Talk:Pittsburgh

Unsourced, poorly-worded, and horribly 'trivial' information removed

The following paragraph was removed from the 'government and politics' section. It is not sourced, and seems to be bordering on POV, and not to mention rather trivial. Lots of cities have budget shortfalls and financial challenges. Why is Pittsburgh's situation any different than anyone else?

Like many American cities, Pittsburgh has recently faced financial challenges and budget shortfalls. Although the cause of the city's budget shortfall is debated, many cite the success of the medical and academic sectors, since the nonprofits are tax-exempt. Despite the budget crisis, the city has continued to grow, as evidenced by the recent addition of the American Eagle Outfitters corporate headquarters, renovation of the former Lazarus-Macy's department store into high-end retail, office, and condo space, and multiple mixed-use towers under construction downtown. As further evidence of recovery from these fiscal problems, Pittsburgh had a $15 million surplus in 2005.

world city status

i think think it should be mentioned that pittsburgh is a world city because of its economic and cultural influance on the world. pittsburgh is home to 6 fortune 500 componies tied for 7th most in the nation. pittsburgh is home to some world renound museums including the largest complete dinosaur collection in the world in carnegi museum of natural history.--Dzd (talk) 01:24, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

While Pittsburgh is highly regarded in many circles, it would not be appropriate to call it a World city without a reliable source describing it as such. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 01:41, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

pittsburgh is considered to be a "world city" by carnegi mellon university at [cmu.edu]--Dzd (talk) 01:56, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

First, you'd need a more specific link than that; second, CMU's notion of global city should be in line with this article. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 02:30, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

pittsburgh meets all of the criteria to be called a global city except for a core population of 1,000,000 people but the metro area has 2,400,000 people.--Dzd (talk) 15:55, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

You'll need more than that, including a source. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 16:42, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

source [1]--Dzd (talk) 17:26, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

No where in there does it say "world city", and even if it did, Carnegie Mellon is not the standard used in World city.--Loodog (talk) 17:38, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

im sorry wrong wording if you must i meant "global city" and please if you will provide for me your "standard--Dzd (talk) 17:54, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Read the article.--Loodog (talk) 17:56, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

i did and pittsburgh almost perfectly fits in the criteria--Dzd (talk) 18:47, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

It may fit many of the criteria, but describing it as one in the article without a reliable source referring to it as one would be original research. Mfield (talk) 18:58, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Is this a joke? World city? Have you been downtown after 8pm on a weekday or even a weekend? I don't think any world city would turn into a ghost town so early. I don't think even "global city" applies. The majority of the non-white, non-black ethnic people there are students or interns. I even doubt there are any neighborhoods left where you can still find people speaking German, Italian, or Polish fluently. Angry bee (talk) 18:59, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Weather effects due to proximity to the Atlantic Ocean

209.2.60.95 (talk · contribs) removed prose to the effect of "winters are somewhat moderated by…proximity to the Atlantic Ocean". I reverted the removal, but it's true that the assertion doesn't seem to be supported by a citation. Something to be looked into. —Notyourbroom (talk) 01:54, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

If that statement seems highly suspect why keep it? Pitt is about 300 miles from the Atlantic, while it's much closer to Lake Erie. If someone can't source that statement, why should it still be there? — Preceding unsigned comment added by G. Capo (talk • contribs) 21:32, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, and the Atlantic Ocean is just a tad bigger than Lake Erie and is rumored to have a greater effect upon regional weather patterns and general climate. If a gigantic mountain range were in place of the Atlantic Ocean, or a large desert, or some other geographical feature, I'd fully expect the climate to be substantially different. There's no reason to say that 300 miles marks some acceptable cutoff point beyond which there is no climate effect. —Notyourbroom (talk) 00:14, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Except that winds are predominantly from the west. --Mishnayd (talk) 20:37, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Also, please remember to sign your comments by typing ~~~~ at the end of them. —Notyourbroom (talk) 00:16, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Oceanic Climate?

