What? Nothing about Brookline?

Our problems are solved: The New York Times digs Pittsburgh.

Another city, not my own

Why do I have the feeling that Camille Paglia has never been to Pittsburgh:

Current scuttlebutt -- a frail reed in this mercurial race -- is that the multiracial metropolises of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia will go for Obama, while the vast rural and small-town heartland will endorse Clinton, whose family roots are in coal-country Scranton. (link)

Multiracial? Metropolis?

"Shrinking to greatness"

Sam at AntiRust wonders if this City Journal article about Buffalo provides a prescription for Pittsburgh's recovery.

Radio daze

Jason brings some common sense to the broohaha over WDUQ and Planned Parenthood, over at PBRT.

Wanted: blue collars

State and local leaders should take note of Bill Steigerwald's Q &A with Joel Kotkin. I've occassionally had my differences with Kotkin, but he's right on the money in much of what he says about the state of the American manufacturing industry. Here are some relevant quotes and my thoughts:

I have to tell you, almost every place I go in this country, particularly where the economy is growing, if you ask business people what is it that would really help them, they say "skills." Machinists. Welders. It's not like there's a Ph. D. shortage, generally speaking. But there is a welder shortage, there's a plumber shortage, there's a machinist shortage. But nobody wants to talk about this. Cities that have lost their industrial base don't want to talk about it, and many cities that still have it are almost ashamed of it. In one of the great historical ironies, the places where they are not ashamed of manufacturing are places like Houston and Charleston and Charlotte. But the places with the great industrial traditions, it's almost as if they are ashamed of their lineage.

Many Pittsburghers are so ashamed of their steel-making heritage that we wring our hands over a lousy football team mascot, and the mayor brags on national television--somewhat erroneously--that steel has completely vanished from the regional economy.

Kotkin's other point, about skilled labor, hits close to home as well. When I was still at the Tribune-Review, around 2000, I wrote a story exploring Pennsylvania's dearth of skilled and technical workers. (The Trib's archives are hard to navigate, but you are welcome to dig for it.) We are flush with colleges and universities (I now work for one) but we don't have enough technical schools, and guidance counselors and teachers turn their noses up at vocational high schools. Talented students are pushed into college no matter where their interests lie. But workers with technical training can earn as much as those with bachelor's degrees, and guess what? You can't outsource plumbing or carpentry to India.

Let's continue:

But I think the reason that manufacturing -- particularly at the higher end, which is more and more what is there -- is so important is that -- going back to Jane Jacobs -- it is a classic export industry. If you are in Seattle and you are assembling planes, or if you are in Dubuque and you are assembling and building systems for building roads around the world, you are taking money from other parts of the country or the world and you're bringing that money in to your town. Most of the stuff that has been growing isn't doing that -- it's retail; it's health care, which is basically serving your own people. ...manufacturing is one part of what you have to offer...

Even somebody who's going to work in, let's say, an auto plant today, going forward is going to be more skilled because you're going to have more robots; it's going to be more computerized. So it's kind of misleading to look at manufacturing as a low-skilled industry. ...

States in the Upper Plains have basically fairly high education levels. A high school graduate in Iowa or the Dakotas is generally much more literate than a high school graduate in the Northeast or California.

So Kotkin presumably thinks that manufacturing is a necessary condition for a truly robust economy, and that a high level of basic and technical education is a necessary condition for manufacturing. Going back to my previous point, that puts us in a bind if indeed we do lack a good base of skilled labor. One of the things I was told when I did my story for the Trib was that professional labor is more likely to relocate than skilled, blue-collar labor. So if you don't have a homegrown pool of local talent, manufacturers will pass you by.

So what do we do?

I would try to find out if there are companies that are expanding. Are there companies that would like to expand? Are there companies that want to stay? Ask them what they want. We live in this dream world where we say, "Well, if we have a fancy stadium with sky boxes, that will keep businesses here." Well, what do you mean by businesses? Do you mean the gauleiters who represent multinational corporations, so they can hang out at a fancy football game? Or are we talking about somebody who's got 15 people working for him in a shop somewhere in the suburbs and would like to get to 30? What are his issues? Are they tax issues? Are they training issues? Are they regulatory issues? You've got to go ask! I don't see anyone interested in that anymore. It's all "What does some 23-year-old, footloose student want? Does he have enough jazz clubs to go to?" Or some footloose 50-year-old corporate henchman. "Does he have enough arts facilities?"

As a country, we're kind of delusional about our economies.

