Pittsburgh Region: Universities Meld Public And Private Investment For Direct And Indirect Development

Energy Innovation Center (EIC)

A Pittsburgh based, not-for-profit organization with a mission to engage corporate and community leaders, align workforce development and education, develop and demonstrate technology, and incubate businesses, to support emerging clean and sustainable energy markets. This 200,000 square foot building functions as a ‘living laboratory’ for industry-informed education and training programs and a center that co-locates diverse tenants, including energy sector corporations, national energy research laboratories, political and community leaders, economic development organizations, and leading academic institutions (Pitt, Penn State, CCAC).

The Pittsburgh Conundrum:

Forty years after the decline of the steel industry, Pittsburgh has emerged from the ashes of deindustrialization to become the new Emerald City. Touted as the “most livable city” by the likes of The Economist and Forbes, its highly literate and educated workforce has contributed to a robust and diverse local economy known as a center for technology, health care, and bio-science. It is a leader in startup businesses. Uber and Ford’s announcement in 2016 that they would base development of their self-driving cars in Pittsburgh, rather than in Silicon Valley, is a telling example of the power of high-tech image and low costs

Pittsburgh also ranks high in housing affordability. Residents can easily walk or bike to public libraries, museums, and arts and entertainment venues. Some see Pittsburgh as a model for economic development and a new urbanism that could revitalize the Rust Belt and other former industrial regions.

It has retained more of its residents, largely minority households; stabilized its working-class neighborhoods without relying on gentrification; and steadily attracted educated millennials. Morrison also says that Pittsburgh has held on to its historic working-class culture and civic identity more than have other legacy communities. 

“The concept of the ‘Steelers Nation,'” he says, “goes well beyond a marketing campaign and appears to be embedded as a deeply felt personal identity by people of all classes. The retention of dialect, food, symbols, team colors, and attitude is remarkable and, I would argue, increasingly unique.”

Op-Ed: Pittsburgh’s Remake Learning Is Doing Something “No Other Place In America” Is Doing

Here in Pittsburgh, that effort is well underway. For 10 years, Remake Learning has worked to ignite engaging, relevant and equitable learning opportunities for every student — opportunities that leverage technology, art and the learning sciences to upend the factory model paradigm. We believe that to truly prepare learners for the future, we need to equip them not only with deep content knowledge and high-tech tools, but also the skills and creativity to adapt to and thrive amid dramatic advances in technology. 

Our members include more than 250 schools, universities, libraries, startups, nonprofits, museums, and others. Together, we’re turning the region itself into a kind of campus — a place where learners can pursue their passions by leveraging our network’s people and program. 

MAKESHOP

It is at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, or drop in on 

The Labs

The Lab at the Carnegie Library to experiment with robotics.

Tech Warriors

An after-school program at the Neighborhood Learning Alliance

Girls of Steel

A competitive robotics team for teenage girls based at Carnegie Mellon University. That’s why it’s typical to see educators teaching alongside gamers and designers, and to see learning scientists planning summer camps with artists and museum curators. There’s no other place in America yet doing collectively what our partners do: remake learning together, in all the places a child might learn.

How America’s Dying Rust Belt Town Can Transform Into “Smart Cities” Of The Future

Perhaps Pittsburgh’s ability to keep the past in the past led to its success ahead of Rust Belt cities with similar legacies... Instead of injecting more money into steel, long after these jobs traveled overseas, Pittsburgh forged ahead in industries like healthcare, medicine, and education, and sectors like robotics...Pittsburgh’s transformation from “Steel City” to brain city helps it get the attention of big-time players from coastal cities. 

Pittsburgh Global Innovation City Brookings Katz

Pittsburgh is home to a number of advanced industries that are comprised of companies of all sizes, ranging from startups to global headquarters. Firms like PNC, UPMC, Google, Uber, Alcoa, Bayer, Allegheny Technologies, Duolingo, and hundreds of others are investing in technology and leveraging the city’s innovation capacity. In broad terms, three advanced industry clusters— manufacturing, technology, and health care—represent critical pieces of the city’s economic future. Firms in these clusters rely on the strength of the university sector. On a number of metrics, the region punches far above its weight in academic activity. 

The metropolitan area ranks ninth among the largest 100 cities for the amount of university R&D, given the size of its economy and is a powerhouse in fields like robotics, gerontology, critical care, artificial intelligence, cell and tissue engineering, neurotrauma, and software.

At the same time, growth in the city’s startup support systems—mentorship, flexible workspaces, capital, and talent attraction—are fueling a new generation of high-value firms. Startups like NoWait are leveraging the full pipeline of entrepreneurial services to attract investment and grow. 

Finally, many workforce development institutions in the region are improving access to the innovation economy for all workers. However, despite its significant assets, Pittsburgh’s technological strengths have not yet translated into broad- based economic opportunity or growth.

Pittsburgh Transplant Is Poster Child For The City's New Economy

The city has been punching well under its weight in job creation, despite being home to academic research powerhouses University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, according to a 2017 study by Washington, D.C.-based think tank Brookings Institution.

