As Pittsburgh’s leaders search for a path to a happier and healthier city, they can find some solid advice in Alan Ehrenhalt’s recent article in Governing magazine, “A Message to Struggling Cities: Be Yourself.”
“When it comes to generating a revival, trying to copy what has succeeded somewhere else usually doesn’t work,” Ehrenhalt writes. “It’s the struggling cities that begin to look alike — the successful ones succeed in their own individual ways.”
It is a lesson that Pittsburgh learned the hard way when some very smart urban planners decided to transform East Liberty into a no-vehicle outdoor mall in the 1960s. Suburban shopping centers were the rage, but the city destroyed a vibrant neighborhood and the local economy — there were nearly 600 businesses there in 1959 and 300 in 1979…