Product Description
Pittsburgh: Smart City - Pittsburgh's image as a sooty, gritty steel town is a thing of the past. The city s skyline now shines with new construction, its rivers flow by marinas and bike trails rather than mills, and a thriving arts scene keeps downtown bustling after sundown. And because this renaissance has happened under the radar, Pittsburgh is still safe, traffic still flows smoothly, and housing prices are still among the nation s best. In Pittsburgh: Smart City, the authors reveal why it s no accident that Pittsburgh has been named America s Most Livable City twice. Its sense of tradition and lack of pretension are prized, and residents are proud to share its natural and cultural amenities. Philanthropy, the legacy of tycoons like Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Mellon, pours into the city, keeping the arts, conservation, and education on sound footing. U.S. Steel is, of course, still headquartered in Pittsburgh, but so are PNC Financial Services Group, H.J. Heinz, and American Eagle Outfitters. Smaller businesses find strong support too. The University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University lend a hand with powerful entrepreneurship and economic development centers, while the smaller colleges provide a steady stream of bright young workers. Breakthroughs in fields from tissue engineering and transplantation to robotics and advanced materials have established Pittsburgh as a world leader in new technologies. As the colleges and universities stoke the engines of innovation and the warehouses of the industrial age are converted to loft apartments or high-tech workplaces, the Steelers aren t Pittsburgh s only success story. As Pittsburgh: Smart City illustrates, new ones are being written every day.
About the Author
GREGG RAMSHAW relocated to Pittsburgh in 2004 after 30 years in television news in Washington, D.C. He is now a freelance writer and video producer. For more than two decades, he was a managing producer and news editor for The NewsHour on PBS. His career also included stints at two Chicago daily newspapers and at ABC News. During his three decades in the nation s capital, he covered the Watergate hearings, the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon, the Iran-Contra hearings, the impeachment and trial of President Clinton, the first and second Gulf Wars, and a host of other news events during seven presidential administrations. Gregg and his wife, Mary, who have two grown daughters, live in Pittsburgh s historic Shadyside neighborhood with their aging terrier, Abbey. KRISTINA SAUERWEIN is an award-winning journalist, author, and business writer. She worked for more than a decade as a staff writer for several daily newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, where she was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in breaking news for coverage of the 2003 wildfires that devastated Southern California. Sauerwein earned her journalism and sociology degrees from Syracuse University in New York, graduating in three years, Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She is the author of an upcoming true crime book on what has been dubbed the Missouri miracle, the 2007 rescue of two kidnapped St. Louis boys. Sauerwein lives in St. Louis with her husband, Tom, and their daughter, Zoe. SAMANTHA BENNETT moved to Pittsburgh and joined the staff of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1994, after growing up in suburban Philadelphia and working at newspapers in Connecticut for several years. She has a B.A. in English from Yale University and a master s degree in professional writing from Carnegie Mellon University. She began writing her award-winning Post-Gazette humor column in 1999 and was elected vice president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists in 2006. She lives in Dormont.
