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 outsi

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...