Pittsburgh

In a reversal, Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl requested that the Pittsburgh City Council cancel the vote on his proposed tax on Pittsburgh college students.

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl has asked city council to shelve his proposed tuition tax, saying instead that a broad-based "New Pittsburgh Coalition" will work to solve the city's pension problem.

The mayor is willing to cancel the tuition tax vote that could have occurred today in spite of the fact that he can't claim to have landed the $15 million-a-year needed to right the pension fund, nor the $5 million compromise demand he made earlier this month. "This is a leap of faith for all of us," he conceded, but if successful, it will bring the needed funds -- hopefully in time for the 2011 budget, when the city will otherwise face a dire fiscal situation.

For students who were already facing skyrocketing tuition and textbook prices, this tax would have been one more obstacle to gaining access to a college education.

For Ravenstahl's part, this is a political loss (despite it being a good decision) based on his push for this and his subsequent walk-back. He did not manage to secure any additional funding for the city in exchange for retracting the idea, though he did get assurances from Pitt and Carnegie Mellon that they would increase their yearly donation to the city. Ravenstahl must hope, or in his words exhibit "good faith," that these donations dent the budget deficit he must erase by 2011.

In the end, though, this is a good decision for the future of Pittsburgh's college students and educational institutions.

About a year ago, I wrote about the difference between Cleveland's and Pittsburgh's responses to brain drain, a rough economy, and their impotent positions within the economy. The "Brain Drain" is one of the large elements of this discussion, given its ability to steal away a community's future.

In a recent essay in 2007, Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser argued that funneling resources into "place-based strategies" to reinvigorate worn-down cities is wasteful and ineffective. Instead, Glaeser argues that any redevelopment effort should incorporate "people-based strategies," investing in the people living in a community -- acknowledging that these new skills could be put to use in places like Buffalo (the focus of his essay) or Las Vegas. Yes, Glaeser accepts the notion that people might leave.

Glaeser's point is that communities need to begin looking long-term as opposed to short term. Jim Russell's blog at Burgh Disapora takes a shot at what this might look like in a place like Erie, PA, a community definitely suffering from Brain Drain:

I propose starting a boomerang migrant incubator in downtown Erie. Boomerang migrants are natives who left and then returned. As you probably know, moving back home is almost an impossible task. Employment is scarce and relocation logistics can be a nightmare, particularly during a deep recession. Yet people find a way to pull it off. More might do the same if they knew how and had some help. The key is motivation and the willingness to overcome any obstacle. These are the traits of entrepreneurs and Erie could use more of them.

The idea is that whether or not youth leave (they actually probably would if given the education necessary in a people-based approach), we should be investing in everything possible to prepare to welcome them back in ten or fifteen years. That is what Pittsburgh did when it went through its own hard times in the 1980s, and it has paid off beautifully now.

It is unconventional, and it might hollow out a community before making it better, but eventually it could work. The question is do we have the patience?

A few things to check out this evening...

• Barack Obama has created an online community, Renew America Together, linking those serving their respective communities.
• Winograd and Hais give their take on Renew America Together, calling it a "down payment to Millennials."
• McClatchy Newspapers looks at whether the torch has been passed again with Obama's victory.
• Many commentators are arguing that the GOP needs to step up their use of technology to court the youth vote. Spurning C-SPAN isn't a good start.
• Obama, meanwhile, won't let go of his BlackBerry.
• Want a job with the Obama administration? An ex-Clinton appointee gives you some tips.
• The Times profiles Pittsburgh's resurgence after it experienced its own recession a few decades ahead of the rest of the country.
• Campus Progress interviews Kathy Dahlkemper, a freshman Democrat from Pennsylania's Third District, who recently defeated Republican incumbent Phil English. Dahlkemper talks about youth involvement and has a pretty interesting story (I live in the Third District and had an opportunity to talk with Dahlkemper at one of the college meetings she references -- a good person for this district and for young people).
• mcjoan at DailyKos examines the national parks as an opportunity for job creation, a la the Civilian Conservation Corps in the '30s.
• Blagojevich will swear in the Illinois State Senate, which will then promptly put the governor on trial. What great political theater, eh?

I've written a few times now about larger cities in the Rust Belt (largely the Detroit to Buffalo corridor, with Pittsburgh included), what they're lacking, and how they can bounce back. I'll continue to write about this because of my relative familiarity with the region and because I am genuinely interested in revitalizing these cities with youth in mind.

