Richard Florida is gone from the city that wouldn't accept him, yet many of his ideas have stayed, or so it seemed at the.... Richard Florida is gone from the city that wouldn't accept him, yet many of his ideas have stayed, or so it seemed at the annual meeting of the Allegheny Conference. The need for a city to create a welcoming environment was mentioned several times during the course of the event held at the Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh.

During the course of the year, delegates from Pittsburgh traveled to Minneapolis, a city they compared with Pittsburgh in terms of its industrial past, its geography and its future. It's a river city, it's also cold there and it's not near a coast. There are differences, however. The first being it's a growing, not declining city. The second, it's worked at attracting and been able to attract newcomers to the city. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, in the past decade the population of the 13-county Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area grew by 430,000 people, many of them immigrants. Minneapolis used to be referred to as the "whitest" city in the U.S., but no longer. That distinction today may indeed go to Pittsburgh.

There's a long way to go before we are in a position to attract many many newcomers from points around the globe. The United States as a whole isn't really in a position these days to attract other groups such as gays and lesbians. Perhaps a few will come across from Ohio since that state has pretty much outlawed their relationships. The environment here isn't so obviously welcoming either. Despite being controlled almost completely by Democrats, few public attempts have been made to embrace alternative families.

The Allegheny Conference has also been slow from moving from the whiskey-smells and cigar smoke of the rich paneled rooms in the Duquesne Club, but this years event showed at least an openness to new ideas, along with a commitment to education reform and reform of the fiscal problems the city now faces.

I can see the city changing some now, and progress on many fronts is being made. Moving the reform from think tanks and private business groups into the marbled walls of city hall are a bigger challenge. How we have to change may also be a harder sell on the streets.

That we are making steps in the right direction is clear. The notion that we are a welcoming environment open to diversity or a gateway for new ideas is one that's not yet so convincing.