Braddock, PA: Out of the Furnace and into the Fire

[adma]

http://monthlyreview.org/081222straub.php

One heck of an article on one heck of a place, with one heck of a mayor...

 

[Hipster Duck]

People like this working in places like those is what makes America the most inventive country on earth.

 

[Brandon716]

People like this working in places like those is what makes America the most inventive country on earth.

Not sure I quite agree with that statement, but... I was in Braddock the other week before Christmas passing through and its certainly an interesting town. There is one steel mill operating downstream from Homestead.

If I get the urge, I should drive down to Braddock later today and snap some photos. I live in the South Hills and its not that far.

 

[adma]

People like this working in places like those is what makes America the most inventive country on earth.

Where are there places like those elsewhere on earth? Even East German plattenburgs post-Communism haven't hollowed out and depopulated so utterly. I'd say it's just a fortuitous accident of circumstance...

 

[Hipster Duck]

Where are there places like those elsewhere on earth? Even East German plattenburgs post-Communism haven't hollowed out and depopulated so utterly. I'd say it's just a fortuitous accident of circumstance...

There's devastation everywhere, whether you want to measure it by the yardstick of depopulation is somewhat arbitrary. What's more important in this case, rather than a study of Braddock, PA, is the study of John Fetterman, the man. There are dumpy towns in Canada where 90% of the population is gone from its heyday (mining towns in Northern Ontario, or Dawson, YT come to mind) but how many of them ever would have a Harvard-educated, vagabond mayor who looks like an ex con infuse the dying community with art?

 

[ShonTron]

There's a lot of towns in Northern Ontario that have lost at least half their population - former mining, pulp and paper and railway towns, but Braddock is also in the Pittsburgh metro, one that has diversified somewhat after the decline of the steel industry.

I haven't seen Braddock, but I did pass through other steel towns clustered along the Monongahela like Homestead (looks okay, though big boxes replaced the steel mills) and Clairton (steel mill still operating, town in very rough shape). It's an interesting landscape.

Google streetview is rather good. Just take a stroll down Braddock Avenue.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=...bp=12,129.54634797295301,,0,2.125248641972654

 

[Brandon716]

As promised, before I took some photos this afternoon before I went shopping.

Here is Braddock, PA on a beautiful, sunny evening of January 3, 2009. =) Note I didn't call Braddock beautiful, just the day.

I would assume the hospital is its only real job base now:

The main street through town, various photos.

 

[Brandon716]

There's devastation everywhere, whether you want to measure it by the yardstick of depopulation is somewhat arbitrary. What's more important in this case, rather than a study of Braddock, PA, is the study of John Fetterman, the man. There are dumpy towns in Canada where 90% of the population is gone from its heyday (mining towns in Northern Ontario, or Dawson, YT come to mind) but how many of them ever would have a Harvard-educated, vagabond mayor who looks like an ex con infuse the dying community with art?

You are overplaying the creativity part, Braddock also happens to be a city in the middle of a 2.5 million populated metropolitan area. Mind you Braddock is a prime example of the demise of Pittsburgh's industry, because Pittsburgh had 2.9 million people at its height in 1970. Braddock's population loss of 20k to 3k is exactly what you find all along the Mon River Valley... Braddock is barely 5 miles from downtown Pittsburgh for crying out loud. I don't think Formerminingville, Ontario would have such the luxury. Braddock, for all its downsides, is just a hop, skip, and a jump from some very hipster communities. Just up the road from Braddock is a lesbian hipster community called Regent Square, afterall.

I'm surprised the mayor of Braddock isn't an artistic lesbian who has a cookie shop.

And I guess its just luck that I live in Pittsburgh and can connect to this article so well. Thanks for posting adma.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

cool photo tour brandon!


i like this shot.. look at the building on the right, you can look through its windows up at the sky...

freaky!

 

[adma]

You are overplaying the creativity part, Braddock also happens to be a city in the middle of a 2.5 million populated metropolitan area. Mind you Braddock is a prime example of the demise of Pittsburgh's industry, because Pittsburgh had 2.9 million people at its height in 1970. Braddock's population loss of 20k to 3k is exactly what you find all along the Mon River Valley... Braddock is barely 5 miles from downtown Pittsburgh for crying out loud. I don't think Formerminingville, Ontario would have such the luxury. Braddock, for all its downsides, is just a hop, skip, and a jump from some very hipster communities. Just up the road from Braddock is a lesbian hipster community called Regent Square, afterall.

And you must remember re the "creativity" or "infusing with art" part: even that's not uniquely American. After all, one might say that the likes of Dawson or Skagway were "saved" through a sort of creative/cultural tourism undercurrent as well, and at a much earlier date.

If anything, Braddock's attempted creative-classesque adjustment is more exceptional in a US context than it would be in Europe or South America, so I'd restrain myself on the "American ingenuity" angle...

 

[Brandon716]

Eh, its going to take a lot to bring the towns along the rivers back. And I mean a LOT... Pittsburgh for all intents and purposes has bounced back, but certain towns like Braddock are going to be abandoned for many years to come. The reason why is simple: there will need to be hundreds of thousands of people to come back to the region to resettle and redevelop old areas that were abandoned after America's de-industrialization.

