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What I'm saying is that if there weren't so many barriers to progress within the city because of the shackles local government has put on free enterprise, development would occur throughout the city. When government picks winners and losers, it eventually ends in failure.
Remember the millions wasted by the Murphy administration downtown in the 80s when they forced functioning businesses to close in favor of luring huge department stores like Lazarus into the downtown area via corporate welfare essentially. How long did they stay? 10 years? That pretty much put the nail in the coffin for downtown retail.
The population decreases in this region weren't solely because of steel leaving. Much of it was due to over-taxation of businesses, property, sales, and income. These city workers live like kings with their pensions that are funded at about 30%......the worst in the country. That's the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. We have PAT bus drivers who think they should be paid like CPAs, doctors, and attorneys.
We spend money on a tunnel to a casino rather than a connector from downtown to Oakland and the East End for that matter, etc. That's something that could have spurred some development on it's own. But no, politicians got paid off to award a casino license to a guy with no money rather than having the project bid on. So then, the so-called conservative Rick Santorum, procured hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government to build the useless tunnel with cost overruns beyond comprehension.
The city? I don't think any area of the city will undertake a revival of any significance long-term.
Can you name any failed attempts at gentrification within the last few decades? I don't mean urban planning - those are always top-down events. I mean neighborhoods which appeared on the cusp of turning around, then were ground down into the dust?
Quote:
Originally Posted by interested_burgher
It's unfortunate, but taxes are too high, services are terrible, and it's not worth the risk of capital.
Taxes are not particularly high in the city, particularly for business, and they're lower than many other major cities even for individuals.
Quote:
Originally Posted by interested_burgher
It's the exact reason suburban malls, as characterless as they are, took all of the retail business from downtown starting 30-40 years ago.
Suburban malls have been dying for the last 20 years now nationwide however...the Century Three mall is in a notorious decline. And even more modern strip malls are failing with the rise of online shopping.
Quote:
Originally Posted by interested_burgher
The city, through it's ineffective leadership, couldn't manage a lemonade stand and make it profitable. Instead, they try to cherry-pick selected areas, throw money at them, and hope they end up semi-viable. Meanwhile, 95% of the rest of the city is neglected. If the city could produce some leadership that doesn't penalize investment, all of this targeted forced development wouldn't be needed. It would just happen organically.
I don't think city leadership matters half as much as you think, although admittedly it matters more than say the President does with the national economy. Washington DC has had ****ty leadership for decades, but the city has been improving regardless. And the best leaders couldn't turn around something like Detroit at this point.
Also, "the City" has pretty little to do with the redevelopment that happens in most neighborhoods, other than facilitating through the URA. The War Streets, Allegheny West, Manchester, South Side, Lawrenceville - none of these came back due to planning from the city - it was an organic process, in part spurred by the local development corporations. There are exceptions - like Downtown, The Strip, and East Liberty - but for the most part gentrification seems to be a private-sector affair here, much as it is elsewhere.
Quote:
Originally Posted by interested_burgher
Heck, anywhere you go in the city, you're practically raped to park your car. What's the point of dealing with that headache in and of itself let alone risking your own capital? At least Target offers free parking. But they're an exception to the rule.
I think downtown parking is priced too low, honestly. It's a pain when I need to go into work, say, on the weekend to drop off fish for the office aquarium. But I don't think cities should subsidize parking downtown, because it disincentivizes people from using public transit.
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Originally Posted by interested_burgher
The schools are dreadful as well. Why would anyone willingly send their kids to the Pittsburgh Public School system? It's a joke.
I have a three year old daughter. Next year I hope that she'll get into Pittsburgh Montessori. If not, I hope she gets into Linden/Liberty/Dilworth when she turns five. I may have to move out of Lawrenceville if she doesn't (I don't think even I could deal with Arsenal), but there is no way I'm either leaving the city or enrolling her in a private school, as I oppose both ideologically.
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Originally Posted by ferrarisnowday
Penn Avenue in Garfield is actually nicer than Penn Avenue in East Liberty in my opinion.
