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Notably worse in certain parts of the city than others and also noticed by fewer people than you realize.
Meh. Like you and Eschaton I, too, notice abhorrent "remuddling". I would personally never buy a "remuddled" house due to the expense and effort that would be required to undo the "remuddling" and restore an edifice back to its former grandeur. As a "green" person I'd also feel guilty about throwing all those perfectly good building materials from the "remuddling" into a landfill.
I think of how much nicer neighborhoods like Friendship, Bloomfield, Polish Hill, Lawrenceville, Mt. Washington, Brookline, Beechview, and others would look without the "remuddling".
I knew quite a few at work. Men and women. Many ethnicities. None lived in the city. Most were late 20s/early 30s who worked downtown, lived in the burbs, married, with little kids. It's the under 25 men who seem to live in trendy places. We didn't hire anyone with little experience.
The city has a third of the population of Allegheny County.
This is hilarious! Only men 25 and under live in "trendy" places? Whatever that even means.
Meh. Like you and Eschaton I, too, notice abhorrent "remuddling". I would personally never buy a "remuddled" house due to the expense and effort that would be required to undo the "remuddling" and restore an edifice back to its former grandeur. As a "green" person I'd also feel guilty about throwing all those perfectly good building materials from the "remuddling" into a landfill.
I think of how much nicer neighborhoods like Friendship, Bloomfield, Polish Hill, Lawrenceville, Mt. Washington, Brookline, Beechview, and others would look without the "remuddling".
I agree, and I lucked out and got an un-remuddled house on the cheap back in the day. My current remuddling that I am doing is casement windows where it should be doublehung, but they didn't change the window size luckily.
That being said I don't think Brookline is overly remuddled on the outside, however a fair portion have been "modernized" in the 70/80s on the inside.
Anyway, this topic is going sideways. Sorry for me part in that.
Meh. Like you and Eschaton I, too, notice abhorrent "remuddling". I would personally never buy a "remuddled" house due to the expense and effort that would be required to undo the "remuddling" and restore an edifice back to its former grandeur. As a "green" person I'd also feel guilty about throwing all those perfectly good building materials from the "remuddling" into a landfill.
I think of how much nicer neighborhoods like Friendship, Bloomfield, Polish Hill, Lawrenceville, Mt. Washington, Brookline, Beechview, and others would look without the "remuddling".
I don't think with a frame house it's horribly expensive to fix remuddling. Just wait until the windows and siding is shot, tear everything down, and fix the openings and siding at that time.
The bigger issue is related to logistics and security. If you want to fix the front of your house, it means there's going to be a giant hole in the front which anyone can walk through for days to weeks (hopefully during nice weather). This means either you have to move out, or temporarily close off your front room from the rest of the house somehow. The hassle just isn't worth it for most people.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PghYinzer
That being said I don't think Brookline is overly remuddled on the outside, however a fair portion have been "modernized" in the 70/80s on the inside.
For whatever reason, remuddling in Pittsburgh mostly seems to be limited to 19th and very early 20th century homes. You don't see much damage done to facades of houses built after 1920 or so. A lot less of them are chopped into apartments as well, but this likely has more to do with having lower square footage than anything.
Pittsburgh doesn’t have a lot of quaint, walkable, urbanized suburbs. It also has a paucity of highly-developed upscale suburbs. What it does have is lots of old mill towns, and drab towns/villages/boroughs that peaked in the 60s. Add in bad, windy roads, pinch points at bridges and tunnels, and you can get some pretty bad commutes from underwhelming areas.
this is describing many city neighborhoods as well though. not arguing here at all. just trying to see where yo are coming from. what is a good example of a highly-develop upscale suburb? ross? mccandless? robinson? usc?murrysville?cranberry? sewickely? bethel park?
I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with the Pittsburgh suburbs, FWIW. I just think that what sets Pittsburgh apart from other metros is mostly the condition of the city of Pittsburgh proper, which experienced relatively little white flight for a rust belt city, and has lots of intact and desirable middle-class neighborhoods. Pittsburgh's suburbs, on the other hand, could literally be anywhere in the country. Low housing costs and short commute times do make them somewhat more attractive, but there are plenty of other metros with core cities which are hollowed-out messes which could say the same thing. Basically, if you relocate to Pittsburgh and live in the suburbs, you're missing a significant majority of what makes this area so special.
having a good aesthetic is certainly not a term i would use for most of the middle pittsburgh proper neighborhoods. maybe if you like old architecture yeah. even the more upper class ones.
what parts of pittsburgh being special do you miss if you live in the suburbs? i am genuinely curious and apprecaite your insight.
This is exactly it. I they’re simultaneously undervaluing AND overvaluing the city. Much of the benefit of living in the city of Pittsburgh is the city itself. When you’re looking at 50 minute commutes (say, Mt Lebo to East Liberty), you can find comparably priced housing in larger, more dynamic metros. Why be 50 minuets outside of Pittsburgh, when you can be 50 minutes outside of Chicago, DC, Houston, or Atlanta.
that comparison isn't really apt though. it takes longer to get from the east end to downtown than from lebo. lebo is like 5 minutes from city limits as well. a place 50 minutes from chicago city limits isn't comparable to mt lebo at all.
this is describing many city neighborhoods as well though. not arguing here at all. just trying to see where yo are coming from. what is a good example of a highly-develop upscale suburb? ross? mccandless? robinson? usc?murrysville?cranberry? sewickely? bethel park?
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Originally Posted by Moby Hick
Sewickely. The rest kind of suck.
