Pittsburgh 5th poorest big city, census shows (Philadelphia, Media: lofts, neighborhoods)

[bbrian12]

Pittsburgh 5th poorest big city, census shows

[Katiana]

Interesting how McCain and Obama managed to get their 2c in! I'm not sure the PG reporter is aware of what other cities are like with this statement:

Unlike some other poor cities, however, Pittsburgh contains affluent neighborhoods such as Shadyside, Squirrel Hill and Point Breeze, potentially skewing the results to make the city look wealthier than it truly is.

All cities, even the worst of the worst, have affluent neighborhoods. I'm sure our friends in these other cities mentioned in the article, Detroit, Cleveland, Miami and Buffalo, could tell us the affluent areas of these cities as well.

[lifepgh2op]

Originally Posted by Katiana

Interesting how McCain and Obama managed to get their 2c in! I'm not sure the PG reporter is aware of what other cities are like with this statement:



All cities, even the worst of the worst, have affluent neighborhoods. I'm sure our friends in these other cities mentioned in the article, Detroit, Cleveland, Miami and Buffalo, could tell us the affluent areas of these cities as well.

Eh...Cleveland has affluent outer-ring burbs like Shaker Heights and a lot more...but as for actual city neighborhoods--I don't think so, anymore. Even Shaker Heights is losing it's reputation as people flood out of the city into these areas.

[Katiana]

I'm not terribly familiar with Cleveland, but it sounds like the same things are going on in Cleveland as in Pittsburgh and many other cities: gentrification, lofts, etc. In my experience, most cities managed to maintain their old affluent neighborhoods even when the rest of the place went to pot back in the 70s.

Cleveland, Ohio - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Geeo]

Here is the list as published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Pittsburgh isn't in the top 10. I'm confused.

#1 - Detroit
#2 - Cleveland
#3 - Buffalo
#4 - El Paso, TX
#5 - Memphis
#6 - Miami
#7 - Milwaukee
#8 - Newark
#9 - Philadelphia
#10 - Cincinnati

[Awesomo.2000]

^This is the first study that I seen Pittsburgh in the top 10. These articles are always skewed, misinterpreted, and blown out of proportion.

Cleveland doesn't even compare with Pittsburgh in affluent neighborhoods. A large percentage of Pittsburgh's east end is affluent. Philly has affluent neighborhood but not in the same % of Pittsburgh.

Every study I see has Philly and Baltimore way ahead of pittsburgh in poverty and poor rankings.

[Geeo]

I think I've cracked the code. I went to the US Census website and found the report. No easy task, believe me. There are more charts and graphs in that report than Bayer has pills.
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Anyway, it looks like the PG used the "Median Household Income" report and the Plain Dealer used the "Poverty" report. Neither Pittsburgh City nor Allegheny County show up as the 10 highest-poverty cities or counties. Pittsburgh City shows up as the fifth lowest median household income city on the "Median Household Income" list, but Allegheny County doesn't make the list.

This is all very confusing, but I guess the census differentiates between poverty and low median household income, since ours is above the poverty level.

[Katiana]

I tried to find this stuff, too, and while I found a report that was released yesterday, I couldn't find any links. Do you have the links, Geeo?

[Geeo]

Here's the link to the report. Good luck!

http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/acs-09.pdf

[Geeo]

What I'm getting from this report is that while median household income is low (maybe because of so many senior citizens?), that doesn't mean that those people live in poverty. So the P-G story was a little inaccurate.