Agreed. We get takeout at Spak Brothers, and eat at the Quiet Storm, quite a lot, so we spend a lot of time on Penn. Plus we drive to the East End Co-Op to do our shopping. While there's still a lot of blight on Penn, overall I can't say it's in much worse shape than Butler Street was a few years back.
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Originally Posted by escilade18
nyc?
NYC had a bad period in the 1960s-1970s as well, only really beginning to climb back in the 1980s to a world-class city. Really, the 1980s was the decade that a few of the old-line U.S. cities managed to recover (San Francisco, NYC, Boston) and showed urban malaise wasn't a given. Sadly, no cities have really fully transitioned since then, although many are showing bright spots.
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Originally Posted by interested_burgher
I was in Garfield and East Liberty on Sunday. Upon about 500 feet of entering Garfield, there was a street fight taking place. I'm not kidding.
I've seen street fights on Liberty in Bloomfield too. I'm not sure what this shows.
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Originally Posted by alleghenyangel
I would love nothing more to see revitalization projects happen in the western and southern city neighborhoods. But these neighborhoods never fall as far as East Liberty or Larimer. I think a neighborhood has to hit rock bottom before people think of turning it around, and Carrick is far from rock bottom. I wish people would work to fix their neighborhoods before they become abandoned warzones, but that doesn't seem to be the American way. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. What are we doing to prevent or stall decline in our neighborhoods?
As I've said before, I think there's only so much energy to go around in terms of revitalization. I think it's a big job for Pittsburgh to turn around the entire East End, plus the inner neighborhoods on the North Side and the South Side. Something has to give, and sadly, it seems to be the southern/western portions of the city, along with the outer north side. There is neither enough government focus, nor enough urban pioneers, to take them on.
I am somewhat bullish about the West End proper, however. There has been an active community organization there pushing for redevelopment, and I know anecdotally from my wife (who lived in the South Side for many years), that people getting priced out were looking at the West End as the "New South Side." Sadly, I think Dormont has replaced it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by interested_burgher
What I'm saying is that if there weren't so many barriers to progress within the city because of the shackles local government has put on free enterprise, development would occur throughout the city. When government picks winners and losers, it eventually ends in failure.
Disagree strongly. On a macro level, what you talk about is called "industrial policy," used by every other country in the world, and is why even countries with similar labor costs are beating our pants off with high-tech manufacturing like solar and wind.
Quote:
Originally Posted by interested_burgher
Remember the millions wasted by the Murphy administration downtown in the 80s when they forced functioning businesses to close in favor of luring huge department stores like Lazarus into the downtown area via corporate welfare essentially. How long did they stay? 10 years? That pretty much put the nail in the coffin for downtown retail.
I moved to Pittsburgh right at the end of Murphy's mayorality. However, what I heard from people was that Murphy was someone who was incredibly pro-business, and would have been a Republican in any other city.
But this is one of the areas I agree with you overall. Tax credits to "create jobs" almost always cost taxpayers far more than the jobs they create give to the community.
Quote:
Originally Posted by interested_burgher
The population decreases in this region weren't solely because of steel leaving. Much of it was due to over-taxation of businesses, property, sales, and income.
I'd actually argue part of Pittsburgh's problem is our tax system favors landholders over residents. We have a very low property tax rate, but a high income tax rate. This basically subsidizes downtown real estate, at the expense of making individuals - even renters who would otherwise only indirectly pay - have a much higher burden. And we have local politicians who want to scrap the property tax entirely and move over to a 100% income tax!
Quote:
Originally Posted by interested_burgher
These city workers live like kings with their pensions that are funded at about 30%......the worst in the country. That's the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. We have PAT bus drivers who think they should be paid like CPAs, doctors, and attorneys.
