CEOs for Cities, a national network of urban leaders, including a number from Cincinnati, who are creating next generation cities, gathered two weeks ago for its national meeting in Pittsburgh. It was provocative and surprising from start to finish.
The first big surprise was Pittsburgh itself. Most of our members had never been there, and if they had, it was a long time ago. What they found was a city with an appealing downtown, high usage of its public transit system (buses only, by the way), vibrant in-town neighborhoods, a connected, people-friendly riverfront, and plenty of construction underway.
What they didn’t find were steel mills and polluted air. Although Pittsburgh still loves its Steelers, it is no longer Steel Town. In fact, Pittsburgh has now shed all of the manufacturing jobs it’s going to lose, and the city is left with an economy built on advanced manufacturing, eds and meds. With Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh leading the city’s array of universities (and with Google’s new offices there to take advantage of the tech talent), the city is well positioned to thrive in the knowledge economy.
The two biggest worries for Pittsburgh, in my view, are the drag on its future vision that the past continues to exert and the fact that Pittsburgh is far more white than is healthy at a time when diversity matters at all levels.
Are there lessons here for Cincinnati?