Safety in McKeesport

[MissShona]

Originally Posted by COPANUT

There are 4 cities in Allegheny County.

Duquesne, Clairton, McKeesport, and Pittsburgh.

They are classified as URBAN, not SUBURBAN.

That's how they were organized/incorporated. It has little bearing on the nature of those communities.

[MissShona]

Originally Posted by Drover

I don't care who classifies what as what. When a city of 25,000 that sits right outside the metropolitan's city proper, it's a suburb.

I think it is more accurate to say that McKeesport is the the "Pittsburgh region" or even "metropolitan area"...but I think it is misleading to tell people who are not from here that McKeesport is a suburb. When people hear "suburb" they think of a place where people live while they work and commute into the city -- like those towns in Northern New Jersey (which may be even further from NYC than McKeesport is from Pitt.). However, Pittsburgh is not New York...and McKeesport is really it's own "town". Even though there is nothing there....you also have very few people who work in Pittsburgh...even on the edges of the city...and choose to live in McKeesport.

Understand that McKeesport itself served as "the city" practically for the other surrounding communities of Glassport, Elizabeth, Clairton, North Versailles, North Huntington, Dravosburg, West Mifflin, etc. You could get anything and everything done business-wise right in McKeesport. This is a very different situation from, oh let's say Upper St. Clair or Peters Township....which have many been places where you can build your nice house and live in a cul-de-sac. That sort of thing.

Also ask anyone who has to commute from McKeesport to Pittsburgh...there is no good way. By public transportation or by car...it just sucks. You either have to take PA-837 (towards Homestead) or PA-48 (towards Monroeville). Maybe Rt. 51 and then take Lebanon Church Rd. then catch the (what is it...Orange Belt?) road that runs past the Bettis plant then cross the bridge onto Lysle Blvd. Anyway, you are looking at 45 minutes with daytime traffic.

So regardless of label, McKeesport may "be" a suburb of Pittsburgh...but it sure does not feel or behave like one.

[Drover]

Originally Posted by MissShona

I think it is more accurate to say that McKeesport is the the "Pittsburgh region" or even "metropolitan area"...but I think it is misleading to tell people who are not from here that McKeesport is a suburb. When people hear "suburb" they think of a place where people live while they work and commute into the city -- like those towns in Northern New Jersey (which may be even further from NYC than McKeesport is from Pitt.). However, Pittsburgh is not New York...and McKeesport is really it's own "town".

Really? Who does this? I have never heard anyone use this as the defining criterion for a suburb. If anything, most of the people I have known live in one suburb for work and either work in that suburb or commute to another suburb. Whether or not most or even a significant portion of a municipality's population commutes to the city proper to work has nothing to do with whether or not it's a suburb.

[bbrian12]

in a span of a few years
my car was vandalized twice
hit twice
about 10 house fires
house was attempted break in
paint ball shots at the back window
i allmost got jumped twice
garbage form one end of the town to the other
noisy neighbors 24 hours a day
2 different projects a few blocks either direction
gunshots at least once a week
cant walk anywhere without some crackhead bumming change

thank god i dont live in that $hithole
i was there cause of an x g/f

now there are parts of it that are still decent
but time will make those parts a dump soon enough

[Johnny C]

As stated above, it really depends on where you are in Mckeesport. There are alot of nice neighborhoods that still have a Mckeesport address, like the ones that border North Huntingdon township.

[MissShona]

Originally Posted by Drover

Really? Who does this? I have never heard anyone use this as the defining criterion for a suburb. If anything, most of the people I have known live in one suburb for work and either work in that suburb or commute to another suburb. Whether or not most or even a significant portion of a municipality's population commutes to the city proper to work has nothing to do with whether or not it's a suburb.

