Pittsburgh's Rise from Ashes

Written By: Jeffrey A. Tucker  |  Posted: Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

Pittsburgh is a town that makes me want to rhapsodize like a Randian. Its skyline, the materials and shapes that make up the structure of the city, celebrate man's creative genius in every way. It is more beautiful than the most cultivated garden because it is a picture of order out of chaos and all directed toward the betterment of society. In capitalism's structure of production, the city once stood between the first producers of raw materials somewhere in the mountains of West Virginia and the mansions of the final owners in Rhode Island and Connecticut. It is the city that transformed what nature gave us into things we can use. It was called the Iron City and, later, the Steel City. Steel now only refers to the backbone of the city's spirit. It has remade itself yet again.

Forbes has listed Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at the top of its list of affordable cities in which to buy a home. But keep in mind that this was not a straight line onwards and upwards. Three decades ago, it was the symbol of the panic of the time: the de-industrialization of America. The place was nearly gutted but look at its strength today even in the presence of the second great depression. As Forbes notes in passing that the city "never experienced the dramatic run-up in prices that characterized the national housing bubble - so it was spared the subsequent bust."

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