Sewickley falls under "quaint, walkable, urbanized suburbs", but it suffers for it's lack of connectivity to the city. The McKnight corridor comes closest to a typical middle-to-upper-middle class suburb, but it still feels underdeveloped, with too much focus on McKnight. A lot of suburban Pittsburgh feels more like an overcrowded rural area than a suburb.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul2421
that comparison isn't really apt though. it takes longer to get from the east end to downtown than from lebo. lebo is like 5 minutes from city limits as well. a place 50 minutes from chicago city limits isn't comparable to mt lebo at all.
I think people grossly underrate how long it takes to get to or from Mt Lebanon at rush hour. If you live on the T, it's convenient. Otherwise...eh. As far as distance from city limits goes, Mt Lebo is close, but due to congestion at the tubes, it's not a short commute to downtown, and is really inconvenient to Oakland and the East End.
As far as Chicago goes:
Walkable, first-ring suburb with great schools, on CTA bus and train lines. There is probably no Chicago suburb more closely analogous to Mt Lebo than Oak Park. It literally borders the city, meaning the border is zero miles from city limits:
This is exactly it. I they’re simultaneously undervaluing AND overvaluing the city. Much of the benefit of living in the city of Pittsburgh is the city itself. When you’re looking at 50 minute commutes (say, Mt Lebo to East Liberty), you can find comparably priced housing in larger, more dynamic metros. Why be 50 minuets outside of Pittsburgh, when you can be 50 minutes outside of Chicago, DC, Houston, or Atlanta.
I was thinking more about comparing the suburbs of Pittsburgh to say the suburbs of Detroit or Cleveland. There is no question that as a core city, Pittsburgh is doing better - neither of those cities can hold a candle to us. But in terms of suburbs? They both have a nicer selection, IMHO. More tree-lined streets, more upscale shopping (both walkable and not walkable), better architecture, etc. And things like cost, school district quality, and commute times aren't very different.
Of course, we don't get many transplants from metros like those - we get them from higher cost areas. But the fact remains that if you want to relocate to Pittsburgh and are more of a "suburb person" you're not getting the best bang for your buck here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul2421
this is describing many city neighborhoods as well though. not arguing here at all. just trying to see where yo are coming from. what is a good example of a highly-develop upscale suburb? ross? mccandless? robinson? usc?murrysville?cranberry? sewickely? bethel park?
IMHO, there are basically three kinds of suburbs which are desirable to (different kinds) of middle-class professionals.
1. The "semi-urban" sort with walkable business districts, pre-war residential architecture, and preferably transit access to the city. Sewickley, Fox Chapel, and Aspinwall are the only ones which really check these boxes in Pittsburgh - unless you're willing to compromise somewhat on things like public schools.
2. The "On Walden Pond" suburbs with larger lots and heavy tree cover, where you can try to pretend you have no neighbors. Fox Chapel and significant portions of the North Hills fit the bill here.
3. The "new everything" suburbs for people who treat houses like most people treat cars. Obviously you can find these to some extent in Pittsburgh (particularly to the north and west) but compared to growing metros, our stock here is limited.
A lot of Pittsburgh suburbia doesn't check any of these three boxes. Think of somewhere like Bethel Park. There's nothing wrong with it per se, but it's not walkable, bucolic, or new. It's just a suburb.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul2421
having a good aesthetic is certainly not a term i would use for most of the middle pittsburgh proper neighborhoods. maybe if you like old architecture yeah. even the more upper class ones.
what parts of pittsburgh being special do you miss if you live in the suburbs? i am genuinely curious and apprecaite your insight.
I wasn't really talking about the built condition of architecture. That's really something younger people don't care about until they are homeowners or getting close to it. I was talking about "intactness" more broadly. Basically, lots of Pittsburgh neighborhoods still have functional walkable business districts. What's more, many of these neighborhoods are not ghettos, making them reasonably safe places to live. This is a rarity nationwide, where most urban neighborhoods are either absurdly expensive, bad neighborhoods, or functionally suburban neighborhoods with little in the way of amenities.
I mean, when I first moved to Pittsburgh way back in 2005, I lived in Bloomfield. It was much, much cheaper then - I rented an entire two-bedroom alley house for $425 a month (though in the winter my heating bill was almost as high as my rent). But within a 5-10 minute walk of my house I had a coffee shop, a DVD rental place, a CD store, an Indian restaurant, two Thai restaurants, a Vietnamese restaurant, several bars, etc. I walked to shows on Penn Avenue in Garfield all the time as well. This wasn't a "weekend on the town" thing - this was my normal life. I'd get off work, stop by Dreaming Ant when I got off the bus, and pick up my takeout from Thai Gourmet on the way home. Maybe meet up with a friend at the BBT for some beers on the night the $1 beer fridge was open. I had lived in cities before, including DC, where I lived on Capitol Hill. But Bloomfield was far more functionally walkable than anywhere I had lived before, where I often needed to bike and/or use transit to get everything I needed done. In contrast, I only needed my car for grocery shopping and visiting friends in other parts of the city.
Pittsburgh has a very high level of urbanism compared to its peer cities. Indeed, I think it has the largest selection of intact, traditionally urban neighborhoods between the East and West Coast, barring Chicago. I've shown in the past that there are literally 30 different local business districts with some level of vitality to them. Most cities cannot hold a candle to this - largely because even if the old urban area was as large to begin with, much was lost to urban renewal, or fell apart during the white flight era.
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