Ummm...yeah. Just because you never heard it defined that way, that makes it invalid? Let's put it this way....I used to live in Miramar, FL...which was on the county line of Broward and Miami-Dade counties. So it was equidistant from Ft. Lauderdale and Miami pretty much. Now Ft. Lauderdale is only...oh...16 miles from Miami (about the same that McKeesport is from Pittsburgh if you think about it). Curiously enough, no one really considers Ft. Lauderdale to be "a suburb" of Miami. Also, Miramar is considered a suburb of Ft. Lauderdale because most of the residents of Miramar travel or work in or around Ft. Lauderdale...and not Miami. Sure there are those work work in Miami (I was one of them) and there is the county line that you have to contend with...but the bottom line is looking at how the people there function and live their lives. Look at the "flow" of people's daily commute and where they travel for various things such as shopping, schools, etc. And where they view themselves in relation to the metro area around them.

Another point is that people from McKeesport consider themselves "from McKeesport"....and not from Pittsburgh. This is not the case for people from place like Morningside, or East Liberty.

[Drover]

No, the fact that you just made up your own definition that has nothing to do with the conventional meaning of "suburb" is what makes it invalid.

Not to mention Miami and Ft. Lauderdale is a poor comparison to Pittsburgh and McKeesport. Occasionally, a metropolitan area will have two urban cores. They are the exception and not the rule. Miami and Ft. Lauderdale is one example. Dallas and Fort Worth is another. The Twin Cities and Tampa/St. Pete are examples. Pittsburgh and McKeesport is not.

Pittsburgh's size and political/economic influence completely overwhelm McKeesport. McKeesport is in squarely in Pittsburgh's cultural, political and economic orbit. What happens in Pittsburgh has a far greater impact on McKeesport than the other way around. These, along with their proximity, are the things that make McKeesport a suburb -- not whether people say they're from McKeesport and not Pittsburgh (duh, that's because they're from McKeesport and not Pittsburgh, if they were from Pittsburgh then they wouldn't be in a suburb) or whether everyone commutes from McKeesport to Pittsburgh to work (newsflash: most suburbanites don't commute to the metropolitan area's core city for work).

I don't understand what's so confusing about whether or not a bedroom community 8 miles outside of Pittsburgh surrounded by contiguous suburbia is a suburb of Pittsburgh. I doubt many people share your confusion.

[Katiana]

I think McKeesport is a suburb, for many of the reasons Drover gave. There have been threads at various times about the definition of "suburb" on General US. Many people seem to agree with Miss Shona's definition. I did too, at one time in my life. However, a) I have seen the light, so to speak; and b) cities have changed dramatically since the 1950s, when suburbanization really took off. (Granted, there were suburbs before then as well.)

Now, to McKeesport in particular. Back in the day, I was a student nurse at Pitt. When we began our public health clinicals, we were give a lecture about the different communities in Allegheny County. What sticks in my mind to this day is that we were told (presumably by those who know) that people in McKeesport felt their town was somehow 'different' and 'unique' among the cities/boroughs/townships in the county. For example, when McKeesport people, so we were told, refer to downtown, they mean downtown McKeesport, not downtown Pgh, as someone from say, Cranberry might mean. And so on. Sort of like the people from the farther out towns like Beaver Falls. I don't really know; I didn't do my clinical there, but I find that interesting.

[Drover]

I can see how people who truly are out in the sticks wouldn't consider themselves "suburban" even if they're technically lumped in as part of the official Pittsburgh MSA.

I also get how some suburbs developed independently of the city, and only later became part of suburbia. Maybe that's what happened to McKeesport and that's why it still has that whole "independent spirit" thingy going; I don't really know. There are some notable Chicago suburbs that are truly urban in their own right: Aurora, Joliet, and Gary for instance. They have some measure of political and economic independence and even have their own little mini-suburbs. Some of them developed quite independently of Chicago -- Aurora for instance was founded within a couple years of Chicago and didn't really become a suburb in earnest until about the 1960s or 1970s.

But today nobody disputes that Aurora is a suburb, not even Aurorans, even though it's 45 miles away, is a mini-city in its own right, and only a fraction commute to Chicago. And McKeesport doesn't have nearly the same urban qualities and semi-independence. If Pittsburgh disappeared tomorrow, McKeesport would follow shortly. If McKeesport disappeared tomorrow, Pittsburgh would barely notice.