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Sunday, June 30, 2002

By Dan Fitzpatrick, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

When Forbes magazine released its rankings earlier this month of the best U.S. cities in which to be young and unmarried, "square and stagnant" Pittsburgh finished last, tagged as a "pit for singles" and "the worst place in America to be stuck with a lonely heart."

	Stacy Innerst, Post-Gazette Singles statistics

Ouch.

Such a harsh judgment, according to hundreds of Pittsburghers, could be the most damaging piece of Pittsburgh PR since the words of Boston journalist James Parton, who in 1868 called the city "Hell With the Lid Taken Off."

After the Forbes article appeared, Pittsburghers flooded the magazine with more than 240 e-mails. "This is easily the most irresponsible piece of journalism I've ever seen," one said. A 24-year-old University of Pittsburgh public affairs officer, Kate Whitemore, told Forbes that she, too, was skeptical of Pittsburgh but still found a boyfriend within three months of moving here.

Forbes.com writer Davide Dukcevich, who gathered the singles data for Forbes and wrote the story about Pittsburgh, said he'd like to make another visit. But, he added in an e-mail, "I'd be killed in four minutes after people found out who I was."

"I've gotten TONS of hate mail."

By ranking Pittsburgh last out of 40 metropolitan areas, Forbes waded into the middle of an intense war for the city's image. To those waging it, every newspaper story, magazine article, TV clip or book that mentions Pittsburgh is either a win or a loss, a way to track the region's slow, frustrating evolution from "Hell With The Lid Taken Off" to that of a vibrant, diverse community no longer dominated by Big Steel.

Recent "wins" include President Bush's description of Pittsburgh as "Knowledge Town" and The Wall Street Journal's 1999 decision to rank Pittsburgh as one of the nation's top technology markets, nicknaming it "Roboburgh." Forbes' description of Pittsburgh as the worst city for singles was an obvious "loss," as was a recent Brookings Institution report that rated Pittsburgh as a laggard among cities racing to build a local biotechnology industry.

Still in question is a widely discussed book by Carnegie Mellon University professor Richard Florida, who portrays Pittsburgh as a city with a rich history, invaluable assets and great universities that is weighed down by "cultural inertia," a lack of diversity and a blind eye to the needs of the young workers he refers to collectively as the "creative class."

Florida, it turns out, contributed the research from his new book, "The Rise of the Creative Class," to Forbes' singles analysis, and Florida also suggested that Forbes talk to his 24-year-old graduate assistant, Elizabeth Currid, who lamented the lack of nighttime options in Pittsburgh as a collection of "sports bars and cheesy dance clubs."

"There's two bars I'll go to in Pittsburgh," she told Forbes. "I'd rather stay home and watch a Woody Allen movie because it's just so boring."

Getting out the vote

As one example of how badly economic development agencies want to alter that image of Pittsburgh, the Greater Pittsburgh Convention & Visitors Bureau earlier this year orchestrated a campaign to get Pittsburgh's name on an AmericanStyle magazine poll of the most popular arts-related tourist destinations.

The bureau sent out an e-mail to hundreds of arts and economic development officials throughout southwestern Pennsylvania urging them to cast a vote on the magazine's Web site. By doing that, the bureau helped boost Pittsburgh's ranking from No. 12 to No. 4, beating out bigger places as Chicago, Boston; Washington, D.C.; and Philadelphia.

"I wasn't surprised when we jumped from 12th to 4th because we got actively involved in the voting this year," said the bureau's director of cultural tourism Tinsy Lipchak. One voter was Pittsburgh Cultural Trust spokesman Paul Kovach, identified as a "reader" in the accompanying article and quoted as saying that Pittsburgh is "the biggest little city between New York and Chicago."

Magazine spokeswoman Christine Kloostra made it clear that the rankings were totally unscientific. "If one city wants to organize a campaign to get on the list," she said, "so be it."

Now that Pittsburgh has a such a high ranking, the convention and visitors bureau is promoting it heavily. "We will put AmericanStyle on everything we send out," Lipchak said.

Bill Flanagan, communications officer for the Allegheny Conference on Community Development and the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance, said he had no problem with such methods. "If AmericanStyle chooses to use quirky methodology to rank us fourth, we will run with it, milk it for all it's worth," said Flanagan, who has spent the last nine months trying to craft a new image campaign for the region.

To some outsiders, though, the debate about Pittsburgh's image can easily turn defensive and obsessive. Rarely does Forbes' Dukcevich get such a visceral reaction to his stories. "One guy told me his cousin Kenny was going to kick my ass," he said.

While Dukcevich noted that he is "enjoying the spunk from Pittsburgh," he also finds the "bitterness" of some letters to be "a little bit weird."

"It's like, 'OK, guys, calm down.'"

City in a gray flannel suit

Perhaps no one person is doing more to shape Pittsburgh's image on a national level right now than Florida.

Problem is, his portrayal is not the positive story local economic development officials had in mind.

"I could use many places as examples of cultural inertia," he writes. "But I think it best not to pick on someone else's town." So he picks on his own.

Florida, born in Newark, N.J., and educated at Rutgers and Columbia University, has a history of thrusting himself into the middle of local debates. Soon after joining Carnegie Mellon in the late 1980s, he served as co-author of a "white paper" that portrayed Western Pennsylvania as a fragmented region mired in economic crisis and lacking leadership. Some criticized the report, released in 1993, as being too negative.

Despite its faults, the "White Paper'" sparked regional leaders into action and led to a goal of 100,000 jobs by the year 2000.

