utterly opinionated

Remember this story?   Mon dieu!  You don’t have to spend $1010 on a trash can.

I love the pragmatic simplicity of Parisian trash cans.  A short steel post, with a ring at the top, bolted to the sidewalk with a plate.   The bag is held in place by an enormous, sturdy, bungee cord.

Get a local manufacturer to make these and I’ll bet they won’t cost much more than $50 a piece.  In Paris, you don’t have to walk much further than a block or two to find one.   They don’t take up much space, and the bag is simple to replace.

When did we start to believe that trash needed an architectural masterpiece to house it?     Admittedly, this solution was born as a safety measure, after trash cans became a great hiding place for bombs.  I love this solution.  Bombs can’t hide in clear plastic bags.

Bring it on!

Its my third coffee shop of the day and I’ve overdosed on coffee so this time I ordered tea.  Tea and a palmier.   I sat down around 4:30 and by 4;45 the coffee shop was packed.  Teatime, coffee time, snack time.  There is no other time as busy as this.  This is when the stores shut for a few hours and everyone takes a break before the evening rush.  Very civilized.

Unlike coffee shops in Pittsburgh, mine is the only computer in sight.  Parisians take their breaks seriously.   And unlike coffee shops in Pittsburgh this one caters to everyone.  The youngest person I see is 1 and the oldest is probably pushing 80.

Paris is a dense city.  There is not much space here.   Streets are narrow and crammed with cars.

A typical parking space in Pittsburgh measures twenty feet long by eight and a half feet wide.   This smart car fits into a space just nine feet long.  I measured it.   Fill a city with tiny cars and there’ll be twice as many parking spaces.

I’ve been sleeping through the winter.  Paris has woken me up.

24 hours ago I arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport, caught the RER metro into central Paris and settled into my tres petite chambre a coucher.   Tres petite.   Very un-American.  Lured here by a free room and a cheap ticket I thought what better way to emerge from the winter, but five days in Paris?

When I travel to a city I always promise myself that I will hit several museums and the important sights, but I should know myself better.  Once I start walking I am lost in the streets and there is no stopping me.   I cannot help myself.   Time inside seems time wasted.

On this trip I decided to focus on Le Marais, on the right bank of the Seine, and perhaps one of Paris’ most interesting neighborhoods.   My Eyewitness travel guide says this about Le Marais.  “ A place of royal residence for centuries, it was abandoned to the people during the Revolution and descended into an architectural wasteland, before  being rescued in the 1960s”.   Such a description cannot keep me away.  It takes an hour to walk there from my hotel and an hour back, but the journey is part of the adventure and it helps to burn off the endless food temptations along the way.  Tomato and mozarella pressed “sandwichs”,  crepes filled with nutella and wrapped in paper and lots of cafe creme.  Past the Jardin du Luxembourg and a school with children screaming in the playground, past scooter stands, markets, through the streets of the Left Bank, across the Ile de la Cite and then I am almost there.

This morning I set out after eating my petit dejeuner of french bread, croissant and hot coffee.  As I walked I absorbed the simple adaptions to life that Parisians have made in this very dense city.

We can learn from this.

Read on …

We sold our Lake House a couple of years ago.   It had become a burdensome retreat, large and a lot to care for.   Most days we’d sit in the tiniest room just off the kitchen, reading and looking at the gorgeous lake view.

I’ve adapted to life without a weekend retreat.  Still, I daydream about the perfect place to spend a weekend day and list the formula in my mind.  No more than an hour’s drive from our home in downtown Pittsburgh;  one room with a great view;  a fireplace center stage;  by water; on a biking trail;  with grounds that are rough and weedy.

Heaven.

And then I found the Red Guest Houses.   Designed by Totan Kuzembaev for a resort near Moscow, they have helped to transform once filthy waste land.  I will  build one.  It will hover above the old steel and weeds, right next to the river, bright red against the grey ground.  Apart, yet part of the landscape.  My Red Guest House will be something new and creative set into the solid roots of the region.

