Give it a break Fineman and everyone else for that matter. Obviously, you have love for your city, just as most people love where they actually reside. Detroit is suffering from a tempest of dispraise that in some respects is unwarranted. Yes, Detroit is suffering. There is room for improvement (a whole lot of improvement) and the state of Michigan for that matter. However, Detroit has what it takes to be first class city again: infrastructure (water system), housing stock, natural resources (border with this country's largest trading partner), and a ctizenry (despite the borderline racist characterizations constantly being employed to caricature Detroiters) that is as gritty, and prideful as they come. For those who want to continually question the intellect or pride of the city's residents, I challenge you to stop in any number of restaurants up and down Woodward Ave. and spark a socio-politico conversation. I'm certain you'll quickly discover just how myopic your perspectives are. In the end though, people respond to economic imperatives and incentives...just as Pittsburgh, Chicago, and any other hosts of cities that experienced such dire straits. The federal government is not the answer, however there is much the government can do to provide incentives for and support to cities like Detroit that are suffering from the recalibration of the U.S. economy.
- 1
- 2
What Pittsburgh (Don’t Laugh) Can Teach Obama
Email To A Friend
Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.
A way of making a living ended, but not a way of life. The old determination found a new focus, which wasn't anymore a lifetime job in the mill, but a college education—and more education.
And that, above all, has been the key to the city's survival: pride in and commitment to local education. The city school system avoided the kind of collapse that faced other urban centers; schools in surrounding suburbs of Allegheny County have risen in stature. This was largely a local choice, with local and state money.
The same is true with higher education. Pittsburgh is one of only a handful of cities with two institutions—Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh—in the 62-member Association of American Universities, a prestigious alliance of the nation's leading research schools. True, CMU and Pitt get a lot of federal research money, and federal grants and loans help pay the tuition of many of their students. But the schools wouldn't be what they are had it not been for the vision of locals, from Andrew Carnegie and Thomas Mellon to the thousands of Pittsburgh schoolkids who contributed pennies toward the construction of the main building on the Pitt campus.
Believe it or not, Pittsburgh today is a college town, with one of the highest ratios of students to full-time residents in the nation.
At the center of the university complex (there are dozens of other universities and colleges in the area) is health care; and again, its creation was the result of local initiative. Affiliated with Pitt, UPMC has become one of the nation's largest, most advanced (and entrepreneurial) hospital and health-care providers.
HHS didn't tell them to do it.
"Now we're the city of 'eds and meds'," says Ira Morgan, a savvy player in Pittsburgh real estate.
Morgan and others see a revival of manufacturing, too—but on a smaller, more dispersed scale. The old open-hearth behemoths are gone; the cleared land along the rivers is now home to startups in computer systems and software and metals fabrication. "The industrial parcels are cheap and the business in them is strong," said Morgan.
The key to all of this is civic pride and lots of time. The city, pretty much left to its own devices, suffered for two decades, its wounds salved by the Steelers and other local sports teams, but the pain was very real. Pittsburgh has half the population it once did (though the Allegheny County metro area has retained its size). Some graceful old neighborhoods are collapsing under the weight of crime and drugs, even as most of them remain remarkably well maintained.
But the point is that this is largely a local story, not a national one. The lesson for the auto business and the auto-producing regions is not the one that President Obama wants them to hear. It is that the old world will inevitably disappear, and that creating a new one is up to you, not someone else.
© 2009
- 1
- 2
My Take
Each Newsweek reader is different—and now your Newsweek can be, too. Use this page to create a experience that's personalized for you and your interests. My Take: it makes Newsweek whatever you want it to be.
Discuss