What is Pittsburgh like? (Rochester: relocate, property taxes, tornado)

[GlobeTrekkerWannabe]

I am considering Pittsburgh as a top spot to relocate and would love to get REAL info on the city.

1. Housing: Is Pittsburgh affordable? What kind of housing do you get for your money? Are apartments expensive?

2. Crime: I've read that Pittsburgh is actually a fairly safe city. What is your opinion? Where is crime concentrated?

3. Weather: I've also read that Pittsburgh is VERY dreary. Lot's of cloudy days. What is weather REALLY like?

4. Transportation: Does Pittsburgh have a good transportation program? If not, are they investing in one at least?

5. Schools: Are schools in the area pretty good?

6. Attractiveness: Is the city fairly clean? Are there a lot of run-down buildings, vacant lots, unkempt houses, and so forth?

7. Is the city green (as in trees, parks, bike paths, yards, gardens) and so forth? Are there a lot of lakes and rivers?

AND FINALLY

8. Recreational and Leisure activities: What is there to do in Pittsburgh? Are there lot's of festivals? Fun things to do?

I know this is a lot but I would greatly appreciate your feedback!! Thanks,

GlobeTrekkerWannabe

[Drover]

Housing for the most part is ridiculously affordable. Careful about the property taxes though if you're buying. They're kind of steep in the city, and some of the suburbs are even worse.

Pittsburgh proper has some fairly serious crime problems. (So do a number of its suburbs.) Crime tends to be isolated in specific areas but there is some spillover now and then. It's not a city where you can wander around aimlessly without fear of ending up in a bad place. On a per-capita basis, Pittsburgh has a higher crime rate in every violent crime category (murder, rape, robbery) than Los Angeles. The only exception is assault.

Whether Pittsburgh's weather is dreary will depend on your frame of reference. If you lived in Seattle all your life, you'll probably love all the sunshine. If you lived in Los Angeles all your life, you'll probably want to slit your wrists by the time winter is over.

If anything, Pittsburgh is disinvesting in public transportation (with the exception of that stupid tunnel to the north shore -- don't get me started). As the city center continues to depopulate and population density drops, it is becoming harder and harder to operate comprehensive mass transit efficiently.

Schools in the area run the whole spectrum from spectacular to God-awful. The city itself is not renowned for its quality school district, but some of the suburbs are.

Pittsburgh is probably the greenest major city east of the Mississippi. In particular, Frick and Schenley Park on the east end are each about 2/3rds the size of NYC's Central Park. Many neighborhoods are lined with old, old shade trees, and several neighborhoods are spaced out enough that people have yards with nice green lawns and gardens and what-not.

As for what to do, there is enough to do to keep yourself busy. There are a few other threads here covering that topic but I'm too lazy to dredge them up not to mention it's really late. Maybe someone else can do that later.

[GlobeTrekkerWannabe]

Wonderful. Sounds like Pittsburgh is not really the place after all? Seems like it's got some problems.

[Drover]

Guess it depends on what you're looking for.

[Bazzwell]

Might the question be asked as to what your personal criteria might be for the categories you requested information on? Without having that information we might wrongly assume you'd consider East St Louis the stuff dreams are made of or are trying to find Eden.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by GlobeTrekkerWannabe

I am considering Pittsburgh as a top spot to relocate and would love to get REAL info on the city.

1. Housing: Is Pittsburgh affordable? What kind of housing do you get for your money? Are apartments expensive?

Housing is about as affordable as you will find in any comparable city. In my view the best deals in both homes and apartments tend to be in historic Victorian and Arts & Crafts houses (and small apartment buildings), which can be found in both the City and many older suburbs, but you have the full range of options available (lofts, new apartment complexes, new condos and townhouses, new urbanist developments, many traditional suburbs, and even rural areas where you can get a decent bit of land relatively close to the city).

2. Crime: I've read that Pittsburgh is actually a fairly safe city. What is your opinion? Where is crime concentrated?

Here is a ranking of 300 metro areas by violent crime rate. Pittsburgh is #189 (and keep in mind it is a top 25 metro area by population):

2006 Metro Area Violent Crime Rates

For comparison, Rochester, NY is #188, and Raleigh, NC is #190. By my standards, that makes Pittsburgh a pretty safe place. Violent crime is also concentrated in relatively few economically depressed neighborhoods, making the remaining neighborhoods quite safe (including many city neighborhoods).

3. Weather: I've also read that Pittsburgh is VERY dreary. Lot's of cloudy days. What is weather REALLY like?

I'd agree the worst thing about Pittsburgh weather is that it does in fact have a lot of cloudy days, roughly comparable to Seattle. On the other hand, many of those days are fine for getting outside, and generally it doesn't have a lot of other weather problems (hurricanes, tornados, lake-effect snow, and so on).

