Conference of African-American Scholars

The Association for the Study of African-American Life and History is in town this weekend for its annual meeting.

The News Yesterday

The second installment of Rand's op-eds about Pittsburgh ran here yesterday. Not much there. The P-G reported that the Gov has made part of the city a Keystone Innovation Zone, with a $250,000 grant. More window dressing (what is anyone going to do with $250,000?). (Here is the KIZ homepage.) The Allegheny Conference is a KIZ member and claims to have seen the light:

Michael Langley, chief executive of the Allegheny Conference, the influential, business-backed policy group, acknowledged that his group's focus has been more on bringing companies to the region and encouraging ones already here to expand, rather than growing the tech sector.

No more, he pledged. There needs to be a balance between fostering new industries and luring older ones.

"All this fabric of innovation and entrepreneurship needs to be melded more effectively together. And we're dedicated -- I'm dedicated -- to moving aggressively in that direction," Langley said. "But if all we do is small business development and growth, then we're doing a disservice to this region as well."

Not much there, either.

The best writing on Pittsburgh in yesterday's paper was via a letter to the editor from Jim DeAngelis.

The Great Race

The Great Race is back this year, heading off the line in Frick Park next Sunday at 9:30 a.m. The P-G's preview today is curious, since in ways it suggests that local runners are afraid of the race eventually returning to the big-time status that it enjoyed before last year's collapse. Great: one more (minor) example of Pittsburgh for Pittsburghers.

Do I miss the point? Aren't the folks in the article just saying that the race belongs to the casual runner and jogger and shouldn't be taken over by professional elites? Maybe -- but then that would be just as wrong as saying that the top end of the race should belong to local swifties. When I lived in the San Francisco area, for years I ran the "Bay to Breakers" 12K, a race that dwarfs the Great Race in every way imaginable -- faster elite runners, better costumes, sometimes no costumes (and no clothes), more weddings, tougher course, and (most important) just way more people. More than 100,000 people "ran" the race in its peak years, meaning that the overwhelming majority of the group were casual runners (and joggers, and walkers, and occasionally cross-country skiers). The fact that the paid elites were crossing the finish line while many of the 100,000 were crossing the starting line took absolutely nothing away from the race's status as the world's largest mobile block party. ("Running" here is a euphemism, since with that many people, you could really run only the last 4 or 5 miles of the course.)

All power to the Great Race organizers. It's great that the race is back, and may it continue and flourish in the years to come. But bring back the elite runners. The best local runners could use the competition. And it can still be the biggest community event of the year in Pittsburgh.

The Symphony Strikes a Chord

The Pittsburgh Symphony has replaced Mariss Jansons with a three-person staff: an "artistic advisor," a "principal guest conductor," and an endowed "guest conductor." I don't know anything about symphonic music, so I'm in no position to comment on the artistic merits of the decision. But not only is this an unusual step for a major symphony, it's a step that was taken specifically at the urging of the players themselves. (The New York Times report suggests that in giving more authority to the musicians, Pittsburgh is moving towards the Viennese model.) In a town where we have too much centralized control over things that should be decentralized (such as economic development), and too little centralized control over things that should be centralized (so many little municipalities!), maybe the Symphony offers an example of the right structure for the right institution. Let's hope it works.

Innovations

Props of a sort to the Trib, for launching this new blog. It's called "Innovations," and it's supposed to cover "the latest science, engineering and computer science developments from Western Pennsylvania's universities and research institutions."

In a purely academic sense (and I use that phrase with all the positive connotation I can muster), this is a great thing. Seriously: there's a lot of first class research going on in labs around the region, and this is a way to learn about some of it without going to conferences and reading really, really boring papers.

In a practical sense -- and to most people living in the region, this is the only sense that matters -- the blog is almost useless. At best, it's misleading, since it suggests implicitly that this stuff will help people, or will help Pittsburgh, or both. But that's wrong. Pure "scientific breakthroughs," whatever they are, very rarely affect people's lives, or the life of the region. Science needs the energy of investment and management. It needs people and firms with the vision to build products and offer services. If the Trib wants to do something, well, innovative, it would report on venture deals and the technology behind up and coming companies.

Down to Earth

I agree with the Comment that it's foolish to wait 20 years and hope that Pittsburgh improves by then. But that's not my read of the Rand report, or of the Rand op-ed. I don't suppose that anyone thinks that we can or should sit around and do nothing for 20 years, and hope for the best.

