The Pittsburgh Citizen

Part IV was going to be about politics in Pittsburgh, but the tidal wave of G20 media has started to crash on the shore around me, so I'm interrupting the series to take a topic out of order.

I want to challenge some Pittsburgh orthodoxy, something is that is spreading like a virus -- the bad kind -- through well-intentioned journalists who do what well-intentioned journalists sometimes do: Write the story they want to write, rather than write the story that's really there.

The story that they want to write, but the story that gets in the way of the truth, is a simple tale of hard work. Pittsburgh owes its current success to the hard work and grit of Pittsburghers themselves, who stuck with their beloved city through thick and thin. Pittsburgh and Pittsburghers are the tortoise to the hare of places like Florida and Arizona. There is a culture of hard work and modesty here, combined with an unrivaled passion for and loyalty to the city, that was forged in the steel era and drives the city forward today.

That theme -- that "character" matters most of all, and Pittsburgh's character has never really changed -- is most clearly on display in this recent love letter to the city, from Forbes.com ("Pittsburgh? Yes, Pittsburgh: Why the city on the Ohio River is the perfect G-20 host"). (A footnote: the author of that piece is a young and successful Pittsburgh expat. She is Mt. Lebanon High School Class of 2000!)

What's the problem? It is this: I doubt that Pittsburgh's "character," whatever it might be, is the cause of Pittsburgh's current condition.

I'm increasingly skeptical that Pittsburgh today has this "gritty" character that lots of people assign to it. Maybe it does, especially in some neighborhoods and communities, and especially among people who have lived here a long time. I know a lot of "gritty" people here. I also know a lot of enthusiastic and energetic movers and shakers, in the arts, in the neighborhoods, in politics, and in entrepreneurship -- and they aren't "gritty" at all. Many of them didn't grow up here and don't have family here and wouldn't know the inside of the region's steel history if they were hit on the head by a bust of Andrew Carnegie. Instead, these people have the same kind of passion and spirit and talent that you find in arts advocates, neighborhood organizers, emerging political leaders, and entrepreneurs anywhere. Eventually, I might make the case that Pittsburgh isn't succeeding today *because* of its historic gritty character -- assuming that this gritty character survives -- but *despite* it. Maybe. Count that as a hypothesis to be explored.

I understand why the "gritty character" story survives. It's a very American way of combining political/economic/cultural success with a morality tale: The good people, the folks who put their heads down and planned for the future and avoided the flash and dash, have come out on top. (And we Pittsburghers, of course, are the good people, especially when we're contrasted with Clevelanders or Baltimoreans.) Never mind that over the course of the last 100 years in Pittsburgh, many of the people responsible for organizing and leading Pittsburgh's major successful economic, cultural, and political institutions either weren't very nice (or even "gritty") and would struggle to achieve characterization as "the good people." In the morality tale, the workers and a small number of selfless capitalists and politicians are usually "the good people."

Never mind that putting Pittsburghers' collective heads down and planning for the future and avoiding the flash and dash ended up driving the city over an economic cliff in the 1970s and early 1980s and did precious little to bring things back to life over the succeeding 25 years. I do not suggest that Pittsburghers are not good or hard working or that our steelworker forebears didn't struggle mightily to achieve success for their families and for the region. They are, and they did. But I am skeptical of the morality tale that says that Pittsburgh is where it is today because good people wanted it and worked hard for it.

Read more at Pittsblog.

[Part I is here] [Part II is here][Part III is here]