Soon.

cityLAB is going to pop Pittsburgh up in some other cities.  We are hosting a one-day creative event (a charrette) at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Architecture in Pittsburgh. Designers, architects, artists and wanna-be artists will work in teams to design a pop up that describes Pittsburgh best.

Not sure what a pop up is?   Come and find out at 10 am.

Creative and itching to design?  Stay on and we’ll assign you to a creative team.

Curious and got a point of view?  Come to the presentations at 2:30 pm and join in the critique.

Questions?   Email me at eve@citylabpgh.org.  We’ll be working in the College of Fine Arts Building at CMU, Room 214.

Everyone is welcome!

Our bus stop shelters are as dreary as January in Pittsburgh.  While they may be utilitarian they are quite pedestrian and uninspired.   The essential bus stop sign hasn’t even been integrated into the shelter.   It stands all alone, attached to a nearby post or pole, an afterthought.  What a shameful solution for a bus system that has more riders than most other cities in the US.

Santa Monica, on the other hand, is celebrating its bus system   Last year their Big Blue Bus Agency awarded Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects and Bruce Mau Design the Big Blue Bus Architectural and Branding Package.   These two internationally recognized firms were charged with the job of exploring how public transportation has the potential to cultivate, enrich and connect the community.

Their joyful solution, “The Blue Spots” takes the dreary out of bus stops.  Eventually, these flexible blue shelters will be implemented at 360 stops.

Ours or theirs?   You pick.

Everyone deserves to earn enough money to pay for their daily essentials.  On face value alone the proposed prevailing wage bill in Pittsburgh makes sense.  It speaks to the basic decency of employers and their willingness to take some responsibility for their employees lives.

As I understand it, the legislation ties real estate development dollars that the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority invests in a project to a guarantee that the developer pays prevailing wages to everyone involved, for evermore.  This means any business within a development must also comply.  No longer do the proponents of the bill want to trust employers to do the right thing.  They want to ensure that public dollars result in prevailing wages.

I so sympathize with this point of view.

But I’m going to land on the other side of this debate, and here’s why.

About five years ago I purchased the Liberty Bank Building on main street in East Liberty.  It sits in a neighborhood that at that time had many shuttered storefronts.  It had been vacant for ten years, and I lovingly called it “green”.  The building was covered inside with green mold.  The renovation that we embarked on was extensive and complicated.  Not much was left to save but the beautiful sandstone walls.  It is not a huge building but it was a huge financial undertaking.  It required the URA’s assistance, my life savings and an awful lot of time.  This is the sort of project you call “patient”.  I took this on because it matters to me that my projects make a difference in the long run and I was sure this one would.

In the early years it was almost impossible to find good tenants.  Tenants came and went, damaging the spaces and requiring more funds to repair them.  New potential tenants could not see the value of locating to this neighborhood.  It was tough.  Very tough.  My partners and I lost money.  Dollar Bank and the URA helped as much as any financial partner could.  They worked with us, unfailing, through the tough times until now, five years later, we are beginning to break even.

The due diligence that came along with city funds that were borrowed has also been burdensome but I believe a fair exchange.  Every year (amongst a sea of other reports) I compile a report of jobs created in the building.   Where once no-one was employed here, now sixty-one people come to work at the Liberty Bank Building every day.  I consider this a staggering success.  If I had to entice tenants to the building and require that they report their wage rates to me or the URA, I doubt that we would be at break even today.

Today, Rich Lord reported Rabbi Jami Gibson as rhetorically asking developers, “Why can’t you get by on the minimum profit?”.

This comment hits me hard in the gut.  I get by on LESS than minimum profit, Rabbi Gibson.  I’ve invested myself whole-heartedly into this neighborhood.  While the building I built may not require that everyone in it receives prevailing wage, it has helped to turn this neighborhood around, and brings far more jobs along with it than just inside the building alone.

Would I have tackled this building with the prevailing wages as an added mandated obligation?

No.

On January 12, cityLIVE! presents pop culture in the city of Pittsburgh.  Don’t you wonder what we are watching, reading and listening to – both good and bad?   We will discuss television, movies, printed material, the internet and music, and how pop culture goes from a niche phenomenon to a full-on pop cultural extravaganza. How have these influences changed Pittsburgh and the region, our population and our perception of ourselves in the larger world – both positive and negative, and is any of it within our control?

