America’s Most Livable Cities

Francesca Levy, 04.29.10, 06:40 PM EDT

In these affordable metros, jobs are plentiful, crime is low and there are myriad entertainment options.

In Depth: America’s Most Livable Cities

Each year Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business attracts some of the brightest master’s degree candidates in the country. But the admissions staff occasionally has to sway prospective students with their choice of top schools who wonder why they should relocate to Pittsburgh, Pa.

“Pittsburgh has a really great cultural scene. We have a great ballet and a great symphony that travels the world and performs to packed houses, and there’s a restaurant scene that’s much more diverse than it ever was when I was growing up,” says Wendy Hermann, director of student services for master’s programs and a Pittsburgh native. “And it’s an easier sell, now that the Steelers and Penguins won their respective titles.”

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Indeed, Pittsburgh’s art scene, job prospects, safety and affordability make it the most livable city in the country, according to measures studied. The city has rebounded from its manufacturing past. Disused steel mills have been repurposed into multimedia art centers, and amid a struggling national economy, Google ( GOOG – news – people ) Pittsburgh, a test site for the company’s new high-speed broadband network, has expanded its offices to accommodate more hires.

In Depth: America’s Most Livable Cities

Pittsburgh’s strong university presence–the city has over a dozen colleges or campuses–helps bolster its livability. In fact, the key to finding the easiest places to live may be to follow the students. Most of the metros on our list–including Ann Arbor, Mich., Provo, Utah, and Manchester, N.H.–are college towns.

“Universities are large employers in their cities,” says Alexander Von Hoffman, senior fellow at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. “In the long term, not only do you have that employment, but you have an educated population, and you have a large youthful population which tends to be a consuming population.”

Behind the Numbers
In compiling our list, we measured five data points in the country’s 200 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas: unemployment, crime, income growth, the cost of living, and artistic and cultural opportunities.

To find out where jobs were available and incomes were steadily growing, we ranked cities both by their rate of income growth over the past five years and the current unemployment rate, based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The stronger the income growth trend and the lower the unemployment, the higher each city ranked. Jobs don’t mean everything, though: A city is more livable if a family’s income goes further. Using cost of living data from Moody’s ( MCO – news – people ) Economy.com, we ranked cities higher that had lower costs for everyday goods.

Some places are inexpensive, but still not desirable, so we included a measure for crime, using the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s and Sperling’s Best Places reports on the number of crimes per 100,000 residents, ranking low-crime cities higher. We also considered a thriving local culture crucial to livability, so we gave higher rankings to cities that scored highly on the Arts & Leisure index created by Sperling’s Best Places. We averaged the rankings for each of these metrics to arrive at a final score.

America’s Best Housing Markets

Francesca Levy, 02.19.10, 04:50 PM EST

Low foreclosures, rising home prices and affordability make these parts of the country good bets for home buyers.

In Depth: America’s Best Housing Markets

Families in the market for a house are shopping at the right time: Nationally, homes are near the most affordable they’ve been in 18 years. In the fourth quarter of 2009 housing was 62.4% more affordable than the same time a year earlier, according to the Housing Opportunity Index, published quarterly by the National Association of Home Builders and Wells Fargo.

The best place to buy right now: Pittsburgh. For a housing market to be attractive it should have appreciating prices that show homeowners are making wise investments; an affordability rating that gives middle-class families with good credit entry into the market; and a relatively low number of foreclosures, which keeps prices stable and indicates there isn’t an excess of inventory.

In Depth: America’s Best Housing Markets

Pittsburgh has all three. In the metro area, 85% of homes are affordable to those making the median family income of $62,500. At the same time, foreclosures are low: Only one home is in foreclosure for every 120 housing units–the second-best record of all the cities we ranked; and home prices are expected to increase 2.67% by the end of the year.

Yes, the city has suffered greatly since the decline of its manufacturing-dependent economy. But that slump helped its real estate market dodge the rapid run-up in prices that doomed so many markets after the housing boom.

Pittsburgh is the first non-capital city selected to host a summit of Group of 20 leaders. Obama told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette the two-day session set to begin Thursday will show off the city’s economic transition.

“This is a recognition that Pittsburgh is a world-class city,” he said. “That it represents the transition of the U.S. economy from (an) industrial state to a mix of strong industry — steel — but also now biotech and clean energy. It has transformed itself, after some very tough times, into a city that’s competing in the world economy.”

Obama said the city is an appropriate venue for the G20 summit which will take up the interconnected 21st century economy.

Pittsburgh ranked tops in U.S. by The Economist

British magazine gives city a jolly good No. 1 rating

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

By Mackenzie Carpenter, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato was calling — no, crowing — from his cell phone, in full, gleeful, salesman-for-the-region mode, ticking off the number of recent surveys declaring Pittsburgh the nation’s most livable city (four or five); the number of front-page New York Times stories about Pittsburgh in the past three months (two) and the value of such publicity to the Pittsburgh area (priceless).