The Brookings study, which was funded by the Hillman Foundation and the Heinz Endowments, recommended creating an Innovation District in Oakland, where academic researchers could work shoulder to shoulder with venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, transforming scientific breakthroughs into goods and services.

Pittsburgh Regional Alliance — Pittsburgh’s Poised to Become Life Sciences Powerhouse

Pittsburgh’s prowess in life sciences was on display during Pittsburgh Life Sciences Week. Celebrated on May 22-26, the week-long series of innovation forums presented by the University of Pittsburgh brought together a diverse mix of life sciences groups – researchers, entrepreneurs, large corporations and investors – to connect and discuss current successes and emerging topics in this sector, and there was a lot to talk about.

In 2016, the region’s healthcare and life sciences sector experienced the largest capital investment since 2011: $150 million. And, with the sector contributing nearly 10 percent of GDP in our region and employing some 133,000 people, Pittsburgh is poised to become a national powerhouse in life sciences. A number of domestic and foreign owned firms are investing in the region, and just last year there were 18 new healthcare and life sciences deals, accounting for 2,983 anticipated new jobs in southwestern Pennsylvania. 

New investment in the sector is supported by a robust network of incubators, R&D centers and universities – including the University of Pittsburgh, which receives over $700 million in NIH funding annually and ranks fifth among universities nationally. The region is working collaboratively to leverage this success and build greater partnerships that will accelerate innovation, life-changing technologies and economic growth.

Using Pittsburgh As A Model For The Revival Of Detroit

Pittsburgh is a city that has largely shifted is primary industry structure from steel manufacturing to one centered on education and health care services. Through increased entrepreneurial activity, the city has also been able to adapt a diversified industry structure in the fields of technology and financial services. 

In recent years, the city of Pittsburgh has topped the list of Quality-of-Life Rankings in publications such as Money, Forbes, and Places Rated. The Economist Intelligence Unit ranked Pittsburgh as the most livable city in the continental United States in both the years of 2005 and 2013. In 2014, the city of Pittsburgh ranked second on the list of “America’s Smartest Cities” released by Forbes magazine, which is attributable to the large growth rate in the proportion of residents possessing at least a bachelor’s degree…The overall economic well-being of the city today provides suggestive evidence that some crucial actions were taken to transform the economy of Pittsburgh beginning in the 1980’s.

Fifth Season

A recent vertical farming startup: originally launched as RoBotany Ltd, has announced details of its 60,000-ft2 LED-lit vertical farm under construction in Braddock, PA near the city of Pittsburgh. The company has raised $35M (million) in venture funding and plans a start to commercial growing operations in early 2020. A 25,000-ft2 growing room lit with GE Current solid-state lighting (SSL) is slated to yield 500,000 pounds of lettuce and other leafy greens in its first year of operation.

The Post Industrial Revitalization Of Pittsburgh: Myths And Evidence (Detrick, 1999)

Abstract: Industrial regions have faced many challenges in restructuring their economies in the 1990s. In this article, I analyze the turns taken in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, region. The area forged a collaborative model of redevelopment through public-private partnerships over the post-World War II era. As the region lost its economic base in steel in the 1980s, partnership in Pittsburgh evolved along consensual lines to incorporate new nonprofit and community-based organizations into its planning and revitalization efforts. Its success in revitalizing the region became a model for other regions in transition. In the 1990s, however, the strength of the region's economy and the partnership model has weakened. The article highlights the limits of consensual partnerships when economic regeneration slows.

Explaining the "Brain Drain" from Older Industrial Cities: The Pittsburgh Region (Hansen, Ban, & Huggins, 2003)

Abstract: Many college graduates are leaving western Pennsylvania, recent college graduates from three Pittsburgh-area universities were surveyed about their career and location decisions. The results indicated some increase in those staying between 1994 and 1999. A logistic regression analysis showed that an improving economy, low housing costs, and ample opportunities for continuing education were the major reasons. However, the region is still losing disproportionate numbers of minorities and graduates in high-tech fields and is attracting few immigrants. The major competition was from neighboring states rather than the Sun Belt. Low salaries and lack of advancement opportunities, especially for women, minorities, and two-career couples, were the primary reasons. The results suggest several policy recommendations to help retain recent area graduates and to attract more highly skilled workers to the region.

Pittsburgh's Evolving Steel Legacy And The Steel Technology Cluster (Treado, 2009)

Using an industry studies approach, this article provides an assessment of a cluster of product and service providers that have leveraged regional expertise in a declining industry (steel) to continue to supply technology to a global industry. The formation of Pittsburgh's steel technology cluster has depended on three main regional factors: location, labour and legacy. In particular, Pittsburgh's expertise and long tradition in metallurgy and materials science has been the ultimate source of the cluster's success and the region's resilience. The results of this research have practical and theoretical implications for regional economic development policy and its relationship to path dependence.