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I grew up in Rural West Central PA. Personally, I hate that area, and hated pretty much the entire area. For most of my life I wanted to move down to North Carolina or Virginia. I am not a homebody or a "local pride" kinda person in the least and would have done anything to get out of the region and to a place where something was happening.
I'm not exactly sure when I started to change my mind, but when I got up to Erie, I started to gain some appreciation for the (former) Rust Belt, I looked more at the things that we have here that you wouldn't find in a lot of the country and started to recognize the particular "charm" that this region has. I still wanted to be where the action is, though. Over the course of the last four years, I started to make some trips down to Pittsburgh for more than just field trips and the city started to grow on me quite a bit.
Being involved in politics, I was still very determined to go to Washington though, until I actually spent some time down there. One thing about being in Washington is that, unless you are a die hard, red meat political junkie, the luster starts to die off very quickly. I'm not really interested in politics so much as I am in issues, and leadership. So I started to look elsewhere.
To make a long story short, I started to fall in love with Pittsburgh, and when I finally made the decision to get into Urban and Regional Planning, I decided to go for a "Pitt or bust" strategy. It worked, and so here I am today and I couldn't be more pleased with my decision.
As for the "what I like"... well, its hard to quantify, really. I like the character of the city and as I mentioned, its charm. I like how its big, but not too big. I like that it is reinventing itself, to an extent, but that people still have a firm grip on the past. As Brian said, alot of improvements have been made, even from the limited things that I can remember, coming here when I was little. I like the way it looks. I like the way it feels. I like that it is on the way up (hopefully). I really don't know how else to say it.
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