What we can do is look around for ways in which we can make the city and the region better, and we can celebrate ways in which others are doing the same.

Today's suggestion is from the business sector, courtesy of a friend: A company in Warrendale, PA called Renal Solutions, which could use a sexier name but which is apparently making some nice progress on the biotech front.

Groundless Optimism?

The Commenting in the post below about the Rand report on Pittsburgh, and the P-G story and the report itself, are interesting to me for the following simple reason: At a very low level, they suggest that the question of Pittsburgh's future is starting to appear on radar screens in a serious way. Is that right? Or is this just another round of mindless civic cheerleading?

Here's one more observation, motivated in part by a pretty clear divide among the Commenters: There are those of us in Pittsburgh who have, by and large, chosen to be here. Professional and economic circumstances being what they are, the ability to choose where you live may be something of a privilege these days, at least past a certain age. It does strike me, however, that those who've made that choice are more likely to share a guarded optimism about the future of the region. There are, by contrast, those whose presence here is essentially involuntary, whether because family or job circumstances literally limit their mobility, or because it just doesn't occur to some people that life might be different -- and perhaps better -- somewhere else. For this group, optimism about Pittsburgh, even guarded optimism, is inevitably colored by history (things were a lot better in the old days, and things haven't gotten any better in a long time), or by lives better lived somewhere else (I wish I were still in XYZ).

Reactions? If this second observation is right (and I am not at all sure that it is), in this respect is Pittsburgh any different from dozens of other cities around the country?

I-Memorial

Take a moment to check out the I-Memorial, a website and screensaver that memorializes the more than 1,000 Americans who have fallen in Iraq and expresses, in a small way, the hope that all those who are still serving will return home safely.

Take a Walk on the South Side

I rather liked the P-G's special Travel section today on Walking the South Side. Sure, there are quibbles. (Post yours in Comments.) Mine is that the paper's staff chickened out when they got to Homestead. After ritual expressions of dismay at the coming demise passing of Chiodo's, they headed straight for the Waterfront. Had they continued up Eighth Avenue into Munhall, a stone's throw from the Waterfront, they would have found The Outer Skin alive and well more than four years after its opening scandalized oh-so-proper Pittsburgh.

My other complaint about the Walking series is that it's not online. You can buy pamphlet versions of this one, and the earlier Walking Oakland and Walking Pittsburgh sections, at the P-G online Store. But if you don't want or don't need the pamphlet, you should find and keep today's paper. I will. The P-G, like a lot of Pittsburgh, is still learning a thing or two about e-commerce. One thing it hasn't learned, at least not fully: If you give it away to some people, other people will still buy it.

Bright Lights, Small City

In connection with today's upbeat P-G Forum piece about Pittsburgh's future by a pair of Rand Corporation research, Chris Briem points me to this slightly longer and more detailed Rand report on Pittsburgh's demographics (pdf file).

Rand's key observations:
1. Further Population Aging is in Store. The young will get old, and the old will get older.
2. Young Workers Will Be Relatively Scarce. Unless the pace of in-migration increases.
3. Young People Will Move Toward Economic Opportunity. The report notes that this is already happening -- Pittsburgh's "brain drain" has largely abated. But in-migration is dynamically related to job growth.
4. Immigrants Will Bring New Growth to Many Areas of the Nation. The authors don't quite come out and say so, but the clear implication is that Pittsburgh needs to focus on attracting the foreign-born in order to get and stay ahead of the curve.

Talk Like A Pirate Day - September 19

Don't forget: Sunday (the day after tomorrow) is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Arrr!

South Side Works

What's the verdict on the new South Side movie multiplex? Just another 10-screen monstrosity, or a credible update of the old-time movie palace? A little of both? Or neither? Too soon to tell?

Go Huskers!

It won't be a popular stand, but I'll be rooting for Nebraska tomorrow in the big matchup against Pitt. My grandfather played for Nebraska roughly 80 years ago, and I have strong and fond memories of rooting for the Huskers anytime and every time they played, and especially against OU in the annual Nebraska/Oklahoma showdown. Tops on my list: Watching the 1971 thriller that Johnny Rogers won almost by himself. Even sitting at the keyboard, I can still see him streaking down the sideline.

