Pittsburgh's Livability: It's The Small Things
The credit for Pittsburgh's recent honor of 'most livable city' goes not to big marketing or development initiatives, but the sum of a lot of small things that make the city and region a good place to live.
"In the first "Star Wars" movie, Obi-Wan Kenobi advised Luke Skywalker to 'let go.' In real life, the boosters of the greater Pittsburgh area might consider the same advice regarding the region's image."
"No doubt a number of resumes in our booster organizations and government offices have been updated to claim credit for the recent rating of our region as the nation's "most livable" by Places Rated Almanac. More recently, our region landed at No. 26 in the world according to The Economist magazine. Perhaps our sales representatives can claim some credit. But if you take the factors that earned our region these lofty rankings, one by one, it quickly becomes evident that no single agency, company, government office, news medium, foundation or individual was responsible. Places Rated Almanac did not rank Pittsburgh in the top 20 in even one of its categories: affordability; transportation; jobs; education; climate; crime; health care; recreation and ambience (which includes cultural amenities, such as museums, performing arts and restaurants). But in comparison to the other 378 rated communities, the numbers added up in our region's favor."
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the virtues of its defects
It seems to me that what the author is trying to say that Pittsburgh's very defects are virtues: an emptying-out city is usually going to be cheaper and have less traffic than a booming one. And an old city will usually have better cultural institutions than a new one, because it will be living off the museums, etc. built in its glory days.