[eschaton]

I think the City of Pittsburgh has a relatively healthy relationship with its suburbs for a rust-belt city, for a number of reasons.

1. Downtown employment remained very strong throughout the 20th century - there was no decampment of office jobs to the suburbs.

2. The presence of all of the major universities and colleges within city limits (Pittsburgh lacks any college towns of note at all).

3. Even during the worst period for the city, there were upper-middle class enclaves like Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, and Point Breeze which remained desirable, and even in some cases kept desirable neighborhood schools.

4. White flight was relatively modest in Pittsburgh, affecting selected neighborhoods, but not a whole "side" of the city like St. Louis or Cleveland (let alone the entire city like Detroit).

5. On the flipside, a lot of "suburbs" ended up more economically depressed than the city as a whole for various reasons. Some of them were just old mill towns which happened to be outside of city limits. Others experienced white flight early on.

In the last 15 years things have shifted to the point where now a majority of the black population of Allegheny County is outside of the City of Pittsburgh. The black population is still over-concentrated in the city, considering the city is only around 1/4th of the county population, but it's pretty clear now which direction things are going.

That is not to say there aren't suburbanites scared of the city, or people who move to the suburbs as soon as their kids are kindergarten age, But I don't hear quite the same level of vitriol from suburbanites here as other places I have lived.