Given my background (researcher for a labor union) I'm perhaps a bit personally invested in this. I'll just remark that NYC, Boston, and San Francisco didn't have to gut the wages and benefits of their workers to turn their cities around. Our union was originally private-sector, and has gotten into the public sector over the last 20 years. We have a lot of frustrations (public-workers seldom understand class-consciousness, and are often very self-centered), but IMHO, what public workers have everyone should have, so I'm not going to argue that we need to ratchet them down to the same level.
Quote:
Originally Posted by interested_burgher
We spend money on a tunnel to a casino rather than a connector from downtown to Oakland and the East End for that matter, etc. That's something that could have spurred some development on it's own. But no, politicians got paid off to award a casino license to a guy with no money rather than having the project bid on. So then, the so-called conservative Rick Santorum, procured hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government to build the useless tunnel with cost overruns beyond comprehension.
Again, in agreement here. In the longer run, casino's will become zero sum, as they continue to proliferate and must eventually reach a saturation point. You're already seeing this in places like Atlantic City, which unlike Vegas hasn't been able to find a rationale to exist now that gambling is widespread.
The city? I don't think any area of the city will undertake a revival of any significance long-term. It's unfortunate, but taxes are too high, services are terrible, and it's not worth the risk of capital.
So what do you think is going to happen to neighborhoods currently on a steady ascent (e.g., Lawrenceville)? What do you make of the recent (speculated) increases in population? What do you make of property values going up steadily in comparison to the rest of the country? Increases in job numbers in the core city? The general national trend of suburban youth heading back into the cities in their 20s? The effect of rising gas prices?
Quote:
Heck, anywhere you go in the city, you're practically raped to park your car. What's the point of dealing with that headache in and of itself let alone risking your own capital? At least Target offers free parking. But they're an exception to the rule.
I'd honestly prefer that people who (a) obsess about parking to the point that they will forego the cultural and social pluses of the urban environment because they can't find somewhere to put their vehicle ; and (b) blithely compare the price of parking to sexual assault, would stay out of the city anyway.
Quote:
The schools are dreadful as well. Why would anyone willingly send their kids to the Pittsburgh Public School system? It's a joke.
This has been debated on this forum a million times. Yes, there are some terrible public schools. There are also Pittsburgh Public Schools that outstrip their suburban peers in any number of categories. Why is it impossibly hard to get people to widen their frames of reference on this forum? It's a very simple concept to understand.
Disagree strongly. On a macro level, what you talk about is called "industrial policy," used by every other country in the world, and is why even countries with similar labor costs are beating our pants off with high-tech manufacturing like solar and wind.
An interesting aside on the "industrial policy" you mention here. Here's an article from Forbes that gives a nice explanation of the industrial strategy by using Sony as an example:
Sadly, this kind of thinking also hurt the steel industry in our region. While other countries/companies were innovating and developing new technologies to reduce production costs, the US companies were too dead set on cutting workers rather than improve processes.
Suburban malls have been dying for the last 20 years now nationwide however...the Century Three mall is in a notorious decline. And even more modern strip malls are failing with the rise of online shopping
The Waterfront was a real hard punch for Century III. There's only so much buying power per area, and The Waterfront rerouted a significant number of buyers that would have otherwise gone to Century III. I think it's a real shame - West Mifflin made better use of its once strong retail sector than Homestead ever will from the shops on the other side of the tracks...losses from Century III motivated it to begin gouging Kennywood with a high amusement tax several years ago. Over ten years later, the old brownfield aside, Homestead appears not a whit better to me. They also gained a Walgreen's ().
For what it's worth, our office of about 50 people relocated to Garfield at Penn and Atlantic a couple weeks ago from Liberty and Bloomfield Bridge (and about 25 people from Oakland). I'm not there much, but I saw a couple workers with Voluto cups the other day. No idea what it's like on the weekends or after 5pm.
Thanks for all the hard work eschaton. I just got the crazy idea to (one day when I have a lot of time) to develop a similar map but rate each neighborhood by owner-occupied homes, e.g., purple > n%, etc. and see how it corresponds to what you have there. Then I started looking at the Neighborhood Rankings section of http://www.pittsburghpa.gov/dcp/snap...0_Oct_2011.pdf and got overwhelmed with all the measurements. Maybe assigned a weighted value to each category and then average it all to see how the neighborhoods statistically measure up in a visual map.