This may sound crazy but if we're going strictly by Koppen climate classification (as this article does), Pitt is a Humid subtropical climate bordering both a Humid continental climate and an Oceanic climate. Take a look at what constitutes an Oceanic Climate and then compare with Pitt's average temps. If the monthly average of July is about 1 degree (celsius) lower than is listed, Pitt would be an Oceanic Climate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by G. Capo (talk • contribs) 21:42, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

If you can find a reliable source that specifically addresses Pittsburgh's proximity to the border of two climate classes, it would be appropriate to paraphrase or quote from it with a citation. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 02:22, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

What about January temps? They have to average above freezing. --Mishnayd (talk) 16:17, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Note that the record low in the table does NOT match the record low in the text. Neither of them matches the record low on www.weather.com, for what that is worth.MichaelCYoung (talk) 15:56, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Cradle of Quarterbacks?

I don't think that one should say: ( The Pittsburgh region also has developed several NFL quarterbacks, giving Western Pennsylvania the nickname Cradle of Quarterbacks) because the source for this come from a Pittsburgh POst Gazette editorial. I feel like the writer was using it as his own creation and that there would need to be an outside source declaring pittsburgh or western Pennsylvania to be the cradle of quartebacks. I'm looking for other thoughts but I will edit it out if no one can provide a nonbiased source. 199.248.185.22 (talk) 19:33, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Google provides over 50,000 hits for the search query "cradle of quarterbacks" pittsburgh, and I can say as a native that I've certainly been familiar with the phrase. That 2005 editorial absolutely did not coin the expression. To prove it, I've added a 1991 NYT citation. —Notyourbroom (talk) 21:29, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

It's pretty trivial, quarterbacks have lots of cradles. As a comparison, Google has 24,000 hits for "cradle of quarterbacks" Purdue, but I'd guess there are at least 5 towns/teams that claim the same thing. Smallbones (talk) 19:25, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

History

Uncited sentence "By the 1840s, Pittsburgh was one of the largest cities west of the Allegheny Mountains." has some problems. Actually, Pittsburgh was probably THE biggest city west of the Alleghenies starting in 1758 (if not earlier), but looking at Largest cities in the United States by population by decade and the sources it gives. New Orleans was bigger in 1810, Cincinnati in 1820, and the later you go the further Pittsburg drops back. Clarify or remove? Smallbones (talk) 19:18, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm thankful...

...that the G20 hasn't led to the sort of vandalism of Pittsburgh-related pages that the Stanley Cup series did. I've been checking in every hour or two, but things look pretty good. :) —Notyourbroom (talk) 14:57, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Updated some of the pics and switched "Iron City" nickname

Hey all, I threw in some more descriptive pictures of the city and its beauty spots in the sections. I would love input but lets try to remember that many who visit this wiki page have the mistaken impression they will be looking at pictures of Steel Mills and 1940's housing. I think both of those should be represented but the Children's museum, the skyline shots from the stadiums and arena, the Phipps and murals etc. should be highlighted somehow. Interested on your thoughts, but please lets add like images or better yet take ones that are even more amazing!

The three "nicknames" yes I know its Iron City Beer, but besides ex-Pittsburghers the name Iron City is more of a antiquated 1800's term. Steel City more then represents our industrial heritage, City of Champions (only metro to have TWO years in which multiple teams won it all, 1979 and 2009) and the fact that The Sporting News declared it undisputed should make it obvious that City of Champions is a much more relevant nickname then a 1878 horse and buggy, gas lamp, no indoor plumbing or air conditioning or television or wikipedia era Iron City. Steel City does fine capturing our history, Iron is a bit redundant and obsolete even when we were the Steel capital of the world. Hholt01 (talk) 07:54, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Changes to basketball section

I thought it was important to note in the section about professional basketball that Pittsburgh has never had an NBA team. Anyone disagree? MikeR1717 (talk) 19:35, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't seem relevant at all, actually. We should focus on the three teams that are here, not teams that aren't. Perhaps if there was a push to start or relocate a basketball team here, that might notable, but that would also need to be well documented and cited. Dr. Cash (talk) 18:00, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Livability

