Yesterday, the Post-Gazette's Business section featured a story, which you Web-only readers may or may not have been able to find on our exasperatingly New and Improved Web page, about Gen Y: What does this generation, born between 1972 and 1997, want out of a career? Out of a boss? Out of a workplace?

But before you can begin that conversation, you have to get them to come to your city in the first place, and that's where Pittsburgh, you may have heard, has traditionally struggled. Pittsburgh, for a lot of people over the past three decades, hasn't had whatever panache that Generation Y is now looking for in a city.

Said The New York Times, this very week:

"Sixty-five percent of 1,000 respondents aged 24 to 35 who were asked by the Segmentation Company, a division of the marketing consultant Yankelovich, said they preferred to 'look for a job in the place that I would like to live,' rather than 'look for the best job I can find, the place where it is located is secondary.' They also told researchers that places must be safe, clean and green. The most-cited quality was tidiness and attractiveness (78 percent) followed by 'will allow me to lead the life I want to lead' (77 percent) ... CEOs for Cities, a Chicago-based association of urban leaders, [financed] the study, titled 'Attracting College-Educated Young Adults to Cities.' Its advice? Spread the word that you are, in the words of the report, 'clean, safe and green.' Those qualities won't seal the deal, but without them, this age group won't even look."

Hmmm, safe, clean(ish) and green -- yes, yes, and yes. We're all that and a bag of chips. So what the heck is the problem?

Though the net migration rate (out-migration minus in-migration) has improved over the decades, from 50,000 a year to 5,000, we're still losing people and, as any Rust Belt city in good standing, we obsess over that.

When you're not, you're not

The problem might be that vast gap between what people say they want and what they actually pursue. You know, the man who says he wants an intelligent girl with a sense of humor, but then always seem to end up with the hottie.

The AP just did a story on this (subtly headlined by the folks at CNN, "Men Want Hot Women, Study Confirms"): " 'Just because people say they're looking for a particular set of characteristics in a mate, someone like themselves, doesn't mean that is what they'll end up choosing,' Peter M. Todd, of the cognitive science program at Indiana University, Bloomington, said ... Women's actual choices, like men's, did not reflect their stated preferences, but they made more discriminating choices, the researchers found. The scientists said women were aware of the importance of their own attractiveness to men, and adjusted their expectations to select the more desirable guys."

Hmm. Substitute the word "city" for "mate," and maybe you have Pittsburgh's dilemma.

Is it possible that Pittsburgh, because of built-in biases that have been nurtured for generations, will never be as "hot" as Las Vegas, Phoenix, Atlanta, Charlotte, Denver and Miami? Certainly we're cleaner than Miami, and greener than Las Vegas, and safer than Atlanta. Gen Y types say the city is more important than the employer, but actions don't always match words, and maybe people will always favor the hot place with the high-paying job, no matter what they think they want.

Or maybe it's simpler than that. Maybe, as things so often do, it all comes down to good Mexican food: "Alan Caudill, now 31, moved from Pittsburgh to San Francisco five years ago, when the Internet start-up that employed him was floundering and he and his wife of two months realized they had never loved Pittsburgh," says The New York Times, in the same Gen-Y story. " 'San Francisco culture was more us,' he said. 'I haven't been to an Applebee's, eaten fast food or drank a Coors Light since we moved here -- and I'm finally able to get a real burrito.' "

Clearly he's never been to Mexico City on Smithfield Street Downtown, and it wouldn't have killed him to order an I.C. Light instead of Coors, but that's not the point. Point is, Mr. Caudill had a safe, clean and green city staring him straight in the mug, but ventured elsewhere.

Good ol' Pittsburgh

There's probably a lesson in there, about the futility of branding campaigns, about gut perceptions of this city. But in the grand Pittsburgh tradition of ignoring history's lessons and turning our backs on people who have left our lovely home, the hell with him.

Instead, words to rally around, from Charles McCollester, labor relations professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania:

"The glory that is Pittsburgh today derives from its stunning beauty and historic character, its people and its memories. Sitting in a natural amphitheater carved by the three rivers, its hillsides green and leafy, its rivers once again filling with fish, its neighborhoods a crazy quilt of accommodation with its convoluted geography, the town has character and complexity. Pittsburgh has always been a proud place despite the often bitter labor relations that played a significant role in its history. What has remained true is an intense loyalty to this rooted locale: its neighborhoods and hollows, its forgotten corners and 'seldom seens,' its churches, teams, taverns, schools, and unions."

That's the Pittsburgh our affectionate Diaspora remembers. Gen Y may not be interested in that sales pitch, but for the people who have been here before, who say they want safe and clean and green and actually mean it, let those words echo in our valleys.