...then I can add a special prognostication X value to boost places like Larimer if they seem to rank too low. Just kidding.
The Waterfront was a real hard punch for Century III. There's only so much buying power per area, and The Waterfront rerouted a significant number of buyers that would have otherwise gone to Century III. I think it's a real shame - West Mifflin made better use of its once strong retail sector than Homestead ever will from the shops on the other side of the tracks...losses from Century III motivated it to begin gouging Kennywood with a high amusement tax several years ago. Over ten years later, the old brownfield aside, Homestead appears not a whit better to me. They also gained a Walgreen's ().
The revenue Homestead collects from The Waterfront has allowed the borough to be one of the very few "financially distressed" municipalities to climb out of Act 47 purgatory.
I shed no tears for Century III (blame can also be directed at the incompetent management of Simon Properties). The mall replaced the downtown business districts decades ago. The Waterfront represents the phase of post-mall big box retail that has killed the malls. This type of big box agglomeration would have located somewhere... but The Waterfront is special because... despite its rather lame 90s design... it represented one of the first major riverfront brownfield redevelopments in the region... and represented a major investment in a collection of distressed communities (one that required a bold experiment in multi-municipal planning to overcome the usual Pittsburgh municipal hyper-fragmentation). It's unfortunate the design of The Waterfront has zero cohesion with the existing urban fabric of Greater Homestead... but at least it's filling the coffers of Homestead, W. Homestead and Munhall... and giving people a reason to travel to what would have been a forgotten corner of the metro.
And on a personal note... The Waterfront is convenient to much of the City Proper while Century III is located in my least favorite sector of Allegheny County... "Area 51". That whole region is a declining twilight zone... Century III probably would've become a Scooby Doo ghost town regardless of The Waterfront or South Hills Village.
The revenue Homestead collects from The Waterfront has allowed the borough to be one of the very few "financially distressed" municipalities to climb out of Act 47 purgatory.
I shed no tears for Century III (blame can also be directed at the incompetent management of Simon Properties). The mall replaced the downtown business districts decades ago. The Waterfront represents the phase of post-mall big box retail that has killed the malls. This type of big box agglomeration would have located somewhere... but The Waterfront is special because... despite its rather lame 90s design... it represented one of the first major riverfront brownfield redevelopments in the region... and represented a major investment in a collection of distressed communities (one that required a bold experiment in multi-municipal planning to overcome the usual Pittsburgh municipal hyper-fragmentation). It's unfortunate the design of The Waterfront has zero cohesion with the existing urban fabric of Greater Homestead... but at least it's filling the coffers of Homestead, W. Homestead and Munhall... and giving people a reason to travel to what would have been a forgotten corner of the metro.
And on a personal note... The Waterfront is convenient to much of the City Proper while Century III is located in my least favorite sector of Allegheny County... "Area 51". That whole region is a declining twilight zone... Century III probably would've become a Scooby Doo ghost town regardless of The Waterfront or South Hills Village.
Hopefully they have learned some lessons, and will do a better job connecting the Carrie Furnace and LTV sites to the adjacent neighborhoods, so they can redevelop along with the brownfield sites.
Can you name any failed attempts at gentrification within the last few decades? I don't mean urban planning - those are always top-down events. I mean neighborhoods which appeared on the cusp of turning around, then were ground down into the dust?
Taxes are not particularly high in the city, particularly for business, and they're lower than many other major cities even for individuals.
Suburban malls have been dying for the last 20 years now nationwide however...the Century Three mall is in a notorious decline. And even more modern strip malls are failing with the rise of online shopping.
I don't think city leadership matters half as much as you think, although admittedly it matters more than say the President does with the national economy. Washington DC has had ****ty leadership for decades, but the city has been improving regardless. And the best leaders couldn't turn around something like Detroit at this point.