What Kotkin says here makes a lot of sense, but it would be easy for local and state officials to take his advice too far. We don't want to relax safety and environmental regulations just to please manufacturers, because the long-term costs could outweight the benefits. We don't want to give away subsidies and tax breaks, because they rarely give us a return on our investment.

What we do want to do is drastically re-order our priorities, and consider what we need to do--that we have failed to do thus far--to build a truly sustainable economy.

Happy Labor Day.

Priorities

I was driving home from work yesterday, through the South Side, only to discover that once again McArdle Road is closed. Then today, there's a massive water line break in Oakland, which is, of course, a recurring problem in Pittsburgh.

I added these facts together and came to one inescapable conclusion: This city really needs a new hockey arena.

Maybe a marketing study could be our mascot

Metroblogging Pittsburgh riffs on fears that Steely McBeam misrepresents the city's modern image, and I put in my two cents, which I reproduce below:

Steely McBeam, of course, isn't the mascot for the city; he's the mascot for the Steelers. Do people in San Francisco fret that the 49ers don't accurately reflect the city's image?

Frankly, I think we obsess far too much about what people think of us. I don't think our image, or stereotypes about our past, are what stunt our economic growth. If all the resources and energy devoted to marketing Pittsburgh were devoted instead to solving our very real and tangible problems, like our ballooning debt, crumbling infrastructure, and struggling school system? We might end up with a city we can all be truly proud of--and one that could sell itself.

Maybe they can call the arena team the Pittsburgh Corporate Lawyers

The Post-Gazette reminds the city's image-obsessed civic guardians to lighten up about the Steelers' new mascot:

Here's the observation: Perhaps those who care about the city's image -- ourselves included -- should put aside their branding concerns and lighten up. The Steelers are the Steelers and that won't change; they are not the Corporate Lawyers or the Health Care Managers or any other representatives of the "new" Pittsburgh. If they are going to have a mascot, he is going to look like Steely McBeam.

Who else would we have? After all, Sophie Masloff is saving herself for the cheerleaders.

I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.

But seriously, when will we stop being embarrassed by our industrial heritage? Our past--and alleged obsession with it--is not what holds us back, at least not nearly as much as some people think.

Whatever, dude

Assuming that Bill Peduto is being sincere in dropping out of the Democratic primary because he doesn't like the negative tone of the campaign, then I have three words for him: Boo-friggin-who.

You don't get into politics these days unless you are willing to get your knuckles bloody now and then. Lamentable, perhaps, but that's the way it is. Just ask President Kerry. Besides, Peduto is running against an incumbent. Any time an incumbent runs for re-election the race is a referendum on their performance in office. (I realize Luke Ravenstahl isn't technical running for re-election, but the principal holds.) And I never heard Peduto issue a call for all those bloggers who were supporting him so vociferously to stop their daily attacks on the mayor.

Don't get me wrong--I was pretty convinced that Peduto was in for a thumping come the primary, but I was still holding out hope for an upset. Even if Peduto gets into the general election as an independent, I don't see much chance, absent a complete meltdown by the mayor over the summer, for Peduto to prevail.

Another city, not my own

In what city does Dan Rooney live?

"There are lot of things to do in the city," said Rooney, who moved with his wife, Patricia, back into his late father's house on the North Side years ago from Upper St. Clair. "It's a good place. They usually clean the streets of snow in the city, and where he is going to live is pretty good."

They usually clean the streets of snow? Which streets? During the week of the recent snow and ice storm, the residential streets in Brookline remained untreated from Tuesday on. I'm tempted to make a snarky remark about how it must be nice to live on the North Side--the home of our present mayor and the home of former mayor Tom Murphy--but the comments about snow removal over at this blog indicate that salt and plow trucks were scarce over there as well.

In any case, I welcome Mike Tomlin and his family to the city of Pittsburgh, and I hope Mr. Rooney pays him well. The city dearly needs his tax dollars.

The high cost of low living

Pittsburgh's civic boosters like to talk up the region's low cost of living, but as this writer in the Post-Gazette points out, low cost of living is offset by low salaries. He relies largely on anecdotes to make his case, but I think it's an argument worth considering. What do we talk about when we discuss the region's cost of living.?Does it merely include housing and consumer goods, or do we also factor in taxes? Does it consider the hidden costs of living with aging and inadequate infrastructure? For example, I'm guessing that brakes and shocks wear out a lot sooner on western Pennsylvania roads than elsewhere.