Our panel includes Pablo Garcia, from the Architecture Department at Carnegie Mellon; Emmai Alaquiva, of Ya Momz House; and Kathy Savitt, of Lockerz … and we will be moderated by Rob Rogers, editorial cartoonist and president of the ToonSeum.

Cocktails and conversation to follow.

Don’t let the cold weather keep you away.  Warm up with us.  RSVP here …

Every city needs its angels, and Los Angeles has plenty of them.

It has been several weeks since I returned from Los Angeles.   My trip there as a panelist for an American Institute of Architects SDAT was a rich, if exhausting, experience.  Three intense days there bred a familiarity I will never shake off.  I know downtown Los Angeles now.

Whenever I make one of these trips I expect to discover a city that is somehow better off than Pittsburgh.  I expect to find a city that somehow has its act together. Los Angeles, after all, is the second largest city in the United States covering almost 500 square miles.  In 2008, it was named the world’s eighth most powerful city by Forbes.com. Full of significant architecture, with a rapidly growing residential population it is easy to imagine that downtown Los Angeles should be the envy of every other city.

And yet, like most other American cities, it is rotten at its core.   It is the hole in the donut.  It has some serious problems to overcome.

Politics keep its nine districts distinctly divided, reinforcing the already existing and striking differences between them in both architecture and population. A civic center with great building stock, historic Broadway with a vibrant ethnic community, Skid Row with a sad and unwanted population and a manufacturing district, unheard of in most downtowns, essentially all ignore each other.   Its streets are wide, fast and disruptive, a convict population continues to be discharged at alarming rates into the city center, and the economy has stalled the growing residential population and is endangering the vitality of historic Broadway.

Like every other city one needs to look beyond these physical issues to really understand it.   Here, just like in Pittsburgh, I met a group of passionate and hopeful people all working tirelessly towards improving their downtown.   They are not elected officials.  They will not be paid for their work.   This is their neighborhood and they have claimed it.  They are the city’s angels.

Who knows better than them what the problems are?   Who knows better than them what the potential is? If I were Mayor of Los Angeles I would let them rise up, craft their vision and give them the resources to fulfill it.

I came home happily, eager to see Pittsburgh’s beautiful downtown again.   Our problems seem small now compared to Los Angeles.  Yet one is the same.  Our angels, plentiful and passionate, are all too often ignored.

Last night’s cityLIVE event, 10 people. 3 minutes, was a rollicking success.  10 brilliant people with 10 brilliant ideas.

Our moderator, Chris Potter of the City Paper, conducted a survey to determine the “winner” by providing 5 pennies to each audience member and a styrofoam cup for each panelist, bedecked with their photo.    Late last night, Chris and his wife counted pennies.  He remarked that as an alternative-weekly journalist, a lot of his workdays end this way.

Top honors, or should I say, the most pennies go to Jon Rubin of the renowned East Liberty Waffle Shop.  Chris will make a donation in his name to Pittsburgh Promise.  The amount is TBD but he promises it will be less than the $10 million donated by UPMC, but more than the 41 cents dropped into Jon’s cup.

Jon amazingly crammed three big ideas into three little minutes.

First, he proposed to kick all of  Pittsburgh’s universities (classrooms, teachers, students and all) out of their buildings and relocate them throughout the entire city into storefronts, apartments, boats, and tree houses.  No longer would students be tempted to stay on their cloistered campuses. Writing classes would be conducted on coal barges,  a physics program in row houses, a business school at city hall and university lectures in backyards and street corners.  Imagine!

Second, he proposed super-gigantic sky fans to be installed around the perimeter of downtown Pittsburgh, blowing clouds away and creating a perpetual sunny zone over downtown to attract businesses, tourists and even more new residents.  Sunbathers would abound.  Suburban flight would be reversed and most importantly, the weather in the surrounding suburbs would actually become worse.

