Quote:
Originally Posted by goat314
Pittsburgh is boosted more on these boards than real life. My ex-wife is from Pittsburgh and when she would visit St. Louis with me she always said that "St. Louis reminds me of Pittsburgh, but better". This is St. Louis we are talking about, the murder capital of America and a highly troubled city. I think much of Pittsburgh's praise comes from it being the whitest major Rust Belt city and having a relatively low crime rate. I like Pittsburgh a lot and it has done a lot in real life to clean up it's image, but many would be surprised at how much of the Pittsburgh metro is in really bad condition.
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It's definitely boosted on here, but anyone who visits Pittsburgh generally comes away pretty impressed (even 20+ years ago when there wasn't nearly as much going on in the city).
I'm not sure what "being the whitest major Rust Belt city" would have to do with it, and I'd rather not go there.
I think when people visit and they experience the dramatic topography (which offers constantly changing views of the city), impressive infrastructure and architecture, and numerous unique and historic neighborhoods set in the hills and on the rivers, they come away with a really positive experience. It's a very unique city in the US. It doesn't really look like anywhere else, and the experience on the ground isn't much like anywhere else because of the fact that it's a major city built where no major city
should be built.
But there's no doubt that there exists A LOT of grit. Pittsburgh makes no excuses for that, and totally owns it. Basically saying, "
Well, if you produced most of the nation's metal for a century and won two world wars and literally built the country, you'd look like this too". There are plenty of city neighborhoods and outlying steel towns in bad shape, though overall it's gotten A LOT better (at least in the city proper and close-in urban neighborhoods).