Commentary

Pittsburgh, where I bought a house a couple of years ago, is a friendly place. I remember walking up a hill in downtown among the big old county buildings. The many hills of Pittsburgh are divided where two rivers, the Allegheny and Monongahela, unite to form a third—the Ohio. One building had a brass plaque commemorating the Eastern European immigrants who helped build “The Steel City” when they moved here starting in the late 1800s.

As I walked along the street between the high walls, I felt as if I too were part of a river of people flowing between the hills, though there would have been more back then. Two people smiled and waved. Perhaps I looked winded. Or, like a foreigner. Indeed, I was a surprised foreigner.

I’ve lived in lots of other places—San Francisco, Boston, New York, Washington, DC, Albuquerque, Honolulu, London, Nairobi, Kabul, and near Milan—which were not quite as friendly. Many did not take kindly to interlopers. Of course, in Afghanistan, there was a war going on.

What gives Pittsburgh its friendly vibe? Perhaps it’s decades of a thinning population that make those who remain more welcoming to newcomers.

Now, that thinning population is thickening. According to the latest Census data, released May 15, after almost a century of decline, Pittsburgh’s population is growing. Pittsburgh is growing faster, at 1.6 percent between 2020 and 2024, than any other city in the Quaker State. Some of the exurbs, the wealthy neighborhoods beyond the suburbs, grew as much as 25 percent during that time.

The Steel City’s population dropped precipitously after peaking in 1950. People left as jobs dried up due to declining U.S. coal and steel production. China replaced many U.S. steel mills. Indonesia and Australia supplied the coal. Pittsburgh’s coal mines are quiet now, leaving many of the once-thriving neighborhoods that supplied workers to the Carnegie Steel mills and Mellon family’s coal business, to crumble. The remaining mansions, universities, and museums of these industrial titans still bear the family name. Carnegie Mellon University is one of the country’s top three in the field of artificial intelligence.

AI sits oddly with the demolition contractors in these places. It doesn’t need many people. AI replaces people. Consistent with this logic, demo companies are tearing down homes that are too far gone to fix, the ones with gaping holes in roofs and entire side walls peeling away from the main structures. They are not only eyesores, but they present a hazard to the children who still walk to school. The city pays contractors in neighborhoods such as the Hill District and Wilkinsburg about $7,000 per house to knock them down in half a day. The massive jaws of excavators, often built in China, take bite after bite from the old structures, inhabited 100 years ago by families long forgotten. It takes a week to sort and haul the houses. What’s left are dirt lots turned into side yards for as little as $500 each.

Tax delinquent salvageable houses sell for only $5,000, but it will take another $100,000 to $200,000 to make them liveable. Construction laborers make as little as $15 to $20 an hour. For those who have the skills to turn the wrecks into homes, the results can be beautiful. Homes made of brick and old heart pine that has a tighter grain are stronger than the cheap “softwood” now on sale at popular home improvement retailers. The rough two-by-fours then were darker, straighter, and stained by coal dust still found in Pittsburgh attics and crawl spaces. They used to be two inches by four inches, originating in the ancient forests that were cut down as the city grew. Now, 2x4s are 1¾ by 3¾ inches, and far weaker due to quick growth methods on Canadian tree farms.

Pittsburgh’s cobblestone streets are hidden beneath layers of asphalt. Hard black slag, an oxide and silicate byproduct of steel smelting, was at times used as filler. My workers dug some up, taking turns with massive, hard swings of a pick and ax to chunk off one small piece at a time, each resulting nugget just as rough as the hands of Billy, the hardest worker. In this and other ways, the city is frozen in time. Siding and roof shingles on some of the houses were made with asbestos from the early 1900s to the 1980s. Many roofs are made of slate that reveals the old boards beneath. Some neighborhoods have vacant brick buildings now inhabited by raccoons and woodchucks. Deer and rabbit wander through the yards that long ago lost their protective fencing. Some neighborhoods have abandoned stately mansions, moldering only blocks away from streets with three-story homes that sell for millions of dollars.

The big companies that started in Pittsburgh included the producers of Heinz ketchup, Bayer aspirin, Alcoa aluminum, PPG glass, and Westinghouse railroad gear. Some are now known for bigger and better things, subsumed by imports.

The primacy of industrial Pittsburgh is gone—replaced by the new top employers of America’s service economy: universities, hospitals, banks, supermarkets, and restaurants. Hopes are high not just for an industrial revival, but one built on the technologies of AI, climate tech, cybersecurity, and robotics. Every moderate-sized city, it seems, is aspiring to lead these future industries.

A $10 billion investment project is transforming an old coal plant about an hour from the city center into an AI data “campus” with seven of its own gas turbines. They will produce 4.5 gigawatts of output and reportedly need 1,000 workers long-term. Data centers are typically not big employers, but that may be changing.

The Census shows that the number of Yinzers, as Pittsburgh residents call themselves, is nevertheless growing at a modest rate. For those still here, that is a cheerful revelation.

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