Pittsburgh is no longer the worst place to live with a lonely heart.

	Online Graphic See how Pittsburgh ranks on Forbes.com's list of best cities for single people.

Online magazine Forbes.com posted its annual roundup of the best cities for singles yesterday, and for the first time in four years, Pittsburgh did not finish last.

Instead, it ranked 11th from last -- or 29th among the 40 biggest metropolitan areas in the United States. While a significant victory for local image makers, Pittsburgh's improvement had less to do with a revived singles scene here and more to do with how Forbes.com compiled the list, giving greater weight this year to entry-level salaries and Pittsburgh's low cost of living.

But that information was not enough to check Mike English's excitement yesterday.

"Oh, yes!" said the 28-year-old executive director of the Pittsburgh Urban Magnet Project, a Downtown group devoted to the needs of young people locally. "I always thought that putting us 40th out of 40 was really unfair" and hurt the city in the eyes of newcomers.

"I was really sick of it, too," he said.

The change in the magazine's methodology did not dampen the mood of 30-year-old Joy Braunstein, executive director of the Friendship-based Pittsburgh Singles Volunteer Network, a group created because of the negative publicity surrounding the prior Forbes.com rankings. Braunstein, who is single but has a boyfriend, said the change should instill some "city pride" and allow some to say, "See, I told you so. We're not so bad."

Also, "it makes our job easier," added Braunstein, who connects singles at community volunteer events.

But another local booster -- the staid Allegheny Conference on Community Development -- was cautious about reading too much into the random findings and reluctant to show too much excitement, lest the city drop to last again next year.

"Surveys like these can be a lot of fun, but we take most of them with a grain of salt," said Pam Golden, the conference's spokeswoman. "That said, we are pleased that this survey reinforces what many of us here have long known -- Pittsburgh has a fantastic cultural life, an affordable cost of living and a great nightlife."

The Denver metro area finished first in the Forbes.com rankings, and Greensboro, N.C., was dead last.

The last three years, Pittsburgh's showing at the very bottom of the Forbes.com list struck a raw nerve among the many local organizations dedicated to changing Pittsburgh's image nationally. Some reacted with anger, reflecting the mix of pride and defensiveness that often is part of any discussion of Pittsburgh's strengths and weaknesses. In 2002, Pittsburghers flooded Forbes.com with more than 240 e-mails, one deriding the survey and an accompanying story as "easily the most irresponsible piece of journalism I've ever seen."

Forbes.com, though, is candid about its methodology. As in years past, the online publication gathered six measurements for the 40 cities it surveyed: projected job growth, number of bars and clubs, cost of living, number of singles as a percentage of the metro area population, amount of "culture" and "coolness" as measured by Carnegie Mellon University's Kevin Stolarick and Richard Florida, formerly of CMU and now with George Mason University.

This year, Pittsburgh's worst performance was in the area of "coolness," defined as an area's diversity and number of so-called creative workers (artists, scientists, teachers and musicians). It ranked 39th out of 40 in that category.

Its best performance was cost of living, where Forbes.com measured the average cost of an apartment, a pizza, a movie ticket and a six-pack of Heineken. But this year, Forbes.com also factored in entry-level salary data, where Pittsburgh compares favorably to the rest of the country, and the change was enough to bump Pittsburgh to fourth in that category.

It was also a big reason why Pittsburgh moved up so many spots in the larger list.

This year, "Pittsburgh was certainly the biggest surprise," said Lacey Rose, 23, a single staff writer at Forbes.com who helped compile the survey. Other cities moved up more spots than Pittsburgh, she added, "but after landing last on our list for three consecutive years and making the jump to 29, we thought that was quite impressive. We were thrilled."

So was English, the PUMP director.

"I think the ranking is definitely more fair," he said.