Let us take a few moments to ponder the corrosive nature of pessimism and its companion, bending over backward in the face of bad news to put the best face on things. Both are civic diseases of significance in our corner of the world.

The public discussion about the pending arrival of casino gambling in the region has been largely preoccupied with one tangential, if related, subject. Is there enough money to be made from a slot machine operation within the corporate limits of Pittsburgh to fund the construction of a new civic auditorium to replace Mellon…

I recently received correspondence from a man who posed several excellent questions about the Regional Indicator project and the city-​state of Pittsburgh.

Very much in the news these days are the related subjects of unfunded pension liabilities and escalating costs of employee benefit packages because of rising health care costs. They are delivering a one-​two punch to local governments and school districts throughout the nation, with the situation being particularly acute here in the old…

Last fall, PittsburghToday commissioned the first-​ever survey of arts involvement in the 22-​county Pittsburgh region. Done by the University of Pittsburgh, the survey asked several questions including: What arts events do you attend? What arts activities do you engage in personally? What arts activities have your ever had instruction in?

If I told you that breast cancer kills Pittsburgh women at a higher rate than women in other cities, and that Pittsburgh women die of heart attacks at a higher rate than women in other cities, what would you say? And what if I compounded the negativity by telling you that African American…

If you read the daily newspaper, listen to news radio or watch the local TV news, you’ll get a report in the first week of every month on the latest Pittsburgh unemployment rate. It is a news tradition of decades. The data come from the state Dept. of Labor and Industry one month…

Time flies even when you are not always having fun. That’s the lesson I take away from 18 months publishing indicators on pitts​burghto​day​.org and writing about them in this space. My ambivalence is a product of pride that we have developed a regional information system that can serve us well if we expand…

Among subjects of continuing public attention, none resonates like the size and efficiencies of local government. For some months now, a citizens group under the leadership of Mark Nordenberg, chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh, has been investigating the potential merger of city and county government, either in total or in part.

Perhaps we can blame Richard Florida, the former Carnegie Mellon professor, who popularized the notion that, yes, there is a creative class of people and a direct relationship between their representation in a region’s population and the social and economic prospects of that community. As Florida still tells it, everyone loves to be…