Saturday, September 23, 2006

A Little Pittsburgh Boosterism Doesn't Hurt

Allison asked me to plug the National Geographic magazine's recent mini-feature on Pittsburgh, so here it is:
What's most surprising? It's beautiful. Thanks to a 15-year urban renewal program, the city has been revived, morphing from a stronghold of industry into a place that better reflects the surrounding Allegheny Mountains.

This sort of integration into the natural setting is precisely what makes a top-notch adventure city, and, in achieving it, Pittsburgh has become a place where residents can be serious both about their careers and their outdoors. The same shift away from heavy industry that beautified the skyline has also reordered the economy: Over the past decade, hundreds of technology companies of all sizes have set up shop in the Steel City. Still, relocators can take advantage of home prices that remain well below the national average and renovation opportunities in the increasingly trendy downtown zones, such as the artist-filled Oakland neighborhood.

That's a little over the top, even for me. But remember National Geographic's motto: Celebrate What's Right with the World.

2 comments:

John Morris said...

It's not something that goes over well among the "hard as Steel" crowd, but the city has a big "cute" factor to it.

Speaking for myself, I always am a sucker for the cute girls who don't seem to know they are cute. I think that is sort of the apeal to people from out of town.

Tim Murray said...

I suppose we're never going to get away from "surprising" people about how nice Pittsburgh is. I've been reading about such "surprised" people going back forty years. I guess the point is, if you've never been here, you'll likely be surprised the first time you come here because Pittsburgh is viewed by outsiders as a dirty, dying rust belt city. And no amount of sloganeering, going back decades, has ever changed that. Sad but true.