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What do you guys think about what Pittsburgh has done? I think I read that they achieved population stability (as opposed to loss) for the first time last year. This was no accident either. They made a concentrated effort of reaching out to younger people and emphasizing those aspects of urban life that would retain their young professionals or even pull some back after college. It seems to be working. Question: Can Rochester do the same? We have great schools. I know of some people who came here for college and loved it, so never left..
What Rochester can and cant do is limited by the mindset of the locals.
Pittsburgh is in the process of gentrifying the Hill district. i dont think anything like that is in the works for the Rock. Too much us vs. them mentality in Monroe county. Pittsburgh and Rochester are the same in many ways, highly segregated boh socially and economically with Blacks and Hispanics generally being locked out of well paying jobs unless they are over qualified. Cities that do better with inclusion tend to be more vibrant.
Pittsburghs has a much higher profile that Rochester and contains many more forture 500 headquarters. One city is bush league and the other is in the majors in more ways than one.
I think the most likely trend you'll see in rochester is a few years of stagnation followed by slow growth. The fact that kodak went bankrupt and nobody in the area was even remotley suprised (or really all that worried) speaks to the fact that the economy has moved on and diversified to an encouraging extent in the past two decades. Though we did lose population from 2000-2010 it wasn't nearly as bad as most people predicted (everyone was saying that it was going to be below 200 thou by 2010, instead its holding stead at 210,000) during the same time period the metro grew by 30-50,000 people (not sure which, somebody please correct me if I'm wrong). The crash of the housing market and the near-death of the sunbelt cities have brought loads of people back to places like rochester, where the housing market has been ranked as one of the most promising in the nation by numerous magazines, think tanks, etc. I mean we're not going to see a population explosion by any stretch. But the thriving small businesses, the tech scene, the moderate success that bausch and lomb/xerox have had in reinventing themselves and the ever-growing prestige of U of R/RIT are all indicators that suggest the city is starting to get its mojo back.
And, on a more biased note, I personally think the city has a lot to offer in the way of parks, festivals, the art scene, cool little village-style neighborhoods and overall beauty that are hard to find in a place as affordable as monroe county. They're doing a great job of remaking previously sketchy areas like beechwood and lower plymouth-exchange, and the whole of the southeast is an artist's or hipster college kid's dream. I think ROC metro will probably surpass buffalo metro's population by 2015 (it already has a larger, and growing, economy) and the city population might hopefully inch up by 500-1000 people a year or so in the near future.
It looks more like 2022 if the same population patterns continue. It could be sooner. I do think the city has stopped shrinking and predict it will show positive growth by the next census.
with Blacks and Hispanics generally being locked out of well paying jobs unless they are over qualified.
LOLOLOLOLOL!!!
Blacks get FD and PD jobs over whites despite lower exam scores, all in an effort to make sure the community is more accurately represented, even though they're essentially putting the lives of other firefighters and officers at risk with less qualified applicants. I don't think legitimately educated minorities are being blocked out of the few well paying jobs in Rochester. The key phrase here is legitimately educated.
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