And last, but not least, John proposed exporting our greatest resource – the Steelers.  Our football team would become an international traveling soccer team in the off season.  Think of them as the Harlem Globetrotters of soccer.   The last World Cup had viewership of 30 billion people and John thinks we are missing out.  ”If we really want to call ourselves the city of champions, I suggest we take the big leap and go with the sort shorts” said John.

Last night was a celebration of the talent we have here in Pittsburgh.   It was a chance to hang loose and let ideas roll.  In every idea presented there was passion, conviction and truth.   Take any of them and push them forward and we could rebrand Pittsburgh in a completely unexpected way.

I’m voting for the city wide campus.  Short shorts on Steelers don’t seem quite right to me.

Back by popular demand!  We’ve gathered 10 more brilliant Pittsburgh minds to tell you about their funkiest, biggest, hairiest. most brilliant ideas for change.   Give us 30 minutes on December 9, and we’ll change the way you see the city at this cityLIVE! event.  Forget feasibility, funding or anything as ridiculous as consensus-building. We asked for ‘thought-provoking’ and ‘outside the box’.

You’ll want to meet our panelists after the show.  A glass of wine and a chat to polish off the evening. Hilary Robinson, dean of the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University.  Raymar Hampshire, the young founder of sponsorchange.org.  Jon Rubin, CMU Art Professor and the man behind the wildly successful Waffle Shop.  Susan Everingham, the director of RAND’s Pittsburgh office.  Scott Faber, a developmental pediatrician at the Children’s Institute.  Alexi Morrissey, artist.   Priya Narasimhan from Carnegie Mellon’s Mobility Center and founder of YinzCam.  Janera Solomon of the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater.  LaVerne Baker Hotep from the Center for Victims of Violence and Crime.  Sean Jones of the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra.  They make for spicy conversation.

And to make sure that we don’t take ourselves too seriously, Chris Potter, the renowned editor of City Paper, will moderate with his unabashed and ascerbic charm.

You can read about last year’s event here. Greg Viktor will be writing a story again on it this year, in case you miss the event again.

But you won’t, will you?   See you there …

Just back from Australia, with my internal time clock still off kilter, I’ve turned around and headed back to Los Angeles for an intense, but fun, three day project.  The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has invited me to participate as a panelist in an SDAT in Downtown Los Angeles.  What an honor.

The SDAT program is a national community assistance program sponsored by the AIA that focuses on the principles of sustainability.  SDATs bring teams of volunteer professionals together to work with community decision-makers and stakeholders to help them develop a vision and framework for a sustainable future.

For me, this is more fun than a vacation.  I get to spend 3 days in a city I don’t know well and discover every corner of it.  And then I get to think about how to make it better.

Our panel is peppered with smart and interesting people.    An architect and preservation specialist from New York, a neighborhood and governance expert from Seattle, a downtown manager from Oklahoma City, Washington State’s bike/pedestrian/transportation planner, a streetscape and open space designer from Seattle and me, urban guru from Pittsburgh.

For three intense days we will immerse ourselves in the good and bad of downtown LA.  One day will be spent outside, touring, seeing and absorbing.  Another day will be spent meeting with downtown stakeholders -  advocacy organizations, government departments, politicians, neighborhood groups, the transportation sector and plenty more.  A veritable sea of faces.

And on Friday, from early morning until our evening presentation to the public, we’ll prepare our report here and hope that our efforts will have been worthwhile.

Sleepless in LA, but loving it.

Endless miles of freeway have always irritated me.  They plow through neighborhoods, dissecting blocks and turn well worn paths and local connections into dead ends.  Instead of sustaining cities they perpetuate sprawl.

Someone in Melbourne must be thinking the same thoughts.

While riding a 20 mile loop through Melbourne’s close-in neighborhoods, I found myself riding UNDER a freeway.  This creative solution, while not a pretty ride, re-connects the neighborhoods on either side of this freeway and gives back what it took away.  I rode for miles with the sounds of fast-moving traffic above, on a smooth concrete deck, hung by steel straps from the substantial freeway structure above.

Brilliant.

