Sent to me by a wise old corporate type with great lessons/advice for Edmonton.
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The city of bridges has built a bridge from its steel past to a diverse 21st century economy. The summiteers arriving on September 24th can take note
EVEN on an overcast day, the view from Jeffrey Romoffs office is spectacular. Across the river are waterfront baseball and football stadiums. Dozens of bridges span the Allegheny to the north-east and Monongahela to the south-east. The two rivers merge to form the Ohio River. Not one soot-churning mill is in sight. Ed Rendell, Pennsylvanias governor, observed that it used to be you couldnt see a bloody thing. Steel was once the largest employer in the region. Now the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre (UPMC), an $8 billion health-care conglomerate, is western Pennsylvanias biggest employer, with 50,000 people. Last year Mr Romoff, UPMCs chief executive, moved his headquarters to the old US Steel tower, the citys tallest building. UPMCs logo now sits on top of it.
Pittsburgh does not rely solely on UPMC or the health industry the way it once leant on steel. When the steel industry collapsed in the early 1980s, the city and region lost 120,000, or about half, of all its manufacturing jobs. Some 50,000 Pittsburghers left the region annually. The citys revival since then has been part organic and part good long-term planning. State and local officials provided investment, while universities and community and corporate leaders came together to develop economic and business strategies for the region. Pittsburghs employment has, over the ensuing three decades, diversified quite well.
Leaders from the worlds 19 largest economies plus the European Union will be in Pittsburgh on September 24th and 25th. When the White House press corps heard the G20 was to be hosted by Pittsburgh, many sniggered. Usually such meetings are held in capitals like Beijing or London, not rustbelt cities. But, as Barack Obama said on September 8th, Pittsburgh has transformed itself from the city of steel to a centre for high-tech innovationincluding green technology, education and training, and research and development.
Today, its main industries, health care and education, are thriving. Pittsburghs health-services business has almost tripled in size since 1979, creating more than 100,000 jobs. More than 70,000 work in research and development in the metro areas 35 universities (Jonas Salk produced the polio vaccine at the University of Pittsburgh in 1955) and 100 corporate research centres, such as that of Bayer usa, a pharmaceuticals company. Greg Babe, its head, says six jobs rely on one Bayer job.
Pittsburgh has changed itself physically too. The waterfront, once lined with factories, has been given over to parks. The building hosting the G20 is the worlds first and largest LEED-certified (meaning green) convention centre and sits on the citys former red-light district. Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, which provides investment and advice to the regions bioscience firms, is housed on a redeveloped brownfield, the former site of a strip-mill. SouthSide Works is a 123-acre (50-hectare) development made up of shops, offices, hotels and apartments that sits on the former site of an LTV Steel plant. Manufacturing continues to employ 8% of the workforce and the city is still home to US Steel. It is also a centre for innovation in robotics, electronics and nanotechnology.
Entrepreneurship has been fostered. Innovation Works, a state-aided seed fund, supports firms in their earliest stages of development. Susan Catalano, a neurobiologist working to stop Alzheimers symptoms, moved her start-up to Pittsburghs South Side to take advantage of this help. Thanks to universities of the stature of Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh, many new companies and recruits are drawn in. Pittsburghs unemployment rate, at 7.8% in July, was lower than the national rate of 9.4%.
Forbes magazine recently named Pittsburgh as one of Americas best cities for job growth. Some 30,000 jobs are available in the region, says Bill Flanagan, of the Allegheny Conference, an economic development group, an increase of 10,000 since the beginning of 2009. Pittsburgh has 8.4% of the nations nuclear engineers. Westinghouse, a nuclear-power company, is on a hiring spree. People are drawn to the regions well-paid jobs, low cost of living and good schools. The EIU, a sister company of The Economist, ranked it the most liveable city in America. It boasts the top-flight Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Opera, as well as a host of theatres. Gorgeous Victorian townhouses can be bought for amazing prices.
Thanks to a thriving economy and a minor budget surplus, Pittsburgh looks set to stay in good shape. It largely missed the housing and dotcom booms and busts endured by the rest of the country. In fact, it is currently building a new sports arena, a new hospital and, for the first time in decades, housing in the downtown area. Because of a 2003 brush with bankruptcy, it cut its municipal workforce by a quarter, and took many hard decisions, such as closing fire stations, making it well-placed to cope with the current recession.
As well as 1,100 delegates and 2,000 journalists, the city is preparing itself for an onslaught of protesters. One website, resistg20.org, promises a mass march and other protests to disrupt the summit. Some 35,000 people rallied at the G20s April meeting in London. Luke Ravenstahl, the citys 29-year-old mayor, is quadrupling the 900-strong police force by shipping in 1,500 state troopers and borrowing cops from cities like New York. The citys businessmen and politicians are hoping that the protesters and the politicians wont wholly eclipse their own impressive tale of transformation.
http://www.economist.com/world/unite...ry_id=14460542
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