The New Pittsburgh

Sharp-eyed readers of my last couple of posts have put some agenda items on my plate. Benjamin, in the Smart City post, challenged me to respond to my own (not so) rhetorical premise:

What I'd love to see, but doubt I will: A consultant on urban redevelopment who comes in and says: Look, you can't avoid the pain. This city [and you can pick your city; this isn't only about Pittsburgh] won't get off its back unless politicians and business and other community leaders start talking about and making some hard choices. Some people in town are going to lose out, and they're going to be very unhappy, and their unhappiness will simply be a cost of longer term progress. Leaders can avoid making those choices consciously and deliberately and they can avoid doing what they can to miitigate the damage. People will still be unhappy and people will still suffer, but the unhappiness and anger and suffering will seem random and unjust and eventual recovery will be delayed even further. So choose now, or choices will be forced on you later. And here are the options . . . .

An anonymous commenter yesterday wrote:

Pittsburgh needs a new institutional infrastructure to help the region become economically relevant. The weak performance of the ACCD was highlighted very clearly in the RERI report, and since that time there is even less competition in economic development ideas.

I couldn't agree more.

This will take many more than one post, but I'll take a shot: Who are the players of the New Pittsburgh? Who should stay, and who gets cut? Think of this as draft day, and we're going to identify our strengths and our needs, both short-term and long-term.

Who stays (and may get a bigger role):

One -- As I wrote yesterday, UPMC, Pitt, and Carnegie Mellon. These are franchise players for the region, and not just because they're big and they're already here. Duquesne is knocking on this door, but it doesn't have the resources or the international reputation as a research university to play consistently at CMU's and Pitt's level.

Two -- Pittsburgh's corporate R&D economy. This is not particularly visible, and it's not even particularly large as a percentage of the overall regional economy (though Chris Briem and Harold Miller will keep me on the straight path here). But corporate R&D can be an important complement to university research, and it can provide an important connection to money and people outside the region (see Google, Seagate) and outside the U.S. (see Siemens).

Three -- Arts and culture. The Cultural Trust isn't just about the traditional institutions of the Cultural District (which, by the way, is looking pretty nice these days). And the Cultural Trust doesn't exhaust the arts in Pittsburgh. For example, when I travel outside of Pittsburgh, one of the first names I often hear (in the context of "what a great place Pittsburgh must be!) is Bill Strickland.

Four -- the Airport (PIT, not the County). Development out there may finally be getting under way, and it desperately needs to accelerate. I know nothing about the Allegheny County Airport Authority (I can read the website, of course, but that doesn't tell me much). My ignorance itself tells me something. Would it make sense for the Airport Authority to play a bigger public role in regional development? And while we're at it, is there a compelling reason (political, perhaps) for the authority to operate both PIT and the Allegheny County airport? Is this the rare case where consolidation is a bad thing?

Five -- Innovation Works, the Pittsburgh Venture Capital Association (and its members), Blue Tree, and (maybe) the Life Sciences Greenhouse. Right now, and outside the university and KIZ environments, these seem to be the key players in tech-oriented, start-up oriented economic development in Pittsburgh. Some of these are short-term players. Ideally, the more successful IW becomes in boosting new companies, the less necessary IW is. But I don't see IW disappearing any time soon.

The football metaphor isn't perfect. In economic terms, Pittsburgh doesn't need a quarterback [not that it has one; rather, economies don't need quarterbacks]; and it doesn't need a playbook [same reason], and most important, there is no TV contract, no licensing revenues, and no revenue sharing among the big clubs. But there is a core of important institutional players, and there are players who can come in off the bench, and there are players whose best years are behind them and who should retire to a life of playing golf on the Senior Tour.

There are more of each of these than I've sketched above. This is just a start. What about local and regional government? The media? Manufacturing? Jobs in general?

Yet to come: Who goes, or becomes a role player.

What I Missed While I Was Away

I've been out of town much of the last couple of weeks, and it's taking a little while to catch up. One thing that I didn't miss, it appears, was the annual meeting of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development.

Oh the meeting happened all right, but from what I can tell, the ACCD has gone into milquetoast mode. Last year, I was all over the ACCD for an its overinflated sense of self-importance. This year, the self-importance remains, even if the organization wants us to believe that it's eaten humble pie. In a phrase, the ACCD now wants to be the region's therapist. It can help us feel better about ourselves.

From a pre-meeting interview by ACCD and PNC head Jim Rohr:

But with regional employment again on the rise, closing in on 2001's all-time high of 1.54 million for the seven-county metropolitan area, and attributes such as low housing costs and low crime rates, "things are much better than people think," Mr. Rohr said.

"A lot of myths that people think about Pittsburgh are just factually not the case. We're moving in the right direction," he said.

The conference tried to drive home its point that the region is perceived better by outsiders than those who live and work here by opening the meeting with a short musical number, "The Grass is Always Greener," performed by members of the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera.

The region needs to better promote itself and consider its benefits compared with larger and glitzier locations such as San Francisco or Boston, Mr. Rohr said.