Often, when I’m traveling that horrendous thirty hours from Pittsburgh to Australia, I day dream about laksa.  This Malaysian soup is worth the trip and I eat it whenever I can.

Ingredients

Richard Florida ranks it as a  city “where the kids are heading”.  Melbourne, the second most populous city in Australia, with 4,000,000 residents, has also been ranked one of the top three most livable cities in the world by the Economist Group’s Intelligence unit, since 2002.

The most Important criteria for ranking cities on this list are safety, education, hygiene, recreation, political-economic stability and public transportation.  I’m not sure I’d choose to live in a city based on these rankings.  My criteria might look a little different, and certainly, right at the top, would be cuisine.

More than any other metric, the fact that 34.8% of Melbourne’s population was born overseas has the biggest impact on this city.  This is the reason I’d choose it as a place to live.  This percentage far exceeds the national average, already high at 23.1%.  It’s easy to guess this.  The by-product of this percentage is the large number of ethnic restaurants, clustered in every neighborhood and flavoring every street corner.

Flavoring my trips home.

Visits with family members are interspersed here with visits to restaurants and food markets.  Lebanese, malaysian,  vietnamese, turkish and greek food, each meal better than the last.  Fresh food readily available in abundance from every corner of the world.  A melting pot of food and people that is hard to imagine. With the diversity of people comes a diversity of talent.  Once you have lived it, it is difficult to live without.

This week I fly back to my adopted home, Pittsburgh.  Only 5% of our population was born overseas.  We are missing out, big time.

While I write this at four in the afternoon, in Pittsburgh the day I have just enjoyed has not yet dawned.

A week ago I made my way half way across the world.  First, bright-eyed,  from Pittsburgh through Minneapolis St. Paul to Los Angeles.   Then, bleary-eyed from LA to Melbourne in Australia.  Every time I make this journey I am determined to spend the horrendously long travel time well and at first I do.  I read, I write and I work.   By the end of the first fifteen hours, when I board the plane from LA to Melbourne, my resolve crumbles and the remaining hours are spent dozing while watching bad movies.

When I arrive I fight my way through the fog of jet lag (ferocious since the time difference is sixteen hours) to reconnect with my parents, my sisters and my nephew.  Family visits crammed into two weeks always leave me feeling dissatisfied.  They are both too short and too long.  I vow I won’t eat too much so I don’t have to wrestle the pounds back off when I get home.  But the food is a reminder of the home I grew up in. For two weeks I am tempted by the tastes that I cannot take home with me.  Milk bars, laksa, licorice, ginger beer, turkish bread and tropical fruit are all stronger than me.

Although I am Australian by birth, by now I have spent half my life in America and I am caught forever in between.  My strange half Australian half American accent  marks me.  Interesting in my adopted town.  A defector in my country of birth.  Quizzical looks wherever I go.

A few years ago I set about finding a way to fit in on these visits to Melbourne.   The trail that runs beside my sister’s house loops its way through and around the city.  This has become the starting point for my visits.  Two days after I arrive, my head still slightly foggy, I pull out her ancient bike and cautiously ride down the trail that was once unfamiliar but now belongs to me.  Here I fit right in. On a bike my strange accent is barely noticeable.

Here, on the trail, I am surrounded by people of every ethnicity.  This is where the people of the city congregate, on its trails and in its parks.  This is where differences fade away.  Just like in Pittsburgh.

This lovely little city, Pittsburgh, is under siege.  Every day the media describes yet another crisis.  Eight more schools to close.  Library branches to be shuttered.  A court order to fix the water and sewer system.  Underfunded pension funds. Property and business taxes that are burdensome.  Disappearing bus stops.  Disappearing mail boxes.  And the latest, a mayor who wants to tax our local college students to balance the city’s books.

Someone has been asleep at the wheel.

It has been decades now since Pittsburgh’s population was halved.  Any sensible person would surely understand that half the people + the same number of services = disaster?

For the past decade the question in my head has become louder, more strident.   Where is the leadership who will say it the way it is?  Where is the leadership that will prepare it’s citizens for reality?