Pittsburgh has come back because the region as a whole is now healthy. In the early 1980's, Pittsburgh was in a depression level economy. The local unemployment rate was between 25 and 30% for many years. Net jobs were hemmorraging in the hundreds of thousands over the course of a few short years. Remember, we're talking about a singular metropolitan market, not a state or national economy.

The bitter, bitter irony is that after 30 years, Pittsburgh is now growing jobs. The average jobs growth right now is about 5,000 per month in the Pittsburgh metropolitan market. And that's with the economic meltdown that is occuring throughout the US, because you see cities like Phoenix and Atlanta and etc. losing 40, 50, 55,000 jobs per month.

So I guess the cycle has been completed, you can't lose a job that no longer exists, and Pittsburgh has so few manufacturing jobs now and has recreated the economy for a different future.

And that makes for articles like this:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2008-12-22-census-congress-analysis_N.htm

Census estimates point to end of Sun Belt's population boom

By Haya El Nasser And Paul Overberg, USA TODAY

The housing collapse and economic crisis are dramatically transforming the population and political landscape of the nation by ending the Sun Belt boom that dominated growth for a generation, according to Census Bureau estimates released Monday.

For the first time since the early 1970s, more people left Florida for other states than moved in during the 12 months ending July 1. Nevada, among the four fastest-growing states for 23 years in a row, slipped from No. 1 to No. 8. Michigan lost people for the third straight year.

Eight states would lose a seat in the House of Representatives if reapportionment were conducted today instead of after the decennial Census in 2010, according to an analysis by Election Data Services. Five states would gain a seat and Texas would add three.If these changes had been in place in 2008, Barack Obama's margin over John McCain in the Electoral College would have been 10 votes smaller.

The 435 House seats are reallocated every 10 years after the Census count of every person, including non-citizens and illegal immigrants.

The housing meltdown has turned migration flows on their heads. Of the top 20 fastest-growing states, all but four showed slower growth this year compared with last year and only one of the top 10 (Colorado) grew faster, according to an analysis by William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution.

"A giant share of it is housing," says Robert Lang, co-director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. "One, you can't sell a house. You're stuck. Two, there's no job growth attracting people to those states." Lang says every previous recession had one thriving state or region that lured people. This time, no place is immune.

The turnabout in the fortunes of Florida and Nevada is striking. The first half of this decade, Florida was No. 1 in attracting people from other states; now it has more people going the other way. Nevada had begun to diversify its economy, which has been dominated by gambling, tourism and hospitality industries, but it was "too little, too late," Lang says.

Florida still grew overall because of births and immigration but "this is the smallest population increase we've seen," says Stan Smith, director of the bureau of economic and business research at the University of Florida. "It may be the biggest slowdown in the last 50 or 60 years."

The dismal real estate market may benefit states that have seen people head to other states for years. In New York, the number of people going to other states dropped by 7.1% and the number coming in went up 2%, according to Kenneth Johnson, demographer at the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute.

Utah was the fastest-growing state, most of the increase from a high birth rate and immigration.

Immigration is slowing almost everywhere, Johnson says. Nationally, immigration slipped 9.6% from the average annual rate this decade, he says.

Michigan and Rhode Island, which have the USA's worst unemployment, were the only states to lose population from 2007 to 2008.

 

[adma]

Pittsburgh may be growing jobs, but it's still losing people--granted, a lot of that may be die-off and a settling into "normalcy"...

 

[Brandon716]

Pittsburgh may be growing jobs, but it's still losing people--granted, a lot of that may be die-off and a settling into "normalcy"...

Actually Census estimates are notoriously wrong by a good number, Pittsburgh might have actually started regaining people in the past few years. Not necessarily the city, but the metro as a whole. We won't know until the 2010 census.

Oh, and I was wrong. Braddock is 7 miles from downtown, not 5.

 

[Brandon716]

I also took a complimentary photo of Pittsburgh from Schenley Park.

 

[Long Island Mike]

Braddock,Pa: A rebirth of sorts....

Adma and Brandon: Good Monthly Review article about Braddock,PA.

Mayor John Fetterman-despite his tough wrestler look-is a man who could live anywhere with his education but he cares enough to want Braddock to undergo a rebirth as a place to live and work. That "15104" tattoo says something in itself.

it is hard to believe in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County,PA there are places that suffered like Braddock so close to thriving and wealthy areas like Squirrel Hill and many sprawling suburbs like Monroeville.

The Monongahela Valley even had commuter train service until April 25,1989 when the PATrain(which evolved from a B&O run service)that ran between the old B&O Pittsburgh Station and Braddock,McKeesport,Port Vue-Liberty and Versailles ended operation.

The reason for this rail service ending was that the Mon Valley was not prime commuting territory for Downtown Pittsburgh office workers-towns like Braddock were staunchly blue collar manufacturing-based communities.

PAT replaced the PATrain with bus service at that point ending the last commuter rail line that Pittsburgh had-they had other routes run like the P&LE run to Beaver Falls that was discontinued in the mid 80s as well as Pennsylvania Railroad runs discontinued in the 1960s that ran east and west from PGH.

Cities that depended on good-paying steel mill jobs for example were hit hard in the 80s as the article mentions. Places like Braddock were places of poverty for some time until people like John Fetterman came along and are helping them come back to life as I feel they should be. Reviving cities like Braddock could be key to making an entire region more desirable as a place to live and work!

Observations and insight from Long Island Mike