Pittsburgh Today & Tomorrow Annual Report

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Pittsburgh Real Estate

by Julia Fraser

The Terminal, stretching five blocks along Smallman Street, had just been given a stunning makeover when COVID-19 arrived, threatening the eateries and shops it courted as tenants. Months later, the 95-year-old former hub of Pittsburgh’s wholesale produce industry remains a hot real estate property that has attracted tenants throughout the pandemic, including District Brew Yards, …

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A Seismic Shift in Higher Ed

by Bill O'Toole
Between declining enrollment, rising costs and at least one more pandemic-disrupted semester, Pittsburgh’s colleges and universities are facing 2021 budget shortfalls that may impact this mainstay sector of the regional economy for generations to come. Though often hailed as a bright spot in western Pennsylvania’s relatively moribund economy, the higher education sector—locally and nationally—was already …

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New Paradigm

by Julia Fraser
In 1889, Andrew Carnegie, whose immense wealth was earned along the banks of Pittsburgh’s rivers, called upon his peers to direct their fortunes toward the public good. In “The Gospel of Wealth,” he pitched “an ideal state, in which the surplus wealth of the few will become, in the best sense, the property of the …

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Municipal Time Bomb

by Jeffery Fraser
The fear was real last spring as local taxes—the lifeblood of boroughs, townships and cities—were trickling in. The COVID-19 pandemic was closing or impairing businesses in southwestern Pennsylvania, the state and nation. The U.S. unemployment rate soared to nearly 15 percent. “We worried that our revenues would collapse,” said Scott Andrejchak, the municipal manager of …

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Breaking the News

by Bill O'Toole
With their traditional revenue models already suffering a long-term structural decline, local media operations have been further weakened by the government lockdowns and economic havoc accompanying COVID-19. Or as Tom Melia, Washington director of PEN America, the 99-year-old nonprofit that protects free expression, put it: “The pandemic has accelerated almost every contributing factor to the …

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Wanted: More People

by Jeffery Fraser
Southwestern Pennsylvania staggered into 2020 in need of people, again. It was coming off of yet another year when deaths outnumbered births and the number of newcomers couldn’t keep pace with the number of residents moving somewhere else. The COVID-19 pandemic likely makes the already-long odds of a quick rebound in the region’s population even …

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Baby Boom, or Bust?

by Julia Fraser
After a major power blackout left New York City in the dark in 1965, the New York Times suggested it led to a citywide baby boom, citing a surge in births at local hospitals. After Boston was hit with a blizzard in 1978, the Boston Globe predicted it would result in a baby boom. In …

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2021 Economic Outlook

by Stuart Hoffman & Kurt Rankin
Economic recovery prospects in the Pittsburgh metro region are challenging for 2021. Government-mandated business closures and capacity limitations have sunk the metropolitan area’s labor force into steeper-than-average declines, undermining the ability of existing household consumption and business expenditures to reignite economic gains in the near term. New stimulus from the federal government may well provide …

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Pittsburgh Today and Tomorrow 2021

by Pittsburgh Today Staff
To view a PDF version of Pittsburgh Today and Tomorrow 2021, click here.

How Do We Attract People to Pittsburgh?

by Pittsburgh Today Staff
David Feehan, president of Civitas Consultants in Maryland, is a recognized expert in downtown revitalization. For more than 50 years, his work has helped improve dozens of cities and neighborhoods in the United States and elsewhere, including Minneapolis, Detroit, Austin, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh Today spoke with him about ideas that might help …

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Gone Before Their Time

by Julia Fraser
In Pittsburgh’s early 20th century industrial economy, danger lurked in rail yards, on the exposed I-beams of tall buildings under construction and in steel mills where gases and fire coexisted. “Ten minutes before, we stood there laughing, and not one of us had an idea there was anything wrong with that furnace,” lawyer and journalist …

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Crime Is Dropping, but So Are Relations With Police

by Bill O'Toole
Editor’s note: This story was first published in the Spring 2020 issue of Pittsburgh Quarterly. Southwestern Pennsylvania continues to be one of the safest metropolitan regions in the nation, and the latest data suggest it’s only getting safer. The overall crime rate in the seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area stood at 1,687.7 per 100,000 residents …

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Sinkholes, Congestion and Amazon

by Bill O'Toole
On the morning of Monday, Oct. 28, a massive sinkhole, roughly 20 feet in diameter, suddenly opened on 10th Street in Downtown Pittsburgh, swallowing the back half of a Port Authority bus. There were no serious injuries, and the cartoonish photos shared from the scene were generally met with delight on social media across the …

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Pittsburgh Today and Tomorrow 2020

by Pittsburgh Today Staff
To view a PDF version of Pittsburgh Today and Tomorrow 2020, click here.

The Obesity Puzzle

by Julia Fraser
Temptation lurks in gooey fudge icing layered in a slice of moist chocolate cake and the hot salty crunch of a french fry. The sight and smell can incite the body to ramp up blood pressure, heart rate, skin conductance and salivary response—characteristics of arousal and excitement. It’s a response that Lisa Germeroth hopes to …

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Gauging K–12 Education Quality

by Jeffery Fraser
Allegheny County residents are tough graders when assessing the performance of the public schools that educate 115,000 county children in grades kindergarten through 12, a far-ranging survey of their views on education suggests. Fewer than half give schools a better-than-fair rating for their class size, funding, student preparedness, parental involvement and diversity of the student …

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Local Economy Stays Healthy

by Jeffery Fraser
Pittsburgh’s spirited bid fell short of landing Amazon’s second headquarters and the 25,000 jobs it promised last year, but the southwestern Pennsylvania economy continued encouraging trends in job growth, wages and unemployment on its own. Without the jolt of such a major employment stimulus, the region’s hopes are pinned on creating jobs with the companies …

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What’s the Big Idea?

by PQ Staff
As the kickoff to a region-wide competition, we asked a group of regional leaders to submit an idea, in 50 words or less, that, if enacted, would make Pittsburgh a better place to live. It could be something that wouldn’t cost a dime or it could be a multimillion-dollar public works campaign. Below are their …

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The Pittsburgh Flip

by Julia Fraser
Tom Maiden has been renting in the city of Pittsburgh for decades. He has a well-paid job as manager of user services at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, and while he’s never shut the door on the idea of buying a home, the ease and convenience of renting is too compelling. “While renting might be slightly …

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Never-Ending Gap

by Julia Fraser
The wide gap between incomes earned by white and black workers is a national phenomenon that won’t go away. And it’s particularly severe in southwestern Pennsylvania. African Americans living in the seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area earn 48 percent less than white residents on average, 2017 U.S. Census Bureau median income data suggest. Income influences …

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More People Are Leaving the Region. Does It matter?

by Jeffery Fraser
Sometime in 2008, more people began moving into the cities and suburbs of southwestern Pennsylvania from other parts of the country than were leaving for places and opportunities elsewhere. It was a watershed moment, the long-awaited reversal of a decades-long trend of being on the losing end of U.S. migration patterns. It proved to be …

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Pittsburgh Today and Tomorrow 2019

by Pittsburgh Today Staff
To view a PDF version of Pittsburgh Today and Tomorrow 2019, click here.
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