Was this article written by a pro-Pittsburgh PR firm? There are numerous mentions of how livable the city is, and next to nothing mentioned about any of the poor national ratings Pittsburgh has received. For example, the American Lung Association has given Pittsburgh consistently bad ratings almost EVERY year for the last several years. Also, Forbes has ranked Pittsburgh as one of America's worst cities for singles -- not just once, but SEVERAL times. And for at least two years in a row, the magazine ranked the city as THE WORST place for singles (in 2003 and 2004, I believe). (As someone who used to be single in Pittsburgh for YEARS, I can attest to this fact. You have to actually live there as a young, single, educated person to know what I'm talking about.) I thought Wikipedia articles were supposed to be unbiased. Obviously that's not true because this article is significantly skewed. A major contributor obviously has a major conflict of interest with the subject matter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.212.185.67 (talk) 05:25, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Your tone is such that I'm unsure whether you expect a serious response and wish to contribute productively to the article. If you wish to help, then say so, and please review WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF to learn more about the sort of behavior encouraged on article talk pages; otherwise, I will assume your intention was to vent about your (presumably) unsatisfactory personal experience living in Pittsburgh and leave it at that. Best, —Notyourbroom (talk) 06:59, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Your sexual frustration aside, if you can show us the sources regarding poor air quality and Forbes ranking for singles, we'd be glad to include them in the article.--Louiedog (talk) 12:33, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

My "sexual frustration aside"? Now _that's_ being a real good behavioral role model for Editing Talk. And this coming from someone who probably hasn't lived as a single person in Pittsburgh. In any event, perhaps I do have a bit of personal bias, but this isn't about me venting. It's about the accuracy of the article, which I truly think is skewed. Here are the sources you requested:

PITTSBURGH AIR QUALITY (Counties: Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington, Westmoreland)

2009 - http://www.stateoftheair.org/2009/states/pennsylvania/, http://pittsburgh.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2009/04/27/daily34.html

2008 - http://www.stateoftheair.org/2008/states/pennsylvania/, http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/05/01/Report-Pittsburgh-air-dirtiest-in-nation/UPI-88111209669993/

2007 - http://lungaction.org/reports/SOTA07_stateozone.html?geo_area_id=42, http://pittsburgh.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2007/04/30/daily10.html

2006 - http://lungaction.org/reports/SOTA06_stateozone.html?geo_area_id=42, http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06117/685531-113.stm

2005 - http://lungaction.org/reports/SOTA05_stateozone.html?geo_area_id=42

2004 - http://lungaction.org/reports/SOTA04_stateozone.html?geo_area_id=42

2003 - http://lungaction.org/reports/SOTA03_stateozone.html?geo_area_id=42

2002 - Page offline: http://www.lungusa.org/air2002/index.html

2001 - http://web.archive.org/web/20010508001902/www.lungusa.org/air2001/states/s_pa.html

PITTSBURGH SINGLES SCENE (Each year Forbes ranks 40 cities.):

2009 (ranked 17th worst) - http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/24/best-cities-singles-lifestyle-singles-online-dating_slide_18.html

2008 (ranked 13th worst) - http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/3/forbeslife-cx_singles08_Pittsburgh_2530.html

2007 (ranked 6th worst) - http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/3/forbeslife-cx_singles07_Pittsburgh_2530.html, http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07236/811724-28.stm

2006 (rated 6th worst) - http://www.forbes.com/2007/08/21/forbeslife-cx_singles07_all_slide_35.html?thisSpeed=15000

2005 (ranked 12th worst) - http://www.forbes.com/lists/2005/3/2530.html

2004 (rated worst) - http://www.forbes.com/maserati/singles2004/cx_dd_0624pittsburgh_04single.html, http://pittsburgh.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2004/06/21/daily38.html

2003 (rated worst) - http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/05/cx_dd_0605pittsburgh.html, http://pittsburgh.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2003/06/02/daily50.html

2002 (rated worst) - http://www.forbes.com/2002/06/06/0606pittsburgh.html

2001 (rated second worst) - http://www.forbes.com/2001/05/10/bestpittsburgh.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.212.185.67 (talk) 22:45, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I was going for a little humor in how I said it. Didn't mean to offend. It would seem you've provided ample evidence for the city having poor air quality, which I think would merit a mention under the "climate" section.

