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All of Pennsylvania in general is highly undervalued. I spend one or two weekends in PA every month and am always puzzled by how little attention and investment
by rwhitman 10y ago
All of Pennsylvania in general is highly undervalued. I spend one or two weekends in PA every month and am always puzzled by how little attention and investment there has been in the state during the last few economic booms.
PA is littered with top notch universities from corner to corner. It's culturally and historically richer than almost anywhere else in the US. You have a lush, green resource-rich landscape as far as the eye can see (and definitely no water scarcity). Absurdly affordable housing with a surplus of incredible historic architecture. Walkable colonial-era villages and small tightly clustered cities with intact historic shopping districts. Endless square footage of unused warehouse spaces. Huge beautiful parks including old growth forests, mountains, rivers. Fairly decent mass transit in the Philly area at least, (and a lot of legacy transit infrastructure ready to spring back to life at some point).
I'm not just talking about Philly and Pittsburgh either - so many smaller "rust belt" type cities in PA with so much to offer that are just completely overlooked. Like the entire Lehigh Valley for instance. Harrisburg is actually a really cool city when you get to know it - very diverse, lots of smart people there, excellent breweries and a lot of economic growth.
Plus we often overlook the fact that Pennsylvanians largely founded the SF Bay Area in many ways - look at the map of the SF Bay and you'll see the markers of PA everywhere. (hint the street grid of San Francisco is named after Philadelphia's)..
I think the main things that have held back PA is 1) it's been overshadowed by NYC 2) property taxes are absurdly high 3) it's still got a rust belt stigma to shake..
But otherwise for tech folks if you've never been it's really worth checking out
- dionidium 10y agoIt's culturally and historically richer than almost anywhere else in the US. I love Pittsburgh. But cities like Cincinnati and St. Louis and Nashville deserve a seat at that table, too. In general, the rust belt gets a bad rap. It's full of old, interesting cities that are packed with cultural institutions and fascinating history. They deserve a lot more attention than they get.