Given that abundance of good publicity, the news that Pittsburgh once again is the most livable city in the United States — and 29th worldwide — in a 2009 survey by British magazine The Economist was “great news, but not a surprise,” Mr. Onorato said.

“This is now the fourth or fifth independent survey from outside the region talking up the Pittsburgh metro region. You have the stories in The New York Times, the president picks us to host the G-20 summit, now you have this magazine, plus others over the years. It’s amazing.”

The Economist Intelligence Unit — which publishes numerous surveys and studies for paying clients — has ranked Pittsburgh first in U.S. livability ratings since it started measuring them in 2005, said Jon Copestake, editor of the survey.

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Of the 140 cities considered, Vancouver, B.C., took the top spot worldwide, followed by Vienna, Melbourne and Toronto. Cities in Asia and Africa fared the worst, with Harare, Zimbabwe, followed by Algiers and Dhaka, Bangladesh (tied), thanks to “civil instability and poor infrastructure,” the report said.

The Economist’s ranking is just one of many kudos Pittsburgh has earned recently: In 2007 it was rated as “America’s Most Livable City” by Places Rated Almanac, and in January Forbes Magazine cited it as the sixth best city in “Ten Cities For Job Growth In 2009.”

Of course, there was that survey by the Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends project, which found Pittsburgh one of the least popular of places to live — in the bottom 10 of 30 cities surveyed — with only 17 percent of those surveyed saying they wanted to live there. And Business Week magazine reported that Pittsburgh is the 14th “Most Unhappy City” in the nation.

In The Economist’s report, between 30 to 40 indicators were considered under five categories: stability, health care, culture and environment, education and infrastructure. The Economist used its own analysts plus statistics and input from correspondents in each city.

“The idea was that the city presenting the least challenges to your lifestyle would be deemed the most livable,” said Mr. Copestake — in other words, cities that aren’t too big, too crowded or too crime-ridden. Pittsburgh’s medical centers and its cultural amenities — unusual for a city of its size — helped propel it up the charts, he added.

The actual differences in scores between U.S. cities was fairly small, he noted. “All of the cities in the U.S. are comparable in livability terms,” he said, noting that the lowest scoring city, Lexington, Ky., at 85 percent, was only a few points lower than Pittsburgh, at 92 percent.

While Mr. Copestake obviously hasn’t experienced our famous tunnel traffic, he noted that because of our population loss, “that means less people needing services so they’re not overburdened.”

And that’s exactly the problem with these “most livable” contests, countered Jake Haulk, president of the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy.

“Livability is in the eye of the beholder,” he said, noting surveys tend to overvalue cultural institutions — which benefit relatively few people — and undervalue economic indicators such as job growth and low taxes, which benefit many. Places like Charlotte, N.C., attracted people for that reason, he said.

“I would think that livability would have to do with finding a good job. If you’re just looking at cultural things, sure, Pittsburgh is a nice place to live, if you can afford to send your kids to private schools or live in the suburbs and pay high taxes for good schools, but people tend to go where they can find work.”

Nonsense, said Mr. Onorato.

“No one is claiming Pittsburgh is perfect,” he said, noting that Mr. Haulk “bragged a few years ago about how great Charlotte is, and now Charlotte is in total collapse.”

Mackenzie Carpenter can be reached at mcarpenter@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1949.

First published on June 10, 2009 at 12:00 am

Pittsburgh Business Times – by Ben Semmes

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bsemmes@Bizjournals.com | (412) 208-3829

PITTSBURGH — This is what life in one American city looks like after an industrial collapse:

Unemployment is 5.5 percent, far below the national average. While housing prices sank nearly everywhere in the last year, they rose here. Wages are also up. Foreclosures are comparatively uncommon.

A generation ago, the steel industry that built Pittsburgh and still dominated its economy entered its death throes. In the early 1980s, the city was being talked about the way Detroit is now. Its very survival was in question.

Deindustrialization in Pittsburgh was a protracted and painful experience. Yet it set the stage for an economy that is the envy of many recession-plagued communities, particularly those where the automobile industry is struggling for its life.

“If people are looking for hope, it’s here,” said Sabina Deitrick, an urban studies expert at the University of Pittsburgh. “You can have a decent economy over a long period of restructuring.”

Pittsburgh’s transition has been proceeding for decades in fits and starts, benefiting some areas much more than others. A development plan begun in the 1980s successfully used the local universities to pour state funds into technology research.

Entrepreneurship bloomed in computer software and biotechnology. Two of the biggest sectors are education and health care, among the most resistant to downturns. Prominent companies are doing well. Westinghouse Electric, a builder of nuclear reactors, expects to hire 350 new employees a year for the foreseeable future. And commercial construction, plunging in most places, is still thriving partly because of big projects like a casino and an arena for the Penguins hockey team.

The question is whether Pittsburgh can serve as a model for Detroit and other cities in the industrial Midwest as they grapple with large-scale cutbacks in the automotive industry. Even with the federal government’s $17.4 billion bailout, General Motors, Chrysler and Ford are expected to continue shrinking.