Pittsblogging

I need to update my list of blogs about Pittsburgh. Look to the right: Is your blog missing? I'm mostly interested in blogs about Pittsburgh and Western PA, not blogs by Pittsburghers but about other things. Anne Brannen at Creating Text(iles) has the most comprehensive collection of the latter, so far as I know.

There's rarely a clear line between "by Pittsburghers" and "about Pittsburgh." If you'd like a link, or know of a link that I should include, please post in the Comments. Thanks.

If We All Concentrate Together, We Can Get This Town to Levitate

Are there still people in Pittsburgh who think that Maglev is going to save this city? Wait, don't answer that. Of course there are. If Pittsburgh gets the Maglev demo project, will it really change anything for the region as a whole? No. We'll still have all the same problems, and all the same possibilities. And maybe a few new ones in each group. Of course, a few people will be able to go much, much faster than before, and the rest of us will be moving at the same speed as before.

All together again: Click your heels together three times and say, "There is no magic bullet. There is no magic bullet. There is no magic bullet."

Now back to our irregularly scheduled programming.

The Little Dig in Pittsburgh

Well, of course the idea of extending the T under the Allegheny River is insane, whether one works from the assumption that an extension is inevitable but the tunneling option is the most costly alternative, or from the assumption that an extension isn't what the region needs or wants.

The Denis Goes Dark

USAirways's bankruptcy filing has been expected for so long that it's difficult to get worked up over it. The Denis theater in Mt. Lebanon closed over the weekend, a move that surprised (and disappointed) an awful lot of people. The owner of the building sold out. Is there more to this story, or is this a case of "can't compete with NetFlix and multiplexes"?

It's the beer

Thanks, Brad, for pointing out that Pittsburgh Brewing Company's "Save Our City" is connected to a new product launch -- beer in aluminum bottles, in a joint venture with Alcoa. Somehow I missed the Post-Gazette's coverage.

Are you in?

One of the comments on the last post mentioned Whirl, so I thought that I'd give it a whirl, so to speak. The magazine's website is here, but it doesn't include much more than teasers to promote the hard copy. As a special interest publication, it doesn't seem any more or less offensive than any other. (And it seems to me that Cope is right, in his comment, that niche markets like this are most profitably served by niche publications -- with no loss to the community as a whole.) The title of this post, by the way, copies what appears in the title bar of the Whirl site.

Knocking the Post-Gazette: Third and Final Try

I've been waiting for the right opportunity to criticize the P-G's SEEN section, which appears each Monday with precious photos of society fundraisers and the Social Register of upcoming events. I cringe every Monday when I see this; it's like a giant billboard advertising what a retro, old-money, upper crust-driven city some Pittsburghers think this is. (Maybe I should make my Duquesne Club comment again -- but seriously this time.) If these organizations want to raise money by throwing extravagant parties, fine. Why rub the noses of the paper's readership in it? Don't answer that question. I know.

Knocking the Post-Gazette: Second Try

Who in the world thinks that the golf handicaps of local CEOs are newsworthy? The Post-Gazette does. If Golf Digest wants to publish the rankings, fine, and if the Post-Gazette's sports editor thinks that local golfers care, fine too. But in the business section? That's a giant sucking sound you hear down at the P-G's offices near the Point.

Knocking the Post-Gazette: First Try

Should I be flattered or embarrassed that I scooped the Post-Gazette? It's a minor story, but back on August 23, I blogged local firm HyperActive. The Post-Gazette ran with it this morning.

Save Our City?

What's up with Iron City's Save Our City campaign? Save it from what? A self-serving downtown business community? A bloated city bureaucracy? A group of politicians that are outdoing each other in the "Best Nero" competition? An apathetic populace waiting for someone to make Pittsburgh a better place to live?

If the campaign is serious -- then it's misleading. There is no magic bullet. Pittsburgh's current problems have roots that are decades old. They can't be solved overnight, or by putting notes in an electronic suggestion box.

But maybe the campaign isn't serious -- maybe the beer company is just trying to create a customer list. There's no privacy policy on the site, so who knows what happens to your name and address after you post.

