Downtown Population increased 25% since 2000 (Pittsburgh, Liberty: renting, tenant, school)

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by user_id

You say this but what reason is there to believe it? Booms and busts have been part of economies before macro economic theory existed. A number of recessions throughout the world over the last 1-3 decades show that modern economic theory has done little to avoid booms and busts as well.

It is true that industrialization initially led to a boom-and-bust cycle pretty much everywhere. However, some countries then learned that various policies can help moderate the business cycle, and when applied properly and consistently these policies did work for extended periods of time, meaning that while there were still recessions, they were milder and briefer than the recessions of the past. The problem today is that some rather large and important countries (hint: we live in one) departed from these policies, and so we got a bust that was on a scale similar to the old recessions.

Of course all this is on a national level--results will vary on a local level, and while you can never totally isolate a locality from the national economy, you can take various measures to at least soften the impact of the national business cycle.

I don't think anybody thinks busts are a good thing, the real question is how the harm created by the bust relates to the boom. You merely state that "booms don't have to the power to compensate", but why?

Because some resources are perishable, and booms can't make up for that problem because you can't use more than the available resources. Take labor: right now we are wasting a bunch of willing labor (people who want to be employed but can't find employment). And you can't save that willing labor up for the future: every day that goes by that a person who wants to work can't get work is a day's worth of potential labor we can never get back. During a boom period, we can reach full employment (which is a bit less than 100% employment, because you need to allow for some churn in employment), but we can't go over that point. So there is no way for the boom to make up for the bust--the wasted willing labor simply can't be recovered. Again, the general way to put this point is that many resources are perishable, so if you have prolonged periods of underutilization you will end up with less total resources being used over the full cycle.

The boom in Pittsburgh was not exactly a short-term event, it latest decades and transformed the area. Without the steel boom its unlikely you'd be living in Pittsburgh right now as it would be at best a small city.

As an aside, Pittsburgh actually had multiple booms--steel was only the last.

Anyway, it is true that I personally might have benefited from Pittsburgh's boom-and-bust cycle: I wasn't around for the bust, and then I came to Pittsburgh and have since been able to benefit from some of the legacy assets, without so far having to pay too much of the legacy costs. But what is good for me personally is not necessarily going to be good for the region as a whole.

As for size--I'm not sure Pittsburgh would be all that different in size right now if it hadn't had a steel boom (note steel could have been part of the local economy without being so dominant). Plenty of other cities with an otherwise comparable situation have reached or passed Pittsburgh's current size without ever ballooning as much as Pittsburgh did during the steel boom.

Furthermore, the bust of the steel industry does not explain the decades long decline in population observed after the 50's.

If you are referring to just the City, that was an effect experienced by many older central cities. It had a lot of causes: transportation policy, racial dynamics, industrial shifts, and so on. But if you look around, many central cities stabilized somewhere around the 1980s or early 1990s, and started experiencing redevelopment/gentrification, slow population growth, and so on. Pittsburgh is just getting to that phase now, and the basic reason it is 25 years behind many of its peers is that the steel bust kicked it down the stairs when other cities were starting to recover.

Note that if you have always lamented you didn't have the foresight, or the opportunity, to buy into Brooklyn (or whatever your favorite urban gentrification story might be) back in the late 1980s, you've now got a second chance in Pittsburgh thanks to the 25-year pause button we hit. But again, that is a story about personal advantage--Pittsburgh as a whole probably isn't better off for waiting.

Without booms most major cities would not exist, they were ultimately formed by some sort of boom in industry. Show me an example of a major US city that slowly grew over the last 200 years.

200 years ago the United States was mostly a bunch of wilderness and a few farms, plus a few smallish towns. There is no doubt that globally, industrialization led to the rapid growth of cities, so it is going to be very hard to find a major city that did not experience an industrialization-related boom in the last 200 years.

But that is old news at this point. In the last 50 years or so, in already-industrialized countries, the new dynamic cities have had to deal with is the shift of developed economies from mostly producing goods to mostly producing services. In that new dynamic, many cities have gotten onto a relatively stable, slow growth path, and those cities tend to be doing the best in per capita economic indicators. And I think it obviously makes sense for Pittsburgh to look at what has been working for cities in the last few decades, not 200 years ago.

[pman]

