Back at Pittsblog

This is Mike posting, not Chris. I'm back in town and getting back into the swing of things. Not that anyone could have missed me at the blog, since Chris has been doing an amazing job here. Thanks! I've edited the sidebar to the right in the hopes that he will want to stick around.

Six weeks is a long stretch to be away. I have a lot of reading to catch up on. More soon.

everyone wants to talk about Pittsburgh

If you did not start your day reading the USAToday.. you missed this story on local government fragmentation in New Jersey. Funny how this topic always brings in a Pittsburgh perspective with this story even quoting Jake H. down at the AI.

This story starts out by talking about the efficacy of the aero-pality known as Teeterboro, NJ, which is nothing more than a government and an airport for the most part. They have nothing on us locally where the entire municipality of S.N.P.J. was created as a means to obtain a local liquor license.

the deal that wasn't

Strange how history works out... via a tip on thedeal.com's blog I note that today is the anniversary of the day the proposed USAirways-UAL merger collapsed. So our counterfactual history could have been an even bigger airline bankruptcy here since both airlines would go through bankruptcy and emerge in one form or another. USAirways was indeed the largest private employer in the region not so long ago... I do not discount the individual pain that many suffered as they were laid off... but remember how just about everyone thought the region would never recover as US Airways scaled back its local operations. Some even compared it to the collapse of the steel industry in scale.. they were off by at least an order of magnitude in terms of direct and indirect job losses. You would have thought we ought to have closed the town down and turn off the lights for all that was predicted would happen.... but the airport still operates, service to most major markets is intact and you would be hard pressed to see a USAirways effect in employment trends these days.

but here is an interesting question: Would a hypothetical UAL-new USAirways merger be blocked by the current justice department?

The Burgh's West Coast partner is......?

Via Biohealthmatics.com comes a lead to this story in the Indianapolis Star about collaboration between San Diego and Indianapolis in various biotechnology ventures. Do we have enough inter-regional collaboration going on here?

Interesting is the juxtaposition of this story with a story the same paper ran earlier in the month: The Old Economy: It Works for Us.

we're not 40... oh yeah

Is it really worth noting the 'news' that the current Forbes Magazine list of best places for singles dropped Pittsburgh from 29 to 32 among the top 40 regions... and what about the current criteria which includes an index of 'coolness' compiled by former-Pittsburgher-in-chief R. Florida.

You know what is curious. I would think an important metric for singles would be the proportion of other singles out there. As always you need to look at Pittsburgh the right way. If one were to look beyond just how old we are, which tends to make Pittsburgh look like we are a very 'married' region.. among young people we actually are a relatively uncoupled place. By that I mean a relatively high percentage of young people here are yet to be married. By my estimation, in Pittsburgh among those age 21-39 the percentage of people who have never been married is 39%, which is a higher proportion than the majority of those 40 regions in the Forbes list.

and according for Forbes, the #1 region for nightlife: Cincinnati.

Up on the lake

It is still a few more days until training camp, so I can sneak in a news blurb from Cleveland. Worth a read are a series of articles and editorials over the weekend in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on the status of economic development up there:

Team NEO: Idea works, but not here

Money, urgency help other economic regions

High-tech success eludes NE Ohio

Speaking of football. Maybe it is always like this, but the PG sports section online already has the Steelers/football section listed above the Pirates/baseball..

pursuing economics by other means

Another news item that all but requires public commentary is this item from yesterday that goes into the financial details of a proposed contribution to a neighborhood group from one of the potential casino owners. Per the article, once tax breaks are taken into account, the donating company will get back $1.05 million of a proposed $1.5 million earmarked for the neighborhood group. We will chalk this one up under the category of things that make you go 'hmmmm'.

There is a bigger issue here, well, many bigger issues... This whole casino license thing has an interesting analogy to what happened when the City of Pittsburgh awarded its first cable license a quarter century ago, an important piece of history unto itself. (I once wrote about the technology and infrastructure issues involved).. Until that time, there had not been cable service within the City of Pittsburgh. The comparable point is that the city got to pick which cable company got the whole license for a local cable monopoly covering nearly a half million people... something obviously worth a lot of money to the winner. It was probably the last really big license of value given out purely by public fiat in the region. Then and now, there was no auction per se for the potential cable operators to bid on, which just forced them to 'bid' by other means. This meant that each cable company wound up 'partnering' with a wide range of community groups who lined up in support of one company or another. Various groups expected to get sundry 'benefits' if their group won so they weighed in with their political support. The local political battles at the time were far greater than the political battle over the casino license now. That may seem strange but realize that, unlike the casino license which will ultimately be decided in Harrisburg, the Pittsburgh cable license was all a local decision. But overall, the dynamics of how the potential license winners are intereacting with local groups sure appears to be the same as what happened back then.

