Why I'm staying: In Pittsburgh, you can prosper and contribute to the community
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I am a Pittsburgher. Not a native Pittsburgher, mind you, but someone who moved here seven years ago to work and live in this interesting place and someone who has decided to stay.
For the past six years, I was paid to be our region's biggest cheerleader, aside from our elected officials, while serving as head of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development. That post gave me a view of economics, politics, philanthropy and social challenges that most folks don't get a chance to examine up close.
What I saw was at times inspiring, at times depressing, often frustrating, but always interesting and hopeful. It is the hopeful and interesting part that I believe defines Pittsburgh more than anything else.
We learned during the city's 250th anniversary year that our history is built on innovation and a willingness to change things for the better. This place always invents what it needs.
We needed better materials, so we invented better industrial processes and technologies. We needed better treatment and working conditions for labor and we reinvented the union movement. We needed to clean up our rivers and our air and rebuild our urban core, and we created public-private partnerships that drove the success of our region's first and second renaissances.
We are doing the same thing today. Our next renaissance is rooted in research and development in advanced materials, life sciences, information technologies and energy; and in our universities, hospitals, financial and business-services sectors; and in the growing emergence of green businesses.
Our future here in southwestern Pennsylvania and the surrounding states (some call it the "Power of 32" -- 32 counties, four states, one vision) is more promising than almost anywhere else I could imagine living. Even our state government, as ineffective and obese as it is, can't prevent Pittsburgh from thinking for itself and addressing its own needs.
First Published January 22, 2010 12:00 am
