Pittsburgh does not claim to be the next New York. Far from any coast, it cannot emulate sunny Los Angeles, sophisticated San Francisco or hip Seattle. But if it's up to the 84 business and community leaders who participated in last week's benchmarking trip with the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, Pittsburgh could be the next Minneapolis-St. Paul.

This hub of the upper Midwest may seem like an odd place to turn for inspiration. But this self-proclaimed "frozen flyover zone," so designated because of frigid winters and its location between coasts, has experienced rapid growth the past decade. The region boasts four major sports teams, an airline hub and a blossoming population of young people. Its success could provide Pittsburgh with some useful lessons.

Minneapolis, like Pittsburgh, was built around mills, supplying the nation with flour rather than steel. And its sister city, St. Paul, was built around railroads. Like Pittsburgh, the Twin Cities lost residents when these mills began to close and rail transportation gave way to airlines in the second half of the 20th century.

But in the past decade, the population of the 13-county Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, which includes parts of western Wisconsin, grew by a whopping 430,000 people, many of them immigrants -- a 16.9 percent increase to 2.97 million. By contrast, the six-county Pittsburgh area's population shrank by 36,000, or 1.5 percent, to 2.36 million. And job growth in the Twin Cities was among the strongest of all metropolitan areas in the past decade, while Pittsburgh's was near the bottom.

What makes the Twin Cities tick? Native Minnesotans claim that their civically focused Scandinavian heritage has contributed to their success. Indeed, a sense of civic responsibility pervades many of its economic initiatives -- including a tax-base sharing system that reduces financial disparities between municipalities and public-private partnerships that are fueled with foundation money and from the coffers of local corporations, many of which devote 2 percent to 5 percent of their pretax profits to civic endeavors.

Minneapolis faced problems similar to Pittsburgh's as recently as last year, when Mayor R. T. Rybak encountered a budget deficit of $55 million upon arriving in office. But working with community members and his city council, Rybak reversed this deficit in one year. His counterpart, St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly, traveled outside of the country to encourage development in the region. He led a delegation of officials to Thailand to recruit and encourage Hmong refugees who will soon be moving to Minnesota. Indeed, seeking out a diverse population has been a key to the success of the Twin Cities.

Thirty years ago, Hmong refugees fleeing from Vietnam and Laos began migrating to America. The social services and welcoming attitude of the Minneapolis-St. Paul region attracted many of these refugees, whose growing presence further lured family members to join them. Today, the largest urban Hmong population in the United States lives in the Twin Cities. These refugees, who arrived in Minnesota with little if any English skills, now hold prominent positions in the community.

While these immigrants benefited from the Twin Cities' strong education system and social service organizations, they in turn have helped the region flourish. The median income of Hmong in St. Paul is $34,046, vs. $28,588 for a Pittsburgh household. Forty-nine percent of the Hmong population are homeowners -- they live in formerly empty and rundown neighborhoods, creating businesses and livelihoods in otherwise abandoned storefronts.

The Twin Cities continued to encourage this trend even after helping to resettle the first wave of Hmong immigrants. In the past 10 years, the percentage of foreign-born citizens in Minneapolis nearly tripled, while Pittsburgh's slipped 23 percent. Whereas Minneapolis-St. Paul used to be a perennial runner-up to Pittsburgh as the nation's "whitest'' region, it saw its nonwhite population soar 68 percent in the past decade. Rather than waiting for their diversity to attract more immigrants, the Twin Cities actively sought diversity from around the world.

In 10 years, there will be 125,000 new jobs in southwestern Pennsylvania, according to predictions by the U.S. Department of Labor. The region needs to look outside its declining population base for people to fill these jobs. Immigration could be a good place to start. Attracting more people would enhance the rapidly declining tax base, helping to fix a small part of the city's structural deficit and the region's ongoing fiscal struggles. If the lessons of Silicon Valley are any clue -- immigrants started 30 percent of its existing companies -- new immigrants could stimulate development in this region.

Like the Twin Cities, Pittsburgh is situated between coasts, a flyover zone that has missed out on the population growth characterizing many American cities. The 84 leaders who participated in the benchmarking trip are clearly devoted to working for its future. But nonelected leaders can only do so much to make the region a better place. Despite their best efforts, change in southwestern Pennsylvania must come from within. Pittsburgh may be losing its hub status, but it can succeed by emulating the Twin Cities, and serve as a gateway for new ideas and new people.