Hate the Game, Not the City: More Good Rankings for Pittsburgh

In recent years many organizations have created rankings about whatever subject they specialize in, in most cases expressly for the purpose of creating publicity and/or brand awareness for their company or their products. Some of the rankings are done scientifically, but most are just done by arbitrary voting or by cherry-picking statistics.

Tourist and business development organizations around the country use these rankings as promotional tools for their cities. And each city's naysayers (in Pittsburgh it is the anti-yinzers and yinzers alike) try to downplay anything positive and glorify the negative.

Anyway, any time Pittsburgh gets a nice ranking, you'll always see it talked about here. But I must have missed a few. The Trib had a great article Sunday that compiled several good rankings Pittsburgh has received recently.

You can read the article to find out all of the specifics, but here are a few of the phrases used to describe Pittsburgh (by completely independent sources): "bargain destination", "geek-friendly", "city of the future", "cleanest cities", "best arts destination", "hot for business relocation and expansion".

Must Read Column Alert!

Wow! A Pittsburgh columnist writes something positive? This is such a rare occurrence that I almost didn't comprehend it. Ruth Ann Dailey wrote a great column in the Post-Gazette today called "Loving the Pittsburgh we have". A great read.

This column is in the very spirit of this blog. It very easily could have been titled "Wake up Yinzers and people who think they're not Yinzers but by virtue of being negative really are Yinzers, and realize what we have here!" Enjoy.

Pittsburgh Ranked in Top 10 Best Places to Relocate a Family

Another day, another good ranking for Pittsburgh. And at least this one won't be disputed by locals because it is common knowledge.

Pittsburgh ranked sixth among 50 "large" metro areas (population over 1.25 million) in a ranking of the "2007 Best Cities for Relocating Families", published by Worldwide ERC and Primacy Relocation.

The five "big" cities that finished ahead of Pittsburgh on the list were all actually smaller than Pittsburgh: 1. Fort Worth-Arlington, TX; 2. Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro, TN; 3. Kansas City, MO-KS; 4. Indianapolis-Carmel, IN; 5. Austin-Round Rock, TX.

In my opinion, a "big" city is one that has at least 2 million in the metro area. None of these is that big (KC is close). So in my opinion, Pittsburgh really ranked #1 among big cities!

Interesting to see where cities supposedly "similar" to Pittsburgh ranked: #14 Detroit, #22 Cleveland.

The Bottom Five: 50. Miami; 49. NYC/NJ; 48. Chicago; 47. Fort Lauderdale; 46. Philadelphia.

We're, Like...Really Good at Medical Stuff

As most people who live in the region already know, the local medical/healthcare industry has gradually, over the last 35 years, replaced manufacturing as the backbone of the Pittsburgh economy. UPMC and other Pittsburgh medical institutions are consistently ranked very highly in national publications. I think we take these assets for granted and don't praise them enough.

I've got to tell you, there are some very impressive things going on in Oakland lately that deserve some recognition. Check out these recent headlines:

• Children's Hospital Surgeon to Lead National Study on Head Trauma
• UPMC Doctors Perform First U.S. "Beating Heart" Transplant
• DOD Taps UPMC to Run Its First Injury Prevention and Performance Enhancement Laboratory

Good job, guys!

We Have Less A-hole Drivers than Most Cities

Well, the annual AutoVantage road rage survey is out. And Pittsburgh is ranked as having the second most courteous drivers in America, behind only Portland, Oregon. Miami had the most road ragers for the second year in a row.

As a serial angry driver myself, I don't have a grasp on the concept of not road raging. But I guess the rest of my Pittsburgh brethren do. The next time you see one of these rare road ragers in the 'Burgh, it's probably me. Sorry. Anyway, congratulations for being good drivers, Pittsburgh!

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/15/road.rage.ap/index.html

Pittsburgh Adds 10K Jobs in March; Local unemployment at lowest level in 37 Years!

The Pittsburgh region added 9,900 jobs in March, pushing the local unemployment rate down to 3.6%, a figure that is better than both the state (3.7%) and national (4.4%) averages and is the region's best showing since 1970. The year-over-year increase was 6,700 jobs.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/business/s_505397.html
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07121/782320-28.stm

Critics might say that 9,900 or 6,700 jobs is nothing in a region with 1.15 million jobs, or that the job growth is in the low-paying service sector or the temporary construction sector. But wouldn't you agree that it is better than LOSING jobs?