Also, "the City" has pretty little to do with the redevelopment that happens in most neighborhoods, other than facilitating through the URA. The War Streets, Allegheny West, Manchester, South Side, Lawrenceville - none of these came back due to planning from the city - it was an organic process, in part spurred by the local development corporations. There are exceptions - like Downtown, The Strip, and East Liberty - but for the most part gentrification seems to be a private-sector affair here, much as it is elsewhere.
I think downtown parking is priced too low, honestly. It's a pain when I need to go into work, say, on the weekend to drop off fish for the office aquarium. But I don't think cities should subsidize parking downtown, because it disincentivizes people from using public transit.
I have a three year old daughter. Next year I hope that she'll get into Pittsburgh Montessori. If not, I hope she gets into Linden/Liberty/Dilworth when she turns five. I may have to move out of Lawrenceville if she doesn't (I don't think even I could deal with Arsenal), but there is no way I'm either leaving the city or enrolling her in a private school, as I oppose both ideologically.
Agreed. We get takeout at Spak Brothers, and eat at the Quiet Storm, quite a lot, so we spend a lot of time on Penn. Plus we drive to the East End Co-Op to do our shopping. While there's still a lot of blight on Penn, overall I can't say it's in much worse shape than Butler Street was a few years back.
NYC had a bad period in the 1960s-1970s as well, only really beginning to climb back in the 1980s to a world-class city. Really, the 1980s was the decade that a few of the old-line U.S. cities managed to recover (San Francisco, NYC, Boston) and showed urban malaise wasn't a given. Sadly, no cities have really fully transitioned since then, although many are showing bright spots.
I've seen street fights on Liberty in Bloomfield too. I'm not sure what this shows.
As I've said before, I think there's only so much energy to go around in terms of revitalization. I think it's a big job for Pittsburgh to turn around the entire East End, plus the inner neighborhoods on the North Side and the South Side. Something has to give, and sadly, it seems to be the southern/western portions of the city, along with the outer north side. There is neither enough government focus, nor enough urban pioneers, to take them on.
I am somewhat bullish about the West End proper, however. There has been an active community organization there pushing for redevelopment, and I know anecdotally from my wife (who lived in the South Side for many years), that people getting priced out were looking at the West End as the "New South Side." Sadly, I think Dormont has replaced it.
Disagree strongly. On a macro level, what you talk about is called "industrial policy," used by every other country in the world, and is why even countries with similar labor costs are beating our pants off with high-tech manufacturing like solar and wind.
I moved to Pittsburgh right at the end of Murphy's mayorality. However, what I heard from people was that Murphy was someone who was incredibly pro-business, and would have been a Republican in any other city.
But this is one of the areas I agree with you overall. Tax credits to "create jobs" almost always cost taxpayers far more than the jobs they create give to the community.
I'd actually argue part of Pittsburgh's problem is our tax system favors landholders over residents. We have a very low property tax rate, but a high income tax rate. This basically subsidizes downtown real estate, at the expense of making individuals - even renters who would otherwise only indirectly pay - have a much higher burden. And we have local politicians who want to scrap the property tax entirely and move over to a 100% income tax!
Given my background (researcher for a labor union) I'm perhaps a bit personally invested in this. I'll just remark that NYC, Boston, and San Francisco didn't have to gut the wages and benefits of their workers to turn their cities around. Our union was originally private-sector, and has gotten into the public sector over the last 20 years. We have a lot of frustrations (public-workers seldom understand class-consciousness, and are often very self-centered), but IMHO, what public workers have everyone should have, so I'm not going to argue that we need to ratchet them down to the same level.
Again, in agreement here. In the longer run, casino's will become zero sum, as they continue to proliferate and must eventually reach a saturation point. You're already seeing this in places like Atlantic City, which unlike Vegas hasn't been able to find a rationale to exist now that gambling is widespread.
I recall one famous line from the 2008 presidential campaign that pretty much sums up my response, "you can't put lipstick on a pig".
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; and (b) blithely compare the price of parking to sexual assault, would stay out of the city anyway.