Yesterday I came across a piece in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, published a week ago, that glowingly describes the successful renaissance neighboring city Pittsburgh has undertaken. The article frames Pittsburgh as a good example of what can be done to weather the recession. Pittsburgh, which faced its own economic turmoil 25 years ago with the closing of the steel mills, has since diversified its economy, investing in higher education (Pitt, Carnegie Mellon) and healthcare (UPMC hospitals), but also developing tech and green industries as well. As the article describes, this approach has attracted Millennials to the city, taking the place of the Boomers who fled the area over the last few decades.

The bust also caused a seemingly disastrous -- but ultimately beneficial -- shift in demographics. When the jobs left Pittsburgh, so did a generation of baby boomers. Today, that void has been filled by "millennials" -- those 27 years old and younger. It's no accident that Pittsburgh is one of the few cities to offer free Wi-Fi within its borders.

Meanwhile, the city's substantial elderly population, living on the safety net of Social Security, pensions and Medicare, is less affected by a recession than younger working folks.

"The city has done a remarkable job of reinventing itself because it had to," said Michael Edwards, president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, a nonprofit group that works with businesses, civic organizations, foundations and elected leaders on developing the city's 100-block downtown. "We're trying to build a city for the future."

Much of that future is moored in the past. The Pittsburgh Technology Center, an office park on the site of a former Jones & Laughlin steel mill, is a research hub employing 1,000 people and one of the best examples of brownfield redevelopment in the nation.

Of course, I'd do well to point out that the mayor of Pittsburgh is a Millennial himself. 28 years old, Luke Ravenstahl is a Pittsburgh native who was elected to Pittsburgh's City Council (youngest ever) in 2003. Two years later, Ravenstahl was elected City Council President, and when Mayor Bob O'Connor passed away in office, Ravenstahl succeeded him. Ravenstahl was officially elected mayor in November of 2007 by a 64 to 35 percent margin.

While many of the students from Pittsburgh who I work with in Erie don't say much about the mayor, they quite clearly are proud of their hometown. Of course it doesn't hurt that the sports teams attract a following, but they seem to identify with the region. It's interesting that when I hear someone that is a native of a Cleveland suburb introduce themselves, they always say the name of that town. When I hear someone from Pittsburgh tell others where they're from, they always say "Pittsburgh," and only provide the smaller hamlet upon request.

So the pertinent question, then, is what happened with Pittsburgh? How do Cleveland and other Rust Belt cities get to the point where the brain drain's impact is negligible and we create some positive energy in and about these communities?

Not surprisingly, I'd argue that much of it has to do with targeting the younger Millennials -- those who will be going to colleges in these cities in the next couple years and those who already live in these areas. And whether these are explicit appeals -- like the Pittsburgh wi-fi network mentioned above, or the hiring of a "bike-pedestrian coordinator" to make the city more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly -- or implicit -- like the collaboration-heavy route Pittsburgh took to climb out of its own mess -- they seem to be successful.

The Plain Dealer published a sidebar to its article examining what Pittsburgh did to revive its city in order to extrapolate some of the strategy for Cleveland. Check out the Millennial-friendly values buried in these steps:

1. Regionalize. Pittsburgh has lost population, but regional ties give it as much -- or more -- clout in Harrisburg as Philadelphia. Cuyahoga County could streamline county government and forge a regional coalition for more power in Columbus.
2. Develop and use the waterfront. From Pittsburgh's old convention center, there wasn't a window that allowed a glimpse of the river. The new waterfront convention center has a boat dock from which visitors can catch a pleasure cruise.
3. Develop educational leadership. Carnegie Mellon University was once a good regional school. Now it's a great university of international renown. Plagued by abrupt changes in leadership and budget woes, Case Western Reserve University has not grabbed that mantle.
4. Cooperate. Recognizing that their fates are entwined, corporate and labor leaders in Pittsburgh have been successful at setting aside many of their differences to work for a common good.
5. Strategize. Like Cleveland, Pittsburgh's philanthropic and business communities have had open checkbooks. Pittsburgh often has had a sharper vision of how the money should be spent.

Finally, not only should our local governments be targeting Millennial values when developing and reinvigorating communities; we should also be doing all that we can to include Millennials, even recruiting the most passionate of them to run for office. We can see Ravenstahl's impact on Pittsburgh. Getting Millennials involved automatically forces the discussion off of ego-based controversies in the present and pushes it toward the future, answering questions like what the population will look like 25 or 30 years down the road, and what do we need to do to meet that population's needs.

It seems that collaboration, technology, and big ideas go a long way toward rebuilding our cities. Who better to be involved in this effort than Millennials?