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I can equally name a bunch of other cities with similarly well-positioned academic instituions. That doesn't make it unique. For example, look at the Research T

by rexreed 10y ago

I can equally name a bunch of other cities with similarly well-positioned academic instituions. That doesn't make it unique. For example, look at the Research Triangle Park area in North Carolina. Not one, or two, but at least three or four major world-class institutions: Duke, UNC, NC State, Wake Forest, and others. With tons of research and supporting institutions. And a cost of living very comparable to Pittsburgh. Or how about Philadelphia with Penn, Temple, Drexel, and more? Or Baltimore with Johns Hopkins? And of course, Boston with its concentration of dozens of the top-rated schools in the world (Harvard, MIT, Tufts, BU, BC, and on and on). So in what way is Pittsburgh unique? It's not -- it's just like many of these former rust-belt cities with world-class institutions and a startup economy that's interesting but not on top.

cfallin 10y ago
Boston is in the next tier, I agree, but from a CS perspective, I would take Pittsburgh over Philly, RTP, or Baltimore in a heartbeat. We're the only city outside of SF/NYC/Boston/Seattle to have a top-five CS school and local offices (of nontrivial size, at least in Google's case) for most of the major tech firms. City-wise, I think many underestimate our post-Rust Belt rebuilding: we're often held up as an example of how to build a new post-manufacturing economy (see e.g. [1], seven years old but still representative, and [2] as well). I don't think anyone is saying that Pittsburgh is the sole city "on top", as you argue against. I just think it's unfair to knock the city down as another unremarkable steel belt town. It's more than that. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/business/economy/08collapse.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/business/economy/08collaps... [2] http://www.npr.org/2010/12/16/131907405/from-steel-to-tech-pittsburgh-transforms-itself http://www.npr.org/2010/12/16/131907405/from-steel-to-tech-p...

by rexreed 10y ago

cfallin 10y ago

Boston is in the next tier, I agree, but from a CS perspective, I would take Pittsburgh over Philly, RTP, or Baltimore in a heartbeat. We're the only city outside of SF/NYC/Boston/Seattle to have a top-five CS school and local offices (of nontrivial size, at least in Google's case) for most of the major tech firms. City-wise, I think many underestimate our post-Rust Belt rebuilding: we're often held up as an example of how to build a new post-manufacturing economy (see e.g. [1], seven years old but still representative, and [2] as well). I don't think anyone is saying that Pittsburgh is the sole city "on top", as you argue against. I just think it's unfair to knock the city down as another unremarkable steel belt town. It's more than that. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/business/economy/08collapse.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/business/economy/08collaps... [2] http://www.npr.org/2010/12/16/131907405/from-steel-to-tech-pittsburgh-transforms-itself http://www.npr.org/2010/12/16/131907405/from-steel-to-tech-p...