Perhaps the cost of living is not so much of a draw for recent college graduates and young professionals, who don't mind living in a small apartment or sharing costs with roommates, and want more money for some of the extras that Matthew Dillon ticks off in his Post-Gazette essay, like eating out, vacations and a nice car. It might be that cost of living tips the scales in our favor with older professionals who have either been able to cash in on a hot real estate market, or have a salary or savings commensurate with a higher-cost region. I'm not sure that's what the boosters want to hear.

Bread and circuses

I don't know enough about the three casino proposals to say with confidence whether the state Gaming Control Board made the right decision in awarding PITG the city's lone casino license. I do think that the North Shore was the best location for a casino; it's relatively isolated from residential neighborhoods with decent access to transportation and parking. And it just might lead people to use the boondogle that is the North Shore Connector.

I am bemused at the tantrums thrown by supporters of the Isle of Capri's plan, whose biggest selling point appeared to be that it would provide funding for a new "multi-purpose facility" (hockey arena). I don't understand why people believe that government power or funding should be expended to provide homes to professional sports teams--which are, after all, private businesses. (Mike Madison has been talking sense on this issue at Pittsblog, here and here.)

Isle of Capri pledged $290 million toward a new arena. But what about cost overruns? Would they have paid those? And who would have received the revenues from this facility? Mario Lemieux recently referred to the proposed arena as a public facility, which meant it would not generate property taxes. Does that mean the public would have gotten the revenues from non-hockey events? Because that's not how things worked out at PNC Park or Heinz Field.

Proponents endorsed the Isle of Capri plan because of its promise of a privately funded arena. But the casino licensees are expected--required, I believe--to make contributions to their communities. So money spent on a hockey arena would not have been spent on more pressing needs, of which Pittsburgh has many. (The same goes with the money promised by PITG toward Plan B.) The idea that public officials should have awarded the casino license based on its impact on a hockey team would be laughable were it not so indicative of the quality of governance to which we have grown sadly accustomed.

Meet the new boss, same as all the old bosses

Luke Ravenstahl is a young guy, but for some reason, when he talks about making Pittsburgh cool, he reminds me of one of those middle-aged high school teachers who tries to be the students' pal. They were nice and all, but their jokes were corny and their trying-too-hard-to-be-hip references were always six months behind.

In other words, the mayor is a new dog, but he's full of old tricks. With the city struggling to stay out of the red, he wants to give away tax breaks for new housing Downtown, without explaining where the demand for this new housing coming from, and why, if there is such demand, developers have to be bribed to build it.

As evidence of the city's emerging hipness, he cites American Eagle Outfitters move from Marshall Township to SouthSide Works, apparently forgetting that American Eagle received more than $6 million in state aid to shift its headquarters from one part of Allegheny County to another.

Then again, maybe he hasn't forgotten, because, as the Post-Gazette notes, "He wants to replicate that development's style elsewhere, and intends to tap Gov. Ed Rendell for dollars to get that done." Oh, and he wants parking garages to offer free spaces during select days, like Light-Up Night, even though free holiday parking in 2001 and 2002 failed to save Lazarus and Lord & Taylor.

The mayor, given a chance to start things anew, wants to keep doing everything the same. What's so cool about that?

Blast from the past

Hey, remember Tom Murphy? The mayor who presided over Pittsburgh's descent into state receivership? The guy who wanted to level Downtown and replace it with a glorified shopping mall? The guy whose bribe, er, I mean, contract, for the firefighters union ensured his third-term victory?

Well, as Mark Rauterkus discovered, some people still listen to what this guy has to say (from the San Jose Mercury News):

Tom Murphy, a senior fellow with the Urban Land Institute, was mayor of Pittsburgh overseeing the development of a stadium. Failure would have meant losing the Steelers. The odds were long that the team would stay in town and even longer that a new stadium could be built, but the city got it done.

``The referendum to pay for the development was defeated by 70 percent. But we decided we're going to do it anyway, because the Steelers were important to Pittsburgh in terms of our psyche and in terms of who we were,'' Murphy said. ``We were a Rust Belt, declining city and we were losing our Steelers.''

Murphy said $262 million was raised from the team, the state and hotel and sales taxes to build a baseball park, a football stadium and a convention center. The former mayor believes the development succeeded because it was incorporated into the city, rather than standing apart.

I drove around Heinz Field recently on my way to the Children's Museum. Seems to me there is still an awful lot of vacant land surrounding it. And I'm glad the article mentioned the convention center, which has consistently failed to live up to expectations since it was built.

The best part, though, is how Murphy practically boasts about defying the will of the voters. Then again, considering that he was twice re-elected mayor, maybe he's right to scoff. Maybe people truly do get the government they deserve.