Rising Standards

No need to list the now constant stream of media mentions on Pittsburgh’s rebirth, re-growth, renaissance, and re-emergence as a “place to be”.  These things take time and to come to this point it has taken two generations, over 40 years really, since the initial collapse of steelmaking as the region’s economic cornerstone.  While I believe rising economic development is not inevitable, the momentum is certainly there in Pittsburgh’s favor.

I believe Pittsburgh is further fortunate in that it does not get ahead of itself when it comes to civic self image.  Success does not distract Pittsburghers from their life paths.  This isn’t LA or Dallas or Miami, thank goodness.  Driving through the city and surrounds you won’t find a lot of faux-French chateaus being constructed in the hills.

But as with general economic growth in the US over the last 20 years, and similar to what we’re seeing worldwide, the benefits of growth are spread unevenly.  Perhaps more unevenly than any time in the last 100 years, since the Gilded Age.  So it’s appropriate to be thinking about how to mitigate the natural and normal inequalities of growth, as much because we want a solid economic base as because it’s simply better for all the area’s residents.

A rising tide does indeed float all ships.  But let’s make sure the tidal flow touches all and provides them the opportunity to rise.  Everyone who is a thought leader, an opinion maker, a mover and shaker so to speak, has got to be talking about development in all parts of Pittsburgh and the surrounding region.  No community, whether geographically or demographically defined, should be left behind or even allowed simply to lag.

OK, this is one of my blog pieces where I can offer no “solutions” or even opinions of such.  As mainly a free market capitalist, I believe the situation will eventually right itself.  However let’s not sit around and hope for the best.  If any city in the US is an example of what involved citizens can do, Pittsburgh with its generally recognized public-private partnership that produced the City’s first renaissance is the argument for some direct involvement.

Progress most likely will happen on the margins, both geographically and socially.  The worst blighted neighborhoods in Homewood or the Hill District, parts of the Mon Valley or outlying counties, for example, will probably not see incomes increase immediately.  But I believe measurable economic progress can penetrate those communities, among others, in reasonable amounts of time; measured in months and years, not decades.

As I mentioned above, Pittsburgh thought-leaders, in the media, academia, government, and business must acknowledge and give voice to this issue of raising the economic bar for the entire city and region.  Only by seeking solutions to this issue, one that Pittsburgh is certainly not alone among cities in facing, can progress me made.  Acknowledge, think and then act.  I have no other prescription at this time.