur. As our soon-to-be-neighbor-to-the-south might say, this is a good thing.

Much as this would help an intangible Pittsburgh livability index (and perhaps salve the community psyche), at best it's part of a much, much broader strategy. Among many other things, the city needs to start heading down the road to a sensible tax structure.

Searching in Pittsburgh

Local search technology firm Vivisimo gets some nice PR today in The New York Times and the Post-Gazette as it launches its new free consumer search engine, "Clusty". (Note to team: that's a terrible name. If you want people to use your technology, find a name that people can use as a verb -- Google, Yahoo!, Tivo.)

It's a nice boost for Carnegie Mellon, which is the home of the technology team, and a little bit of an image rush for Pittsburgh, but no one should get too excited (get it?) too fast. Vivisimo is mostly in the corporate search business, and it doesn't have any ambitions to play in the consumer space. Meaning: don't hold your breath waiting for a Vivisimo campus in Allegheny County, or for legions of Clusty coders to get rich off of a Vivisimo IPO. For more on the company's real plans, take a look at the report in the Pittsburgh Business Times from last July.

Something to Be Desired.com

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