All this fits perfectly with what the Coase theorem in economics says should happen when markets to not fully exist for a product or its various externalities on third parties. Basically, there can be a set of side payments between the various parties to provide compensation where markets are missing. All of these 'benefits' for various community groups are pretty clearly side payments that Coase theorized on. amazing that. The result should still be an efficient outcome. All sounds great, right? The problem is that in the absense of any legal or regulatory framework to set these payments, one can arguably characterize these side payments in another way.

PNC Park threatens to relocate

For those who read both Pittsblog an my own blog, I apologize for being lazy and posting this on both.... but this is too funny. The Onion gives us: PNC Park Threatens To Leave Pittsburgh Unless Better Team Is Built.

If I were anywhere near as right brained as the notorious and prolific writers at the Carbolic Smoke Blog, I would suggest another headline.. Something like: City Cites Pirates Ownership as Blighted, Intends to use eminent domain powers to buy team.

Harrisburg Inc redux

Pennsylvania announced yesterday that it is providing money directly to 8 venture capital firms to promote some high tech clusters in the Commonwealth. (PBT story). Pennsylvania is by far not the first to directly invest in venture capital markets. One of my first posts here noted the release of this report: Seed and Venture Capital: State Experiences and Options, by the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds. This report catalogues the gamut of efforts by states to invest in growth industries. It is worth a read if you are interested in how states are trying to directly target early stage companies in ways never imagined in the past.

What is this web site advocating?

Seriously, try this. Here is a web site from a group in Ohio. Call it up and after your first impression, write down what you think this group is advocating and whether you think it is probably a good idea or not.

http://www.ohiolearnandearn.com/index.htm

Then take a minute and read a little more... Also, what does it mean for Pittsburgh?

once more wireless.......

Somehow I missed this story last week. but the Wall Street magazine The Deal goes into a little more depth on the soap opera that that has been the story of getting wireless in place downtown. You couldn't make this stuff up. Worth a read, see: Communication Breakdown from July 12th.

A Boring Future

With trepidation it seems obligatory to mention the debate over the North Shore Connector so much in the news of late. I figure I don't really need to write much else to get people riled up. In one form or another, both the Port authority and the county granted approvals for the tunnel that is the core of the project to move foward.

Transportation is one of those things that you really need to plan for the long long term. Highways, and tunnels for that matter, last a really long time. For that reason it is worthwhile to look at the transportation planning of the past. If you are interested, here is the seminal 1967 Allegheny County Rapid Transit Study(warning - large file), but also worth a read is this paper by Coleman, Houston and Muller: SKYBUS Pittsburgh's Failed Industry Targeting Strategy of the 1960s. Also relevant is the Spine Line Corridor Study from 1993. danger.. danger... someone mentioned Skybus: Duck and cover.

What ever happened to the idea of a tram from Mt. Washington to the North Shore? Just asking... not advocating ok.

Dropout rate

So I do note the press coverage of some apparent indignation over a Rand report just out on the rate of graduation in Pittsburgh Public schools. I must admit I did a double take myself when I saw the number that 35% or so do not make it to graduation. Knowing some of the people who worked on this, I have to believe the numbers are as correct as they can be. A couple things that went through my head. One is that because we have so many school districts in the county and region, the stats for the city of Pittsburgh reflect a more concentrated urban center city population than compared to many other large school districts in the country, which are often consolidated to the county level. To be clear, high dropout rates are bad, but how to compare them between different jurisdictions can be tricky. Many City of Pittsburgh stats reflect the fact that the city is just a small part, in both population and land area, of the county and smaller still of the region. That impacts a whole lot of metrics. The city of Pittsburgh also has a fairly high incidence of private school education which includes parochial education. So the PPS student base is actually an even smaller part of the overall student base in the region.

All that aside, 35% dropout rate is bad no matter. The racial disparities are just as troubling. There is a crisis in the country with the rate of young black men winding up in the criminal justice system at one point or another. Hard to finish school, let alone ever find a job in this country once you have a criminal record. You wind up being forced into the shadow economy for the most part. The declining labor force participation rate of Black men is a documented trend that is clearly tied to this.

