by Eric Miller
With recent a trip to Pittsburgh fresh in my mind, I sat down in a San Francisco bar and began grilling a friend of mine from Central America about why immigrants come to San Francisco and not Pittsburgh.
"Do you think immigrants will ever go to places like Pittsburgh?" I asked. The response was a puzzled look that seemed to convey "are you nuts?" I explained more. "It's dirt cheap to live there. You can buy a house. There are some high-tech jobs and there's what appears to be an actual city."
"Well, people don't know its cheap," my friend said. "Except for people like you." "People like me?" "People who grew up in the East," was the qualifier.
Pittsburgh has spent quite a few years trying to undo its smoky, steeltown, hell-with-the-lid-off industrial image. But let me tell you, the problem facing the city now is not what people think of it. The problem is they don't think of it. More immigrants seem to have heard of Austin, Sacramento, Fresno and Jersey City than Pittsburgh.
"What do you think of when you think of Pittsburgh?" I asked my friend. He really couldn't answer. He knew of Pittsburgh through me. He knew I went back there often, but other than that he didn't know about the Point, the steel mills that used to be there, the golden triangle, or anything else.
"This is a big problem," I thought. Later I asked a few more immigrants what their image was of Pittsburgh. Some had heard of the steel mills or knew it as the setting for Queer As Folk (filmed in Toronto), but few had any image of the city at all.
In the bar, I asked my friend what places in the east he had some image of. "Virginia," he said. Dumfounded, I asked what he knew about Virginia…maybe Williamsburg or Monticello, I assumed. "I have heard Virginia is a nice recreational area and a place to go on vacation," he said.
Ah, marketing!
What about other cities? I assumed when I asked about Cleveland my friend would know about the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame. Nope. He had no image of Cleveland either--nor of Ohio, for that matter.
We were drinking Miller Genuine Draft, so I thought for sure when I said Milwaukee he would relate it to beer. Cleveland and Pittsburgh actually had one up on Milwaukee, he had at least heard of them. "Milwaukee?" he responded. "I never heard of it. Where is it?" "Wisconsin" I answered. "Where is Wisconsin?" he responded.
My friend spent some time in Arkansas, so I thought I'd quiz him on some southern places. "What do you think of when you think of Kentucky?" I asked. He had no image of Kentucky. "You don't think of horses and horse farms when you think of Kentucky?" I asked. "When I think of horses, I think of Texas," he responded.
There was clearly no hope for Buffalo or Cincinnati, so I moved east. Philadelphia didn't fare much better, but surprisingly he had an image of Baltimore--the National Aquarium.
For the most part, there was clearly a connection between the places my friend knew about and the ones he never heard of. The ones he had heard of had high numbers of immigrants and a diverse, largely non-white population.
Places my friend knew well---California, Texas and New York--already had a large (in some instances surpassing half) non-white populations. This is the new world, and it is largely economically prosperous and growing. As latest census data reveal, the numbers of non-whites and non-white immigrants are growing in other parts of the country as Asians and Hispanics move to Eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey.
There they will still not know about the old world-- Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Milwaukee--places that are economically stagnant, largely white and shrinking.
Could it just be a matter of marketing? It seems to have provided my friend with a good image of Virginia--an image he will undoubtedly convey to other immigrants.
As humans it is natural to be able to relate most easily to those most like us. If we own a company, we naturally relate better to those like us even though others less like us may be equally qualified for a job. The remedy has been affirmative action.
When Pittsburgh and other "old world" cities market themselves to try to attract youth, I fear the marketing is geared toward a very small segment of a quickly changing U.S. population--white mid-western college graduates.
In a global economy, there is more than a psychological or social value to a diverse population. There is an economic value to a diverse population. White graduates need to be exposed to diverse, culturally-dynamic environments as much as non-white immigrants. Pittsburgh and other "old-world" cities must aggressively market to a non-white immigrants in order to begin to present an image of a global, 21st-century city.
If it can accomplish that, in a few years Pittsburgh could be once again as familiar to the world as San Francisco, and at least as desirable a destination as Sacramento and Fresno.
