Reflections on Two Days in Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh-

After two days in Detroit, Ecologic's group made the 5 hour drive across Ohio to Pittsburgh. Below is a lengthy interpretation of what we saw there. I'm going to try to separate these into a few shorter pieces that could be pulled into an article.

We arrived in the Sheraton Station Square hotel to a vista of a city transformed. As I arrived in my hotel room, I pulled open my drapes to see the skyline of downtown Pittsburgh. It featured a beautiful mix of early 20th century skyscrapers, mid 1980s glass fronted corporate headquarters, and a few modern LEED- certified towers. Viewed from across the Monongahela river, this was a very different feeling than Detroit. This is not a city where the residents claim a small victory when a downtown skyscraper is merely re-lit at night, never mind filled. But, with that same view came a reminder of Pittsburgh's roots. As I tried to fall asleep, coal trains of up to a mile long rumbled by directly under my window.

We would learn the next day that the view we saw of Pittsburgh was of a reincarnated city. Whereas Detroit had reached its nadir in 2009 (or, we hope that Detroit has hit bottom- only time will tell), Pittsburgh's industrial collapse happened in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Three Rivers at Night

I don't know the full story, but from what were told, a labor conflict at the steel mills over how to re-tool the mills to better compete with more efficient competitors, both foreign and domestic. Labor saw that this more efficient method would result in fewer jobs, so they went on strike- and that strike led directly to the closure of almost every steel mill in the area. In a flash, over 100,000 people, about 10% of the workforce, were out of a job. There was nothing else for them to do, so they left. The reason that Steelers games around the country are always so full is that an entire generation left Pittsburgh, but they didn't loose their affection for the black and gold.



The city was saved by 'Meds and Eds' - the medical field and it's universities. These are clearly related fields that rely on education and research. Pittsburg was lucky to be endowed with two major research universities, Pitt and Carnegie Mellon. Somehow it's hospitals developed into one of the main areas for tissue research and organ transplants. These industries stopped the bleeding in the 1980s and 1990s.

Although new jobs took off, the city was left with a legacy of a century of heavy industry that had made its waterways unsanitary, it's air clogged, and it's central city surrounded by giant blast furnaces. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, one of the biggest industries was dismantling the remains of the steel factories. The Homestead Iron Works and the South Side Works were where most of the steel that built America's railroads, created New York's skyscrapers, and helped win WWII came from. But, 20 years ago, they were only worth scrap, and the land they were on had essentially a negative value because it came with a century of pollution.

View from Coal Hill down the Monongahela towards the South Side

Today, the site of these once great factories are again humming with energy. This time, it is the energy of commerce and entertainment. The pollution has been capped and stores have been built. Where once steel was pored, now people go to watch movies and enjoy a beer. The most successful rehabilitation seemed to be the South Side Works. It is difficult now to see a difference between where the city ends and the rehabilitated brownfields begins. It is an excellent work of city planning that has brought a vibrant area back.

Pittsburgh was lucky to have a good shell into which to build these new commercial projects. When the Eastern European immigrants had come in the late 1800s, they had set-up communities that resembled the old country, complete with onion-domed Ukrainian churches. These tight-communities provide a good infrastructure and walkable neighborhoods that are prime for redevelopment. The immigrants didn't need a car to get to work in the mills in 1892, and their great-great grandchildren don't need them now to walk to the movies or the bar.

While Pittsburgh puts on a veil of a modern, next generation 21st century city, with banks, clean energy investment, a cutting-edge medical community, two highly engaged world-class universities, and globe-trotting corporate road warriors, I have to question whether this has been fully embraced. The development that is generating the most excitement among the business community is not high-tech manufacturing, bio medical research, or education. Instead, the business community was focused on the new riches unearthed by the shale gas boom in the Marcellus Shale. For the first time since steel's collapse, people are moving back here.

Shale gas technology, which uses horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to release the pent-up natural gas in shale rock formations, is transforming America's energy system. Where once plans were underway to import liquified natural gas, now the government is fielding permits applications to allow its export. Pittsburgh sits right at the center of the Marcellus shale formation, a prehistoric sea-bed which stretches from West Virginia and eastern Ohio across Western Pennsylvania and into Western New York. It is estimated that this shale contains more recoverable energy in natural gas than Saudi Arabia has in oil.

As the only major city with an international airport that stands within the Marcellus Shale, businessmen in Pittsburgh can smell the boom coming. Already, there's more jobs in the gas industry than can be filled, and people from a round the country are moving in. Even more, though, you can feel that across the region, they are somehow more happy to be back in the energy /heavy industry game. This will always be a blue-collar town where men are happier working with their hands than sitting behind a computer screen. I think that there is a sense of relief that they can get back to their national mission: providing America with the raw materials it needs to grow.

There are real speed-bumps here that they should be aware of: the questions about water quality issues with fracking are not entirely understood yet. It would be ironic if all of the good work done to clean Pittsburgh's waterways was immediately undone as soon as the newest energy source came along. I think that Pennsylvania is taking a good approach: balancing smart regulation with exploitation. But, they must remain vigilant- because revealing a major incident of pollution could kill the goose before they get their golden eggs.

Overall, Pittsburgh is a great city that would be a good place to live. I was happy to see it, and I will plan to go back for a visit.