That $%$# mountain goat

NYT has an interesting article on mapping and in particular how navigation systems deal with problematic street topology and naming. It is a topic even more apropos here because of the screwey road system here. I am curious, I may need to pop a note to Bob Regan (Pittsburgh's own Phyllis Pearsall) on this.. but will mapquest, or other direction finding software, try to drive you down a street that is nothing more than steps? Kind of funny to think about some out-of-towner faced with that.

Remembering the Lumber Company

Is it possible to find a less than fully covered angle to the All Star Game today? I like the Houston Chronicle's article on Phil Garner's relationship with Chuck Tanner. Go Lumber Company.

academic entrepreneurship then and now

Again, I know there is no need to rehash what is covered in the news, but some stories cry out for more discussion than newspaper editors will ever allocate enough column inches for. The PG’s analysis on Sunday of the conflict between academic research and business interests is focused on the brief life and death of a particular funding proposal in Harrisburg. But the topic of how business and academia interact is a topic worthy of many dissertations.

Lest anyone think this conflict started here. Maybe it’s safest to point out a few non-burgh examples to keep some perspective. For those who know the history of computing, the interaction of the University of Pennsylvania in early years of the digital age is a classic story. To oversimplify an important and complex history, but for a time, Philly was the center of the digital revolution. The ENIAC computer was developed at the Univ. of Pennsylvania by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert. Most histories blame a disadvantageous patent policy implemented at the University, and related conflict with school administration, for pushing the two out of the university in 1946. Others think they were just plain fired because they felt there were commercial prospects for their work. Thus the two would form their own company, the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, which would soon face financial problems and be bought out by Remmington Rand. That is not meant to be an example of poor judgment on the part of the university at the time, but it does highlight just how far the paradigm on how academic and commercial interests interact has shifted in the intervening decades. Or has it? The interesting counterfactual is what if Route 1 between Philly and Princeton became what Silicon Valley is today. Trenton as San Jose? Almost too hard to imagine.

Just a fun Pittsburgh factoid that relates to Eckert and Mauchly. Many know the history that their first commercial computer, was the UNIVAC. If you exclude the government agencies, which were a large part of their early clients… of the first 10 UNIVACS installed for commercial clients, 2 were in Pittsburgh. Only New York City had more. Ever think why the Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center is in town?

wireless on the brain

So, the new plan is now for community wireless Downtown by September. Coincidentally the NYT is reporting how New York City is also announcing today how community wireless for 18 New York City parks will be in place by August. Remarkably, the NY plan is only the current iteration of a plan announced in 2003!! There was even an initial contract let in 2004, but they are still trying to get off the ground in mid 2006. So if the resources in New York City (2006 budget $37 billion.. that is with a B) have had a hard time getting wireless in place, it is just another datapoint that the idea Pittsburgh could get wireless in place by the All Star Game was a tad bit ambitious. Even September will be quite an accomplishment. Thinking about the business side of this. Assuming some of the fixed costs of this get covered by the foundation supported $$, this could be quite profitable to this company. Downtown Pittsburgh has one of the most concentrated job densities in the country. (90-100K or so jobs in a half square mile.. not counting the regular flow of visitors). I would not be surprised if they get a decent subscription base for this service.

Also, it seems that the wireless bug has hit Washington, DC , Paris, and even on United Airlines flights.

mapping the genome (well... sort of)

Ok, I need to keep more Pittsburgh-focused... but this is at the nexus of biotechnology and mapping which cries out for attention. Boston Globe reports that in Mass. the State's biotech site finder still just a dream. Seems like a good idea though. Just becasue they have had a hard time doing this, does not mean it could not be done here. Just a passing thought for the powers that be.

Genius reruns

Mike is alive and well... he reminds me that for those who missed the premier of Pittsburgh Genius yesterday, it will be replayed several times over the next few weeks per this schedule. Is a franchise beginning?* I see it now: (fill in hometown) Genius.

* an idea suggested by the Squonk Opera.

for cartophiles only

Not a Pittsburgh post at all... but since we are all map-obsessed these days: Fastcompany.com has an interesting article about how the The Web cognoscenti are mashing up data with maps to create a new way to communicate. Actually I just wanted to use the word cognoscenti in a post. I was once told by a reputable source that the reason Pitt closed its geography department some years ago, as happened at a lot of schools around the country, was that the field had ostensibly reached the end of the line.. i.e. there was nothing else left to 'discover'. Then GIS came along.... amazing that. I can't find a reference, but does anyone know when the Pitt geography deparment was closed?