The Post-Gazette editorial board is on board with this. I'm still a skeptic. I'd still like the ACCD to acknowledge its past successes and then bow out gracefully, ceding the stage (and the therapist's chair) to the institutions that really should exercise regional political, economic, and cultural leadership: UPMC, Pitt, and Carnegie Mellon. If you want to know why outsiders think so highly of Pittsburgh, it's largely because of what Pittsburgh is doing in higher ed and medicine.

Meanwhile, in other news that I almost missed, native Pittsburgher Tom Vilsack, governor of Iowa, recently announced that he's going to take a shot at the top job.

Bright Ideas II

Just following up on Mike's last post. Here is a peresentation that came out of a conference at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago:

A Framework for Understanding How Higher Education Influences Regional Economic Growth. by Richard K. Lester, Director, Industrial Performance Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

also of note are these:

Bridging the Gap between the Academy and the Economy: The Role of Intermediaries. by Randy Eberts, Executive Director, Upjohn Institution

and

Defining a Role for Community Colleges in Economic Development. by Brian Fabes, President, Civic Consulting Alliance

Bright Ideas and Universities

October was a bear of a month, which explains the light posting. November isn't looking much better. Here's a quick link to an interesting piece about university technology transfer, from Sunday's New York Times. The Times interviewed the president of Johns Hopkins University. Here are what I think are the two best exchanges:

Q. What’s wrong with the way universities are commercializing technology?

A. From the university’s perspective, it’s mostly a money-losing operation. The fees that universities get don’t cover the expenses involved in licensing and marketing the inventions. That’s because only a very small fraction of licenses actually generate much revenue. In the year 2000, universities had about 21,000 active licenses with industry. But only 125 generated more than $1 million in licensing and royalty income. Unless you have a big hit like Gatorade, which came out of the University of Florida, or a drug that the University of Wisconsin had many years ago to prevent blood from clotting, or the recombinant DNA patent that the University of California at San Francisco and Stanford share, the aggregate income doesn’t cover the expenses.

. . . .

Q. What should we conclude from this?

A. When you ask “Where are tomorrow’s ideas?” they are things you and I would look at and say, “That’s not going anywhere. That’s worthless.”

It’s hard to predict. What I say is that research is about planting seeds and watering them and occasionally pulling the weeds out. Every now and again you’ll get a prize-winning rose. But you have to water everything.

Is Pittsburgh Smart?

The most recent Pop City issue includes a feature on "Smart City" promoter Carol Coletta, who has a formula for reinvorating cities. The formula has four pieces, most of which will sound familiar to fans of Richard Florida:
--attract young, talented professionals
--focus on innovation in business
--emphasize community connectivity
--appreciate the city's distinctive sense of place

The great thing about these four metrics is that they don't threaten any established interests in any city, no matter how damaged its culture and economy may be. The four-factor Smart City template is a feel-good solution. That makes the template the perfect fit for community leaders and politicians. These four things are all upside and no downside. Hold on to college grads! Develop hip neighborhoods! Get people engaged in the community! Play to local strengths! No reasonable person could possibly object.

What I'd love to see, but doubt I will: A consultant on urban redevelopment who comes in and says: Look, you can't avoid the pain. This city [and you can pick your city; this isn't only about Pittsburgh] won't get off its back unless politicians and business and other community leaders start talking about and making some hard choices. Some people in town are going to lose out, and they're going to be very unhappy, and their unhappiness will simply be a cost of longer term progress. Leaders can avoid making those choices consciously and deliberately and they can avoid doing what they can to miitigate the damage. People will still be unhappy and people will still suffer, but the unhappiness and anger and suffering will seem random and unjust and eventual recovery will be delayed even further. So choose now, or choices will be forced on you later. And here are the options . . . .

My name got spelled correctly

in this P-G story about anonymous blogging. Unfortunately, some sausage-makers on the editors' desk made it look as if I said that the Federalist Papers were published during the Revolutionary War. That sort of thing happens from time to time when complicated stories get shortened to fit the page. No real harm done.

The Pittsburgh Narrative

Well, not *everyone* is on board with the new Pittsburgh renaissance (small "n" on purpose). I'm told that the most recent episode of the Showtime series "Weeds" was titled "Pittsburgh," as in, "nothing interesting ever happens there." And last next Sunday's New York Times runs a book review titled "Pittsburgh Pirates" that covers the era of Mellon, Carnegie, and Frick in distinctly nostalgic terms (while reviewing two new books, "Andrew Carnegie" by David Nasaw, and "Mellon: An American Life," by David Cannadine). The Economist's review of Cannadine's book includes Westinghouse and Heinz in its list of early 20th century Western PA industrialists and captures the sentiment romantically and succinctly:

Mellon was more than a mere shareholder in blue-chip businesses or a supplier of loans to them. He was the leading, risk-taking, venture capitalist in Pittsburgh, the Silicon Valley of its day.

During the burst of industrialisation between the 1860s and 1920s that transformed America into the world's leading economic power, Pittsburgh led the way.