Glenn and Marcia Klepac left Murrysville after 14 years of suburban subdivision living to move into Squirrel Hill's upscale but determinedly urban Summerset at Frick Park housing development a year ago.

	Riverside Development Group High-end housing -- like these townhouses planned for the south end of 18th Street on the South Side -- is helping to draw more affluent residents to the city. Homes in the development will sell for $290,000 to $450,000. Click photo for larger image.

They are a city administration's dream, earning solid income from his job as a patent attorney, paying property taxes on a half-million-dollar home, making frequent trips to Heinz Hall, PNC Park, restaurants and other activities to support the city's vibrancy. A new University of Virginia analysis suggests that the city of Pittsburgh may have increased its share of such affluent fans of urban living within recent years, even ahead of the Downtown condominium expansion that's in the pipeline now.

"I'd been wishing we could live here for years. ... We go to things so much more often now that we're just 10 minutes from the city instead of 40," said Mrs. Klepac, 61, a former health educator who is a devotee of the Whole Foods supermarket in East Liberty. "Some of these things are available in the suburbs, but not in the quality and variety you have in the city."

The amount of new housing built or on the drawing boards within city limits in recent years has given people like the Klepacs more opportunity to pursue city living with amenities such as large kitchens and central air conditioning. The influx is not enough to halt the city's population hemorrhaging or paint a rosy picture for its fiscal future, but indicates vigor in the midst of reports of urban loss and decay..

University of Virginia professors William Lucy and David Phillips, co-authors of the recent book "Tomorrow's Cities, Tomorrow's Suburbs," say their analysis of 22 cities' census data for per capita income shows that most made gains early this decade, relative to their suburbs. They suggest that income data can be a better indicator of a city's appeal than population changes, a category in which Pittsburgh regularly ranks among the worst in the country.

In 2004, city-dwellers' income in 22 places analyzed was 89 percent of what residents of their regions earned, compared to 86 percent in 2000. In Pittsburgh's case, their data suggested city residents averaged 91 percent as much income as residents of the region overall, up from 90 percent.

That would mean if the average resident of the seven-county Pittsburgh region earned $50,000 in 2004, the average city-dweller made $45,500. It has long been typical for people outside of cities to be more affluent than those inside, but the gap between them fluctuates and is of interest to professors Lucy and Phillips.

Pittsburgh's strength, they note, is it has a smaller gap between city and suburban incomes than is typical of cities in the Northeast and Midwest, plus a stability in that proportion throughout censuses and slight improvement in narrowing the differences. Philadelphia, Detroit, Dallas and Houston are among cities the Virginia study showed as trending negatively, with widening income gaps.

The professors acknowledge the data could be affected by different census methods used in 2004 from 2000. The 2004 American Community Survey, which the U.S. Census Bureau is using to replace the decennial census, fails to track information for residents of "group quarters." Those are individuals who would have shown up in the 2000 census living in college dormitories, nursing homes, jails and other institutions, who would be more prevalent in cities than in most suburbs, and with lesser incomes than the rest of the population.

Also, the American Community Survey relies on a smaller sample of interviewees than the decennial census, which could affect results. Neither the professors nor others who work with census data guessed the extent to which Pittsburgh's per capita income might have been boosted by those differences.

The co-authors see the city, however, as part of a good-news trend for urban centers. Their populations may not be increasing, but the people they're drawing are often desirable because of their incomes.

Such gains for cities could come at the expense of closer suburbs that have aged, but not necessarily.

"A lot of new cities are aiming to grab new residents or hold onto the ones they have, taking the explicit tack to attract middle and upper income individuals," noted Alan Berube, an urban demographer and Brookings Institution fellow in Washington, D.C. "Where that's taking place, it's a good thing for cities, but that's not to suggest there's been a sea change where those households no longer locate in the suburbs. ... Suburbs are still adding people and households at a far greater rate than cities."

Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato said he's buoyed by the potential for Downtown to attract young professionals and "empty nester" residents into new housing developments, which he doesn't see as being to the detriment of suburbs.

"Those gains will not be big enough to affect any one [suburb]," Mr. Onorato said. "The Downtown is the core of the region, with 260,000 suburbanites coming in every day. If we build up the residential component, it just makes things that much stronger, that much safer."

The county has a wide mix of conditions among its suburban municipalities, he said, including some with the same fiscal problems as the city has undergone but with less of a tax base to do anything about it. The county is spending 2006 completing a master plan, Mr. Onorato said, intending to help guide those boroughs and townships into the future.

Pittsburgh Planning Director Patrick Ford, who studied under professors Lucy and Phillips at the University of Virginia, said it's still unclear to city officials just where affluent new residents are coming from, but they have been doing that for years "under the radar." He believes many are from city centers elsewhere in the country, attracted by Pittsburgh's affordability and amenities, rather than predominantly suburban expatriates like the Klepacs.

"We can access the quality of amenities in Pittsburgh for a fraction of the price of what it would take in Miami or Ft. Lauderdale," said Mr. Ford, who left Florida three months ago to take a loft apartment over an office in Lawrenceville, as a member of Mayor Bob O'Connor's administration.

Despite whatever good news there may be for the city in recent data, or in housing developments ahead, its decades of population losses have yet to be stymied. Mr. Ford hopes that by 2010, that trend may be finally bucked, though it will take a high number of people moving in to make up for an unusually high proportion of deaths among city residents due to its older population.

"My wife and myself are reflective of a growing population of 30-something and 40-something individuals or couples who are professionals, have good jobs, and have either put off having children or are choosing to play more as adults, and so want to be in Pittsburgh," Mr. Ford said.