"I really believe Pittsburgh has turned a big corner," Florida said in a 1996 interview. Pittsburgh was a place "that has taken the newest, most cutting-edge ideas and put them into action. There is no other place in the country I could go where this is occurring. That's where my optimism comes from."

In "The Rise of the Creative Class," Florida's optimism is still there, but it is tempered by his new thesis, which is that, if cities such as Pittsburgh do not pay more attention to the needs of a new "creative class," they will lose the race for new companies and hot industries. "For what's it's worth, I'll put my money -- and a lot of my effort -- into Pittsburgh making it," Florida writes.

In his book, he cites Pittsburgh's rich history as an industrial power and place of innovation, as well as the world-class universities, parks, rivers and rolling hills that appeal to the "creative class." Yet, as Florida notes, the region continues to lose population. "With such a legacy and such assets," he asks, "why hasn't the region been able to turn things around?"

Florida concludes that Pittsburgh's problem is not economic, nor is it image-related. "The problem is fundamentally one of culture and attitudes."

Cities such as Pittsburgh, he adds, "have not been sufficiently tolerant and open to attract and retain top creative talent."

Focus groups and Carnegie Mellon colleagues told Florida that African Americans, foreign-born students and gays are leaving the city for places such as New York; Atlanta; Washington, D.C.; and San Francisco because there "is nothing in Pittsburgh for them." But Florida admits that with such anecdotes "the perception may be worse than the reality."

Either way, Florida is broadcasting these stories to a national audience.

In promoting his book, Florida is visiting such hot spots as Washington D.C.; Chicago; Boston; Minneapolis; San Jose, Calif.; and Seattle, where he visited Microsoft's corporate campus. He is also getting publicity in such national forums as Salon.com, an online publication popular with the "creative class." Salon said Florida's book "is attracting the type of attention usually garnered by salacious fiction or celebrity tell-alls, from packed readings to a rapid ascent up Amazon's bestseller list."

In a subsequent Q&A with Salon, Florida said that Pittsburgh is among the cities that "thought we really live in a patriarchal, white, corporate society and that the key to success was to strap on your tie, go to work 9 to 5, and behave yourself. There was no room for people with new ideas . . . They were thought to be troublemakers, difficult, weirdos, wackos, eccentrics."

Reaching another influential audience in The Washington Monthly, which printed an excerpt of his book, Florida told a story about a Carnegie Mellon student with "spiked, multi-colored hair, full-body tattoos and multiple piercings in his ears" who had offers from Pittsburgh technology companies but eventually signed "the highest-paying deal of any graduating student in the history of the department" with an Austin-based company. The student told Florida that Pittsburgh "lacked the lifestyle options, cultural diversity, and tolerant attitude that would make it attractive to him."

"As he summed it up: 'How would I fit in here?'"

On the national front, Florida also had a hand in Forbes' much-talked-about evaluation of Pittsburgh as the worst place to be single. Florida's "creativity index," where Pittsburgh ranks 57th out of 268 metropolitan areas, is one of seven categories used by Forbes to rank the best and worst places.

What's more, the two people quoted in Forbes' accompanying article, headlined "Pittsburgh Is A Pit For Singles," are Florida associates. One is Currid, the Carnegie Mellon graduate assistant who helped Florida prepare an outline and early draft of "The Rise of the Creative Class." The other is Traci Jackson, the 29-year-old who helped Florida found Ground Zero, a group of young Pittsburghers interested in making the city a better place for creative people. Jackson is the same person quoted recently by the Pittsburgh City Paper as saying that Florida, "who he is, what he looks like -- legitimizes this town."

Florida was not quoted in the Forbes article and said he did not want to be quoted saying something negative about his town or that "Pittsburgh was the pits." Florida also said he suggested the Forbes writer talk to several people in town, not just Currid and Jackson.

Some, though, have a problem with how Florida handled the Forbes situation.

"The Forbes article, in my opinion, was damning because it was spun as careful, scientific rendering, substantiated by derogatory quotes and descriptions that seemed completely unbiased," said John Fetterman, a 32-year-old who lives in Lawrenceville and works in Braddock. "Truth be told, Florida stacked the deck with ringers who would chirp in line with the conclusions of his new book for sale. Amplified by that kind of agenda and lazy journalism, we in Pittsburgh received a manufactured lashing that our national image won't soon recover from."

To Fetterman, who considers himself a member of the "creative class, Florida's work "smacks of a smarmy, intellectual noblesse oblige."

But others like what Florida is doing.

"The more discussion around what needs to change and the more we confront what truly is good about Pittsburgh and what is truly not so good is to our benefit," said Mark DeSantis, an economic development consultant who lives Downtown. "It is painful to hear it sometimes, but necessary. I give Rich credit for having the guts to do that. You can't change unless you are honest with yourself. What Rich does is force an honest dialogue."

Locally, though, few people have responded publicly to Florida's book. In an interview, Florida said the area's top leaders would rather "ignore" the problems he outlines in "The Rise of the Creative Class" than face up to them. "They have not asked me to talk about my book. This is puzzling to me." His work, he argued, does not worsen Pittsburgh's national reputation. Instead, "what my book says is that Pittsburgh is a creative cauldron."

But the tepid reaction to his criticisms among regional leaders has convinced Florida that "there is really a sense in the community in not wanting to face up to deep-seated problems."

While he does not want to be viewed as a "naysayer," Florida can not help making the point that Pittsburgh remains a "conventional, Organization Man, corporate-driven city."

"You cannot market Pittsburgh from the Duquesne Club."