I have one quote in the story: Below the bullet point: "Don't underestimate the power of community spirit and pride," addressed to Detroit leaders looking for lessons, the story notes:
More than anything else, Pittsburghers' devotion to their city seems to have kept it from becoming a wasteland. Those who didn't leave town when the mills closed have formed an emotional attachment to the area on par with the fierce loyalty exhibited by Pittsburgh Steelers fans across the nation. "People love this city like no other city in the world," said Michael Madison, a University of Pittsburgh law professor who writes Pittsblog, a blog about the area.
Absolutely true, and absolutely inoffensive and meaningless, in one fell swoop.
4 comments:
Unlike the recent Pittsburgh articles in the Philly Inquirer (and AP, NYT, etc.)... this article does not rely on cliches and is quite well researched (with three great assists from Madison, Miller & Briem). It's nice to see a balanced, nuanced article from abroad. It reflects the reality of a region that suffered a dramatic nadir and has moved forward.
to me pittsburgh is great for many reasons despite inneffective and intrusive government action which is a tradition we have yet to evolve from. non-profit and educational entities have prospered with state non-profit tax legislation for sure, but the high tax, inefficient local governments continue to hamper pittsburgh's future progress as far as free enterprise. relative comparisons to detroit need to be heavily taken into context. they are the ones who actually went ahead with city government ownership of a casino and proved how bad government can be ( which pgh city council threatened to do to play power games with the state to get their handouts).
Unique Photo,
We are indeed in need of a reduction in the size and cost of government. Ever notice how many elections there are for state legislators? The first place we need to start is by cutting the number of legislators in Pennsylvania's general assembly. Currently our state has the hight number of full time legislators. For the State House, each representative only covers a district that consists of 60,000 residents. Compare this to California where 80 state house members each cover a district on average the size of 457,000. Kudos to Rep. Matt Smith who recommended cutting the size of the general assembly. Unfortunately, I don't believe any changes proposed by Matt Smith and other legislators can take place until 2010.
More data on this over at t + p .
thanks, i didn't know about rep matt smith
looks like a good blog you have there! subscribed to the feed
rick byerly
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