Some of us have been keeping an eye on 245 Fourth Ave., the relatively tucked-away location (just below Wood Street) where months ago a giant sign was retrofit in neon for Tavern 245.
It finally, softly, opened two weeks ago, a fact I was alerted to by Weekend Mag columnist Munch. "Didn't go in but peered through the window and noticed they have Big Hop on tap, so I like it already!" Munch e-mailed me, a fellow fan of the East End Brewing Co. ale.
I strolled in one evening last week to the just-dark-enough space, classily decorated in a sleek black and gold theme. There are plush seating areas in the front and in the back, where a tiger-striped easy chair and leather sectional beckon. But I sat at one of seven stools at the bar and ordered a Big Hop ($5.75), one of five brews on tap.
One of two guys sitting down the bar was smoking, and while I can't say how much I hate smoking, even that seemed to fit the place's '50s feel.
...
I was digging how cozy it was when I picked up on the fact that there's a dining room upstairs, so I walked up the steps and it wowed me, too: an expansive, airy space with a funky greenish concrete floor and mod windows opening to the street and that giant sign.
The upstairs bar has a dozen taps, including some of my favorites such as Great Lakes; the place also offers some two dozen bottles, as well as wines and cocktails.
The "modern American" menu, executed by executive chef Jay Lewis (formerly of Palomino) and his staff, is tight: Small plates including soft tacos ($5 to $11) and sandwiches and salads ($7 to $12). The spiced Tavern Hamburgesa is dressed in house-made guacamole, chipotle mayo and Colby jack cheese, with house made pico de gallo on the side. They do daily specials, too.
. .. He credits the Tavern's interior decor to interior designer Jacky Kaiser, and also has sincere props for his wife, Mindy, a pediatric intensivist at Children's Hospital, "so she understands crazy hours."
Those are 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Mon.-Sat. (the lounge stays open until 2 a.m.).

Read more: Fresh Find: Tavern 245

[BrianTH]

Tavern 245 Splash Page

East End on tap? Half off drafts 5-7 M-F? I'm definitely going, and soon.

[pman]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Tavern 245 Splash Page

East End on tap? Half off drafts 5-7 M-F? I'm definitely going, and soon.

have you been yet?

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by pman

have you been yet?

No, we don't eat out that often these days (young kid). Hopefully this week.

[kettlepot]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

If you are referring to just the City, that was an effect experienced by many older central cities. It had a lot of causes: transportation policy, racial dynamics, industrial shifts, and so on. But if you look around, many central cities stabilized somewhere around the 1980s or early 1990s, and started experiencing redevelopment/gentrification, slow population growth, and so on. Pittsburgh is just getting to that phase now, and the basic reason it is 25 years behind many of its peers is that the steel bust kicked it down the stairs when other cities were starting to recover.

Note that if you have always lamented you didn't have the foresight, or the opportunity, to buy into Brooklyn (or whatever your favorite urban gentrification story might be) back in the late 1980s, you've now got a second chance in Pittsburgh thanks to the 25-year pause button we hit. But again, that is a story about personal advantage--Pittsburgh as a whole probably isn't better off for waiting.

If you want to look to other central cities beginning the redevelopment or gentrification process, San Diego is an excellent example of a city that began this process 25 years ago, and has mostly succeeded. However, what San Diego's redeveloped/gentrified downtown doesn't have is a large supply of historic architecture. Pittsburgh could benefit from lesson's learned elsewhere. Just as San Diego learned not to do redevelopment along the lines of 1930s through 1960s high rise urban renewal projects that did so much damage to parts of Chicago, New York, and elsewhere. In the long run, the 25 year pause on redevelopment may accrue to Pittsburgh's advantage, as people will take better care of Pittsburgh's historic architectural legacy than other cities which began sooner have done.

Regarding Booms & Busts, what the boom & bust cycles does do is build a lot of fear and caution into the economic cycle. That then causes resources to be diverted to 'insurance'. Insurance could mean excess cash reserves, hesitance to expand, and maintenance of excess capacity. Given that the business cycle has never been extinguished, it is wise and necessary for enterprises and households to maintain these forms of insurance. Still they are forms of insurance which in some respects represent wasted assets.

[BrianTH]

Those are both excellent points. However, I would note that while Pittsburgh does have an opportunity to apply lessons-learned from elsewhere to its redevelopment, it will likely end up losing a lot of historic buildings to decay due to the pause (less so Downtown than in many of the residential neighborhoods).

[pman]

PNC Financial Services Group is spending $485,000 to acquire a Liberty Avenue building near its Downtown campus in a bid to "further enhance the corridor."
The purchase price for the structure at 600 Liberty Ave. is far less than the $800,000 the city's Urban Redevelopment...
URA board members are expected to vote on the proposed sale at their meeting Thursday. They also will consider a request by PNC to extend by 30 days an exclusive negotiating period relating to the possible purchase of a second building at 604 Liberty Ave.
Both of the buildings are located at Liberty and Sixth Street adjacent to the entrance to the posh Fairmont Pittsburgh Hotel in the new Three PNC Plaza office tower and a small park PNC built as part of the development.
A corner building, 600 Liberty currently is home to Liberty Travel and two billboards visible to anybody who enters Downtown from Sixth Street.
In an e-mail, Gigi Saladna, a URA spokeswoman, said the agency obtained two appraisals for the building last year as part of a possible sale. One valued the building at $1.35 million if the billboards remained. Another appraised 600 Liberty at $485,000 without them.

Read more: PNC buying a URA building

seems like good news, removal of the billboards, perhaps further redevelopment of that key block?

[BrianTH]

Interesting that the value of the property depends so much on whether there is a billboard, but I am sure it is good for Downtown in general to get rid of it.

[pman]

value is always dependent on the income stream it produces. I'm curious if they're going to rehab them or "knock em all down"