4. Transportation: Does Pittsburgh have a good transportation program? If not, are they investing in one at least?

I think the public transit system here is sometimes underrated. It does have a small light rail system which is being expanded, but it also has a dedicated busway system (also recently expanded) which is actually a great feature for many communities, allowing things like express commuter bus routes that can be faster than using the highways during rush hours. Incidentally, it is true that due to depopulation (see below) the service on the public transit system has been cut back. However, the population has stabilized and as noted they have actually been expanding the public transit infrastructure. I expect that if energy prices remain high, we are likely to see more and more people using public transit, and it will be relatively easy to scale up the system.

5. Schools: Are schools in the area pretty good?

Public schools in PA rely heavily on local property taxes for funding. What that means is that the public schools in the most affluent neighborhoods are extremely good, and the public schools in the least affluent neighborhoods can be pretty bad. The City's schools are a mixed bag, but there are a number of charter and magnet school options in the City. There are also many private schools available, some quite affordable (such as some of the Catholic schools), and some very posh (but still affordable when compared to similar schools in many cities).

6. Attractiveness: Is the city fairly clean? Are there a lot of run-down buildings, vacant lots, unkempt houses, and so forth?

Both, actually. Since the steel mills closed, the city has gotten quite clean. But the steel mills closing caused a mass exodus of people, which means a lot of neighborhoods now have vacant buildings and lots. Recently, however, many of those neighborhoods are being "gentrified" and new developments are "infilling" some of the vacant areas. So, you can now find everything from established neighborhoods to vibrant neighborhoods rapidly gentrifying to neighborhoods just beginning the redevelopment process to neighborhoods still stagnating.

7. Is the city green (as in trees, parks, bike paths, yards, gardens) and so forth? Are there a lot of lakes and rivers?

Oh yes. The region is defined by rivers and streams, with lots of green hills in between. The City itself has several huge parks and many more smaller ones, and several trails have been laid out along the rivers, with many more to come. The climate is generally favorable for gardening--in fact, the flipside of the cloudy days is plenty of moisture for gardeners. So, in many neighborhoods you will see pretty elaborate gardens, sometimes even on quite small lots.

AND FINALLY 8. Recreational and Leisure activities: What is there to do in Pittsburgh? Are there lot's of festivals? Fun things

Another legacy from its boomtown days is an unusual number of cultural and recreational amenities, including great museums and a very vibrant art scene, major-league sports, a great Symphony and many other performing arts options, several universities, amusement parks, and on and on. I'd also note that Pittsburgh is in close proximity to some great places for outdoor activities, including camping, hiking, boating, skiing, white-water rafting, and so on.

I know this is a lot but I would greatly appreciate your feedback!! Thanks,

GlobeTrekkerWannabe

No problem!

[BrianTH]

By the way, this seems like as good a place as any to note the following:

Many violent crimes are committed among people who know each other, and violent crimes in general are not particularly important causes of serious injury and death when compared to all the other possible causes, so the odds of you being seriously injured or killed by some random person in your neighborhood are relatively low, even in most relatively high crime neighborhoods. In contrast, strangers much more frequently injure or kill each other (or themselves) in things like car accidents. And yet people often choose to live in places that will require them to be out driving a lot more just to minimize the local violent crime rates, which from a statistical perspective might actually be significantly increasing their odds of being seriously injured or killed.

Of course, I'm not saying one should ignore local violent crime rates, and it could be a reasonable tiebreaker between two otherwise similarly situated neighborhoods. But it does seem to me that crime rates sometimes get weighted much more in people's considerations of where to live than the statistics would warrant.

[Smily Gladshanks]

If you leave the forum and go to city-data main page, you can get a rundown of each city--it's sunshine-days and whatnot. Just looking at the sunshine days graph makes you depressed. And I can tell you that those sunny 70-72 degree days with little wind and few clouds?...maybe 2 a year. Maybe 10 if you are lucky.

[Geeo]

Well, that would mean we've had all our sunny days for the year just this week! Honestly, it's not all gloom around here. It's sunny and it's rainy and it's cloudy and it snows some in the winter. That's why everything's so green and lush and we don't have to worry about drought. I'm really not comlaining.

[londonbarcelona]

Originally Posted by Smily Gladshanks

If you leave the forum and go to city-data main page, you can get a rundown of each city--it's sunshine-days and whatnot. Just looking at the sunshine days graph makes you depressed. And I can tell you that those sunny 70-72 degree days with little wind and few clouds?...maybe 2 a year. Maybe 10 if you are lucky.

Pittsburgh was the most depressing place weather wise I have ever lived and I used to live in Seattle! Plus besides the vacant buildings, the streets itself are absolutely filthy. I'm not sure why so many people are such litterbugs there, but they are. I've never seen such a dirty city in my life. The suburban neighborhoods seems to be better kept, but anywhere there is a main street, highway or in the city, I see garbage all over the sidewalks and streets. That really bothered me.