Sun, 30 Jun 2002
Remaking Pittsburgh image
Pittsburgh image-makers battling to get message out, negate bad PR. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Jun 30 2002 7:34AM ET [Moreover - Pittsburgh news] From the Post Gazette article:
In a subsequent Q&A with Salon, Florida said that Pittsburgh is among the cities that "thought we really live in a patriarchal, white, corporate society and that the key to success was to strap on your tie, go to work 9 to 5, and behave yourself. There was no room for people with new ideas . . . They were thought to be troublemakers, difficult, weirdos, wackos, eccentrics."
Exactly. Those of us in the creative class that Florida refers to who've wound up here for one reason or another generally go off to work everyday to watch companies carry on the status quo with their good ole' cash cows while regarding any new opportunity as too risky and new ideas as a threat to the establishment. If it weren't for the universities acting as a gateway, a kind of cultural diversity catalyst against the blue collar monoculture, this place would have died an economic and cultural death years ago. It frankly surprises me that CMU stays here. As we've watched the corporate giants begin to migrate elsewhere, the universities would follow if it weren't for the fact that they are so heavily tied to the soil. Why they're so heavily tied to the soil is another question.
In the end, the essence of Pittsburgh's problem can be summed up by a single sentence in the aforementioned Post Gazette article, "As one example of how badly economic development agencies want to alter that image of Pittsburgh, the Greater Pittsburgh Convention & Visitors Bureau earlier this year orchestrated a campaign to get Pittsburgh's name on an AmericanStyle magazine poll of the most popular arts-related tourist destinations." Alter that image of Pittsburgh. Repeat after me, "Alter that image of Pittsburgh". Pittsburgh will get beyond it's image problem as soon as that phrase becomes "alter Pittsburgh". And that will happen as soon as the city begins to collectively unlearn the provinciality that has kept it an also-ran for as long as I've been observing it.
Posted at: 15:54 | permalink