The unemployment rate in Michigan, already close to 10 percent, will undoubtedly rise further. State and federal officials will have to increase the number of retraining programs, and develop a postindustrial policy that ensures there is something for the graduates to do. That will take patience and money, two commodities in short supply.

About 4 percent of Michigan workers make cars and parts, with many more employed in related fields. Few regions are as dependent on a single heavy industry. But the history of Pittsburgh, where steel workers fell from as much as 10 percent of the work force in 1980 to less than 1 percent today, offers proof that revitalization is possible.

One reason Pittsburgh looks better in the bust is because it never had a real estate boom. That might have been a cause for complaint among homeowners who missed out on soaring values in California and Florida in the first half of the decade, but these days they can only be grateful.

Housing prices in Pittsburgh were up 2.2 percent for the year ending September 2008 despite a slight drop in the latest quarter, according to the government’s House Price Index. That compares with a 4 percent drop for the United States as a whole.

The big local bank, PNC, was resolutely unadventurous during the housing frenzy. It just acquired Cleveland-based National City, which made too many bad loans. That will solidify Pittsburgh’s standing as one of the country’s major banking centers.

Yet the semisweet spot that Pittsburgh finds itself in was never inevitable. As recently as 2000, it had a higher unemployment rate than Detroit or Cleveland. Just as Michigan has traditionally put all its chips on the auto industry, it took Pittsburgh a long time to come to terms with the end of the steel era.

“The emphasis was on fighting the presumed causes of the decline by getting rid of low-cost foreign imports or providing more subsidies,” said Harold D. Miller, president of Future Strategies, a consultancy. “The assumption was that steel will come back and we’ll go back to the way we were.”

There were moments when the rebirth of steel seemed plausible, if not imminent. Ryan Campbell grew up in the shadow of the great Homestead Works, now the site of a vibrant shopping mall. When he graduated from college in 2001, steel drew him in.

Mr. Campbell took a job at a small specialty mill as a foreman. He loved it — the huge cranes delicately pouring pots of molten fire, the camaraderie on the production line, the proud heritage of making something tangible — but soon realized he could never make a career there.

Overburdened with retiree pension and health care costs, competing against both imports and modern minimills, the steel industry was convulsing again. An initial round of layoffs at Mr. Campbell’s mill was followed by a second, then a third. “I need to go paddle on a different boat,” Mr. Campbell told himself.

He posted a résumé online and was sought out by recruiters for Medrad Inc., a health care company founded by an emergency room doctor in 1964 in Pittsburgh. Now a unit of the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer, Medrad last year opened its fourth facility in the area, this one for making disposable syringes. Mr. Campbell, 31, is a production manager.

Career transitions could hardly be more painless, but Mr. Campbell has sympathy for his former colleagues, many of whom had a much more difficult time.

Some would be laid off, work in a grocery store or wait tables, and then go back when business picked up a bit, Mr. Campbell said. It was a rational thing to do: The mill would pay perhaps $17 an hour, much more than a restaurant or store.

Mark Conkle considers himself a retraining success, too, but his experience demonstrates how difficult it will be for many laid-off autoworkers to match their factory income.

Mr. Conkle worked for 15 years for Ross Mould Inc. in Washington, southwest of Pittsburgh, as a unionized production machinist. He was making $23 an hour when he was laid off in 2005.

Some laid-off colleagues went directly to machine shops for $10 or $11 an hour. Mr. Conkle took the harder route of retraining, enrolling in a 16-month technical program. His unemployment benefits and his wife Amanda’s job as a postal carrier carried the family through.

Last February, Mr. Conkle, 40, was hired as a maintenance specialist at the Monongahela Valley Hospital, a 226-bed hospital that is the third-largest employer in Washington County and is still growing. He makes $15 an hour, and in this economy is happy to have it. “You’ve got to take a job, no matter what it’s paying,” he said. “Companies know it.”

The forces buffeting the larger economy are beginning to touch Pittsburgh. Sony recently announced the closing of its Westmoreland County plant, its last television manufacturing factory in the United States. The plant had already been cut to 560 workers from 3,000 a few years ago. And Alcoa, which employs more than 1,500 people here, said Tuesday it was cutting 13 percent of its worldwide staff.

Even health care is affected. The Medrad plant has a hiring “pause.” Built for 500 workers, it has only about 95.

“Folks who are laid off should be given a chance to remake their lives,” said Barney Oursler, co-director of the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee. But “there are never enough good jobs.”

Particularly now. Pittsburgh had the luxury of reshaping itself while the rest of the United States economy was relatively strong. Unemployed steel workers could leave for the booming Sun Belt, helping the city and region shrink to a more manageable size. The metropolitan area of about 2.4 million has 200,000 fewer residents than in 1980.

With the entire country reeling, that escape valve is closed. A few weeks ago, Bill Shever was laid off from his job in a metal sidings plant in Valencia, north of Pittsburgh. He would relocate, but has not heard of any place where skilled labor is in demand.

“Times are tough all over,” said Mr. Shever, 47. “I might as well stick it out here.” He said two specialty steel companies seemed to be holding their own, and he would try them first.