Publications

Southwestern Pennsylvania Regional Indicators Report 2004

This report is Sustainable Pittsburgh’s second comprehensive assessment of regional sustainability trends for the six-county region of Southwestern Pennsylvania. This revised and updated edition improves significantly on the first assessment, first published in 2002, and is the product of hundreds of people’s contributions, all focused on an attempt to answer this central question: are we going in the right direction?

And the answer? In some ways, yes … but in too many ways, the answer must be a resounding “No”.

We can celebrate our relative successes in areas like employment stability, affordable living costs, improved water quality. We have positive trends to build on.

But other areas, ranging from poverty and a deeply entrenched equity gap, to increasing fossil energy consumption, to declining rates of recycling, raise troubling questions about our future. They suggest the need for renewed, spirited, and concerted action to turn these negative trends around.

Sustainability Assessment: Northern Sections of the Proposed Mon-Fayette Expressway

Public investment in infrastructure (roads, sewers, water supply, etc.) is a principal determinant of Southwestern Pennsylvania’s destiny to be a sustainably developed metropolitan area. On a national scale, progress is being made in integrating major transportation projects to promote both access and livable communities. Indeed landmark federal transportation legislation (ISTEA) requires that major infrastructure investments be linked to the economy, environment, land-use, human well-being, and fairness. Nevertheless, no agency in the Commonwealth is mandated to coordinate, much less prioritize, the land use, economic development and transportation linkages in our region. As such, as exemplified in the Mon-Fayette Expressway proposal, while much of the country is moving forward on new approaches to urban transportation solutions, this region is considering old approaches to new circumstances.

Following the principles of sustainable development, this assessment reviewed transportation, economic, community, environmental, and social advantages and disadvantages. We also reviewed the processes used to develop the toll road proposal. Our work is based on careful review of publicly available materials including those featured in two in-depth briefing sessions with representatives of the Turnpike Commission and their consultants. We also drew input from the public panel discussion sponsored by SP on January 16, 2002. Thus, this SA reflects the sentiments of a wide range of studied viewpoints and raises issues to which the public should find answers in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) to be released by the PTC in May 2002 and reviewed and revised during the following months.

Quality of Place & the New Economy: Positioning Pittsburgh to Compete

The rise of the new economy has radically altered the ways that cities and regions establish and maintain their competitive edge. Knowledge has replaced natural resources and physical labor as the source of wealth creation and economic growth. In this new era, a region’s ability to attract and retain the highly educated talent needed for growth has become the key factor in its economic success. But attracting and retaining this talent has proven to be something of a challenge.

Conventional wisdom argues that if the jobs are available, the workers will follow, but the new economy doesn’t quite follow these rules. Because the demand for talented people outstrips supply, and because competition has pushed salaries and benefit packages to very enticing levels, these highly skilled workers can essentially choose where to live and work. When it comes to choosing where to locate, knowledge workers have definite shopping lists, — and regions that seek to attract them do well to know what they want.

This report details the findings of a year-long study of the relative importance of various factors beyond job availability in attracting talent. The study looked specifically at how a group of measures that can be collectively referred to as “Quality of Place” affects the ability of regions to attract talent and to generate and sustain a high technology environment.