FROM STEEL CITY TO SMART CITY

After its core Industrial Age industries fell to progress and changing times, Pittsburgh reinvented itself to become one of the most innovative tech hubs in the world.

- Robert Yehling

When Andrew Carnegie, Thomas and Andrew Mellon, E.J. Heinz, George Westinghouse, Edwin Drake, and Henry Clay Frick moved into Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood in the mid-19th century and launched the Industrial Age, they created the foundation that still serves part of our economy today. However, they also inspired something else: a spirit of innovation and progress that has helped Pittsburgh move from one of the nation’s top industrial manufacturing hubs, known as Iron City (18001859) and then Steel City (1859-1946), to a leading new economy and new technology center.

Now, the city that sits at the convergence of the Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela rivers is becoming as known for gigabytes and robotics among younger generations as it was as an industrial mecca.

Pittsburgh is red-hot and vibrant again. Always known as a diverse city, Pittsburgh features 90 distinct neighborhoods with their own subcultures, as well as 3,000 urban parks to serve its 302,000 residents.

The same ingenuity, collaboration, and innovation that served the Industrial Age founders is alive and well in one of the country’s greatest tech hubs. It is a leading “Next City”, which is no surprise: in the past decade, Pittsburgh’s tech sector has generated $22 billion in revenue. In 2017 alone, nearly $700 was invested in tech initiatives.

How are they doing it? Unlike some areas, which have essentially erased their brick-and-mortar pasts to dive headlong into new technologies, Pittsburgh is marrying the old with the new. Smart move, since its building trade union still has more than 60,000 members.

However, where steel, glass, and iron once ruled, we now find medicine, education, health care, robotics, software engineering, and high-tech industries leading the way.