I'm not so convinced for the singles scene. The most recent ranking, for example, ranks Pittsburgh the 24th best singles location. Your "17th worst" is out of the top 40. Same deal with the other Forbes mentions.--Louiedog (talk) 23:33, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

A city's ranking by Forbes as 24th best or 17th worst of anything hardly seems notable for an encyclopedia article. Forbes seems to do these rankings of various cities and towns quite frequently, and the more I look at them, the more I seem to think that most of them are quite biased, and mostly just "feel good" listings for residents of the cities and towns featured. I think Pittsburgh did get a #1 ranking a few years ago in a Livability survey (can't remember where, but I don't think it was Forbes), and that might be worthy of a mention in an intro to the Culture section; but an entire section on "Livability" seems like overkill to me,... Dr. Cash (talk) 15:58, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. The livability of Pittsburgh doesn't need to be flogged so much. Not to mention how much is uncited in that section.--Louiedog (talk) 16:11, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

montage image in infobox

I've reverted recent additions to the infobox of montage image (collections of photos) because they were simply added and created by random users without any discussion whatsoever. The most recent montage added is actually rather poor quality:

For starters, these images are not very well separated -- there needs to at least be lines between the images -- the trolley at the bottom really blends in with the image of PNC park, which looks really bad. See the Washington, D.C. article for an example of how this is done.

The image of the Cathedral of Learning is horrible quality -- very pixelated. As a matter of fact, most of these images are very grainy and pixelated, and shouldn't be used as an infobox image. Most of the images seem to be used later in the article as well -- images in the infobox are better if they're more unique, and not used over again. There seem to be plenty of images to choose from though, and we could probably prune some of the images later in the article as well (some sections are very image-heavy).

The image of the astronomical observatory isn't even in Pittsburgh itself, but in the suburbs and surrounding areas, so it shouldn't be included in the montage anyways. The buildings and structures pictured in the infobox should be key buildings that define the city of Pittsburgh. I think we should stick with five images for a montage -- start with a good image of the downtown area/skyline and put that in the middle. Then put two images above that and two images below it. The Cathedral of Learning seems to be a pretty big landmark, and certainly can be included; including CMU as well would seem to represent Pittsburgh's status as an educational city. Maybe put those two as the images at the bottom? For the other two images, maybe either Heinz Field or PNC Park (but not both, as too many sports pictures would be overkill; but we could put, for example, PNC Park in the infobox and then a picture of Heinz Field in the Sports section). For the last image, maybe either a picture of the incline, to connect with the city's industrial past, or a city of one of the bridges?

But overall, I think we need more discussion on this, because the two images that random users have added as a montage were very poor quality, and really were just randomly collected images from the ones submitted to the page so far. I will continue to revert any additions by anyone that adds a montage image without discussion or consensus. Dr. Cash (talk) 15:56, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree that there are too many photos in that montage and the quality was lacking as was the separation of pictures. However, the Allegheny Observatory is indeed in the City of Pittsburgh, located in Riverview Park on the North Side in the aptly-named Observatory Hill neighborhood. Other than that, I agree with your choices for pictures, though I would make a pitch for a photo of landmark bridge(s) rather than of CMU whose main building is recognizable but not iconic in the way the Cathedral of Learning, the inclines, the bridges, or the skyline are. --Conk 9 (talk) 20:51, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I thought the observatory was in one of the suburbs to the north, so I stand corrected. Nonetheless, I still think that the infobox should contain images of things which more closely are associated with Pittsburgh, and I think there are a lot of things that fit that much better. Dr. Cash (talk) 22:34, 10 December 2009 (UTC)