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blue bits. red rocks.
Friday 9 January 2009

The short answer is that Pittsburgh’s success won’t translate to either Detroit or Phoenix. Pittsburgh had good bones: a longtime corporate headquarters center, with the capital and talent that attracts; a major banking center; the wealth of its manufacturing barons was for decades poured into building world-class universities and other community enriching institutions; it’s a real city with plenty of urban areas ripe to be reclaimed; it avoided the worst of racial and income polarization that destroyed Detroit and lurks in wait for Phoenix. Perhaps most importantly, it was never a metro area dependent on heavy population growth. The wealth it created came from real things, not the artifice of more Wal-Mart jobs serving more transplants from Minnesota and inland Southern California. Rogue Columnist

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