Carrie Furnace and the Oakmont Country Club. George Westinghouse and the Pittsburgh Opera. These things go in pairs – Pittsburgh’s industrial history and its contemporary arts and cultural resources. Having written about Pittsburgh for close to 15 years, I’ve learned about a lot of those pairings. What’s good for the bank account often turns out to be good for the spirit.
Read More »What I Didn’t Know About Pittsburgh, #1Contemporary Pittsburgh is still mostly missing a writer who distills its emerging, collective voice, meaning a forward-looking imagineer to complement the marvelous visual nostalgia of Rick Sebak. The expressive identity of the city and region are probably the things that I’ve wrestled with the most since moving here and writing about the place myself, on and off, for close to 15 years. And when I come back to the topic from time to time — what defines Pittsburgh, in various ways, and what anchors its evolution? — this is the theme that pulls me in. How does Pittsburgh talk about itself to itself, and how does Pittsburgh talk about itself to others?
Read More »#Pittsblog: Imagining PittsburghFree download: “Contrasts in Innovation: Pittsburgh Then and Now,” http://ssrn.com/abstract=1858741
That’s a full and complete account of innovation and other things in Pittsburgh today, or the good, the bad, and the ugly about Pittsburgh’s continuing journey on the road to recovery post-steel collapse, economically speaking and otherwise. Anyone coming to Pittsburgh or coming to Pittsburgh’s story via a line arguing that Pittsburgh’s innovation is in high gear and that Pittsburgh is a model region for tech, tech policy, and urban reinvention should read further. Good things are happening in Pittsburgh, but there is more going on — more innovation than innovation in tech, and things that aren’t so innovative and that aren’t so good — than are captured in the headlines.
Read More »#WHFrontiers: Pittsburgh’s Innovation Story in FullThere is more to say, as it turns out, about law and tech and entrepreneurship and Pittsburgh and various and sundry other things.
Since the end of Pittsblog (born 2003, suspended 2013) and the earlier version of this site (born 2004, suspended 2015), I’ve been looking for the right moment to get back on the ’round, and this morning, there it was: The Pittsburgh Tribune Review, one of Pittsburgh’s two daily newspapers, announced that it will discontinue print publication on November 30. A number of small-ish regionally and locally-oriented “publications” will carry forward, online only.
[The Trib’s announcement is here.]
At long last, Pittsburgh will finally join the ranks of cities with only one daily newspaper. As the old joke goes, if the end of the world finally arrives, be glad that you live in Pittsburgh, because you’ve got another five years to wait. That’s how long it usually takes for new stuff to wash up on the banks of the city of Three Rivers.
More below the fold.
Read More »Pittsblog: Back Again, and the End of NewsContrasting “Pittsburgh tech is booming!” stories with “the rest of Pittsburgh is struggling” is always interesting … because those sorts of comparisons are done so rarely. But the comparison tells us and others something important about the region.
Read More »Building a #Pittsburgh Narrative