A leader should look like this.  She should prepare her city’s citizens for the strategy that must be thought through – a shrinking city strategy.  She should find ways to consolidate the city’s citizenry, to consolidate services.   She should have the courage to say that upfront.  She should focus on how to grow the city.  And she should share the plan so that her citizens will understand that there will be pain, but there is also hope. She should know that cities are the future and that Pittsburgh will grow again.

Neither the head of the library system nor the superintendent of the public schools are to blame for the situations they inherited.    Audits, anger and outrage will not change that fact.

Streamlining city government:  What can we do NOW?

City County consolidation is a big, top down idea. We’ve worked on it locally for years now and are told there are many valuable efficiencies to gain from such a consolidation.

In the meantime, while we are waiting, are there ways to streamline government services from the bottom up? Should we wait for the big prize, or should we be chipping away at consolidating smaller chunks that may eventually add up to the big prize?

On November 4, a panel of experts will present and discuss their ideas for effectively streamlining government services today at the latest  cityLIVE! Pittsburgh event.  Our panel includes Kathleen McKenzie, deputy county manager for Allegheny County;  Moe Coleman, professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and Urban Studies;  Sala Udin, president and CEO of Coro Center for Civic Leadership; and moderating will be Laura Ellsworth, partner at Jones Day.

Sign up here and show your love!

This weekend I helped a relative move into a pretty little house in Cranberry.  She had finally found a home just 2.5 miles from her job.   Since she likes to walk  I assumed her days of commuting by car were over.  But I had forgotten this fundamental thing about the suburbs.  There are no sidewalks.

 “I’ll drive” she said.

I thought about this as I drove short hops through Cranberry that day.  My errand list required me to drive from one shop to another.  As I became more and more frustrated at my inability to walk even the shortest distance to the next one, I recalled that not every home I have lived in has had a sidewalk in front of it.  Once I was complacent about this issue.  As I have aged I have demanded this simple necessity.  I can’t live my life without a sidewalk.

My sidewalk connects my front door (and me) to so many things that are necessary to my life.  I can walk from my door to a bus stop, or to a supermarket, a drug store or a department store.  When the traffic is too vicious I can ride my bike on a sidewalk to feel just a little safer.  When my children were young I could wheel their stroller on my sidewalk.  I taught them to ride their trikes and bikes there too.

My sidewalk is a place where no vehicles are allowed.  I can feel safe there.  I walk to my mailbox at night with the street lights overhead lighting my way.   Trees, planted at regular intervals, shield me from the sun during the day.  Sometimes my sidewalk will have newspapers for sale, or a bike rack, a bus stop or a cab stand.  My sidewalk, in downtown Pittsburgh, is so very used, and so very full of life and so very connected to everything.

Cranberry has no sidewalks.

This, I venture to say, is the way that the majority of Americans live.  Without a sidewalk.  

Perhaps the path to sustainability is simply a concrete one.

Will we always be second best?

Over the last month I have been corresponding with a young man from Tokyo.  He will be moving to Pittsburgh for a job, with wife and baby daughter in tow.   He is in fact an American  but has lived abroad for years now.  He believes that America can offer a better life for his family.

But apparently not Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh is his entry point back into the country.  He already has a timeline firmly implanted in his mind for the length of his stay here.  Three years and then on to a better place.

My first reaction when he told me this was disappointment.  But Chris Briem set me straight.    He said  “I bet places like Manhattan or Boston, or places one might think are ‘not second best’ are full of transitory people who will not stay.”.    And of course, he’s right.

Just last month the Wall Street Journal’s selected their 10 top-rated Next Youth-Magnet Cities.  Washington DC tied for first place with Seattle.   Washington DC has an enduring brand as a place of transition, full of people who don’t stay long.   And yet, it is, according to the WSJ the number one pick for today’s youth.   Interesting.

If a region has churn, according to Chris, then it is attracting those mobile workers who have the most options on where they go.  And this is a good sign.  For decades now, the region has been moribund, unable to attract new workers,   For decades now we have been number one in weird statistics like the highest percentage of people who have lived in their current home or current county.   Now we have companies like Westinghouse who are growing so rapidly that they may be the provider for the churn we are looking for.   Westinghouse alone is looking to fill some 600 positions they have open.  

