Gosh. I remember when Pittsburgh was named America's Most Livable City way back when. And now, it has happened again.
Congratulations, Pittsburgh. Seriously. I like this town.
And let me be the first to say it...
Can we move on now? Can we please, please, please stop obsessing about "image"? Can we please, please, please stop griping about the difficulty of overcoming the idea that Pittsburgh is choked in smoke and grit and all the rest? Can we stop coming up with new slogans to prove that we are all about tech and medicine and education? Can we just "be," and forget about reinventing who we are and what we think we are?
People know. OK?
But all that aside, do enjoy the place. Enjoy your cheap house and your short commute and your nice view and your neighborhood bar. Those are really important things. (Move to DC once. You'll see.) In the meantime, I am going to have to stop my wife's hyperventilating. She is convinced that Pittsburgh's weather ought to preclude it from anything higher than 500th on the list. She's a flatlander, though. So I forgive her.
In the meantime, I was toying with the idea of checking on Pittsburgh's population the year it last won this honor and comparing it to today. It would have taken about 30 seconds. But that seems overly grumpy and cynical. To hell with it.
Go Steelers! And someone get me an Iron!
I'm going to spend the next few weeks blogging from afar. I'll be posting as the guy from the most livable city in America while living in one of the most livable cities in the world. We're headed to Christchurch, New Zealand.
Should be fun to experience the contrasts. And, it is rugby season too.
Posted by: Mark Rauterkus | April 26, 2007 at 04:57 AM
1980: 423,959
1990: 369,879
2000: 334,563
http://www.city-data.com/us-cities/The-Northeast/Pittsburgh-Population-Profile.html
(i assume these statistics are drawn from census data)
Posted by: Michael Hellein | May 02, 2007 at 04:16 AM