Risk-Taking

As if she were reading the blog, in Sunday's P-G Linda Dickerson's column teed off on Pittsburgh's risk-o--phobic business climate. She interviewed Dave Malone, part of the state Workforce Investment Board that is supposed to help solve the problem by closing the "communications gap." The article quotes Malone: "I don't see our employer base able to communicate to educators, parents and prospective employers about what kind of opportunities exist here."

Anything to help bring risk-taking out of the closet is a good thing. But . . . sigh . . . a lot of this stuff is taking us nowhere. The article notes: "Malone is concentrating on manufacturers. 'When I ask parents how many of them want to see their kids go into manufacturing, I don't see many hands go up,' he said. Yet, advanced manufacturing is one of the job mills of the future."

How about asking parents whether they want their kids to be entrepreneurs?

More on same-sex benefits

No surprise that the Post-Gazette editorialized today in support of Pitt's decision to offer benefits to domestic partners of faculty and staff.

A Pitt undergraduate emailed me to point out that in my review of press coverage of Pitt's decision, I overlooked the efforts of the student paper, The Pitt News. And so I did.

Buried Treasures?

It's a new semester, so I have new colleagues and new students, a lot of whom are new to Pittsburgh. A few of them know about this blog, so they ask me: What are the hidden gems of the Pittsburgh region? Not the great places to go, to eat, to shop that represent the best or the best-known of the place -- but the neat and cool and interesting and fun stuff that's a little bit off the beaten path. Even I know enough to recommend Pamela's and DeLuca's and Enrico Biscotti (which, by the way, may be the single greatest foodstuff produced in the city. But I digress.). But I don't have the depth of knowledge to be as helpful as I'd like. Among the lesser-known destinations, what do you recommend?

Contrasts in Agglomeration: New York and Pittsburgh

Offblog, Chris Briem suggested that I look at an old but classic study of regional economics by former Pitt faculty member Benjamin Chinitz, titled Contrasts in Agglomeration: New York and Pittsburgh. The piece was published in 1961, but much of what it has to say about the Pittsburgh of that era could be repeated today, with little change. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Touching a Nerve

The Tube City Almanac doesn't have permalinks, but take a look at his posts for August 31 and September 1, reacting to my comments about steel.

I'm happy to keep up the conversation. Some additional thoughts:

I certainly didn't intend to provoke such a visceral reaction, but the fact I did suggests to me that there is something here worth talking about. Not about steel, per se, though that's an interesting topic in itself. But about the city, its past, and its future.

I happen to like Pittsburgh, a lot. I think that it's a terrific place to live and that it's terribly underappreciated, especially by a lot of people who were raised here and who still live here. I also happen to think that Pittsburgh has a lot of undeveloped potential -- economically, socially, and culturally. To my mind, the notion that we need to get past steel is consistent with both statements. "Get past steel" doesn't mean that we should ignore or undervalue the contributions of steelworkers or the steel industry; it means that the future of the city and the region doesn't and can't depend on them. It's terrific to recognize, remember, and respect the past. It's not terrific to stop there and to believe that respect for the past is enough to sustain Pittsburgh into the future.

TubeCity, who suggests that I'm a snob, writes:

"But it gets my Irish (or is that Hungarian?) up. You're telling me that what my grandfathers and father did to build America wasn't worthwhile, and that they didn't do anything to make this country great, and that I should forget about it. I take that very personally. Setting aside the obvious --- that Pennsylvania steel built the great buildings, bridges and ships of the world for nearly a century --- the leadership of steelworkers and coal miners made possible such "radical" concepts as overtime pay, paid vacations and holidays, and health insurance. Those didn't exist until men and women struck for their rights, often at great personal risk to themselves. And don't forget the impact that Big Steel had on the northern migration of African-Americans to Pennsylvania in search of a better life; the steel companies pitted whites and blacks against one another, hiring blacks to break strikes by white steelworkers and helping to solidify racist attitudes that still exist to this day.

We're supposed to get past that? We're still living with the consequences of decisions that happened 50, 75 or 100 years ago. How can we expect to move forward without understanding what happened in the past?"

I guess that I'd be offended if I disagreed with what he wrote. (I find it a little odd that he thinks that this is what I wrote.) But I don't; he's right about the importance of Pittsburgh's history, and about the contributions of his ancestors and other steelworkers. If only all native Pittsburghers had equal perspective. I'm not thrilled about being called a snob, but it goes with the territory, and the territory is this: Pittsburgh has a choice. It can stay where it is, or it can try to grow and evolve. If it chooses the latter, it needs to build new traditions. It needs to welcome outsiders. It needs to adjust its self-image (there you are again, Cope), so that we don't default to the Popeye view of Pittsburgh ("I yam what I yam"). We are what we want to be. The question is what that is, and how do we get there. What's next?