If the city is going to expand and grow then this is something we should learn to expect.  It will be hard to forget the last 3 decades. Then, a person who left was not necessarily replaced.  Now we should expect more people to come and leave and be replaced by others.  New people, with new families and new ideas.

The day after he left Pittsburgh after his first brief visit here, my Tokyo friend wrote to me. “Strangely enough” he wrote “I miss the time I spent in Pittsburgh.”   

Churn or not, I had to smile.

Scott Bricker of Bike Pitsburgh at Union Station

DC loves its bike commuters.  

Four million dollars were spent to build this stunning, all glass, “smart building” right outside Union Station.   A membership parking garage, the facility will house 130 bicycles in 1600 s.f. of space that includes lockers, changing areas, a retail shop and bike repair and is heated and cooled passively.  Members will have 24/7 access and the station will be staffed 66 hours per week.    

If you live outside DC, you can park your bike at the station, commute in and troll around town on your bike.   

I want one of these in Pittsburgh. 

We deserve it, don’t we?

Is the rush out of Pittsburgh finally over?

Was there ever really a rush?

Every year since 1995 Christopher Briem has updated his annual report on migration trends in and out of the Pittsburgh region.   Every year an average of 13% of the population has migrated out the Pittsburgh Metro Statistical Area and almost the same number has migrated in. 

While in the past the local media has focused on the 13% who choose to leave, Pittsburgh is apparently attractive enough for almost the same number to choose to come.  Just a sliver has separated these two numbers in past years.  For every 10 that leave, 9 others find reason to come, a mere 10% imbalance.  This was never a profound imbalance but just a slow leak that eventually had to be plugged.  That moment has now come.

For me, this year’s report marks the beginning of the end.  The decline of net population loss has been steady since 2005.   In 2007 – 2008, there was a net population loss of just 738 people.   That is just 0.25% of the population.  Nothing.  Nobody worth talking about.    

Nothing worth talking about, except for this.

In past years the local media has trumpeted Pittsburgh’s migration misfortunes loudly, focusing on those leaving instead of those coming.  I suppose because this year’s loss number is so pitifully small it isn’t much of a story.  This year, the first with good news, the media are painfully silent.

But for me, this is a story worth talking about.   It is another indicator of Pittsburgh’s transformation.  The point is this.   We are healthy.   A lot of people are finding a reason to come here.  Let’s keep that in mind.  And let’s keep them coming.

I can hardly wait for the 2008 – 2009 numbers!

As part of an annual its North American Tour Day to call attention to modernist design, DOCOMOMO US has designated Pittsburgh a Tour Day city. The tour will focus on key post-WW II buildings in the Golden Triangle, starting at the original ALCOA building at Mellon Square, including Miens Van Der Rohe’s Mellon Hall at Duquesne University and ending at the Portal Bridge at Point State Park. The tour will be led by architectural and preservation professionals.

Pittsburgh Moderns organized by the Pittsburgh Chapter of DOCOMOMO, is a group of architects, historians, and artists.  The tour is free and open to the public.  

This is a great opportunity to learn about a group of buildings that make Pittsburgh’s Downtown quite distinctive.

What’s different about President Obama from any president who has come before him?  It’s a difference that has influenced him profoundly.  It’s a difference that will influence the future of this country profoundly.  

This President lived on a city block and returns to one when he leaves the White House.  It’s not a ranch or a secluded compound.  That the city is our country’s future is an important idea to this President, and plays a role in the policies that are being crafted by the White House today.  

I heard this today from Michael Strautmanis, Chief of Staff in the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement.  He told us that we had caught the President’s attention.  

That’s no surprise for an urban President.  The “we” is CEOs for Cities.  I’ve been in DC for its annual Urban Leaders Summit, a wonderful gathering of like-minded urban advocates, led by Carol Coletta.  Ours is an urban agenda.   We are a group of urban change makers, thrilled that we have a President in the White House who gets it.