How about the following provocative -- and purely hypothetical -- suggestion: Should we tear down the Duquesne Club, as a metaphorical gesture intended to break the clubby tradition that has defined Pittsburgh business and politics for so long?

Pitt Finally Does the Right Thing

My employer has announced that it will finally offer domestic-partner benefits. The Post-Gazette's coverage is here. Read it in the the Tribune-Review.

Interestingly, I couldn't find anything on the topic at the Pitt website.

Cope's View

Dave Copeland noticed the "Holding Us Back" thread from earlier this week and observes that Pittsburgh's steel town image is more of a problem for Pittsburghers than for others -- who, by and large, have gotten over that association. I'm in almost complete agreement. That was part of the point of my follow-up "Psychology of the City."

But Cope doesn't answer my initial question. If we don't give out Steelers hard hats, what should we give out?

Friends from Pittsburgh

Thanks to Christian for the tip about an NPR story this morning about two friends and basketball players from Pittsburgh, Jack Twyman and Maurice Stokes. Twyman, who became Stokes's legal guardian after the latter was severely injured in an NBA game, will be in Springfield a little over a week from today to stand in as his friend is inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Before going on to the NBA, Stokes was an All-American at St. Francis University.

The NPR clip (audio file) is here.

The "Hispanic" Market in Pittsburgh

I've resolved to spend less time commenting on bits that I pick up in the Post-Gazette, but I can't resist this one. PNC Bank is bringing Spanish-language commercials to Pittsburgh. This is a great thing. (I'm not holding my breath, though, for Telemundo to show up on basic cable.) If the region wants to grow, it needs to attract large numbers of two groups, Hispanics and Asians and Asian-Americans. Public, commercial recognition of these communities is an important step.

Our Aging Population . . . and Jobs

Last Sunday's New York Times picked up on something that we figured out some time ago. A story in the business section headlined, "Coming Soon: The Vanishing Work Force," began:

"TO be perfectly blunt about it, Pittsburgh is getting old. Half the line workers who repair, maintain and upgrade the grid at Duquesne Light, its electric utility, will be eligible to retire by the end of the decade. Likewise, half the 6,500 nurses working at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center hospitals will hit the typical retirement age of 55 in the next seven years. And just outside of town, at Westinghouse Electric, which designs and maintains nuclear power generators, the average age of engineers is the late 40's.

The trend has some people worried. 'A silent crisis threatens the prosperity of Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania," warned a report done two years ago by the Center for Competitive Workforce Development at Duquesne University. "A declining and aging population places at risk the stability of the region's work force and opportunities for economic progress.'"

The Times apparently was trying to ring an alarm bell to sound a crisis. I'm with those (Chris Briem, are you still around?) who see the trend as a source of opportunity.

The Center for Competitive Workforce Development can be found here.

The Psychology of the City

I'll get on with more concrete items shortly, but here's one more thought, for now, about steel and why it's important.

I'm as frustrated as anyone else by conversations about Pittsburgh's "image." My interest in steel and the Steelers isn't with image; it's with how steel's history in Pittsburgh is connected with what one friend of mine calls the "psychology of the city." As in: How do you go about changing the psychology of a city? There's a fair amount of agreement regarding the diagnosis -- a refusal to let go of the past, an obsession with prior successes (sporting and otherwise), a fear of change. And there's a fair amount of agreement (not universal, but a fair amount) that the diagnosis gets in the way of material progress. But what can we do? You can't very well put a city on the couch.

Respect steel, honor steel, and deal with the legacy problems of steel, but recognize that as much as steel has been a part of Pittsburgh's past, and in some ways is still a part of Pittsburgh's present, it has little or no role in Pittsburgh's future, whatever that future is. That argument isn't about image-making; it can be about things as material as you like, like job creation. The reason I don't like the Steelers hard hats is that they reinforce the psychology of the past. I'd like to find something that embodies the psychology of the future.

Thanks, by the way, to those of you who've written such thoughtful comments.