Pittsburgh’s Youth-Driven Food Boom; New York Times, 3/16/16

Jeff Gordinier, New York Times; Pittsburgh’s Youth-Driven Food Boom:

"If there are scholars who hope to study how a vibrant food culture can help radically transform an American city, the time to do that is right now, in real time, in the place that gave us Heinz ketchup.

In December, Zagat named Pittsburgh the No. 1 food city in America. Vogue just went live with a piece that proclaimed, “Pittsburgh is not just a happening place to visit — increasingly, people, especially New Yorkers, are toying with the idea of moving here.”...

For decades, Pittsburgh was hardly seen as a beacon of innovative cuisine or a magnet for the young. It was the once-glorious metropolis that young people fled from after the shuttering of the steel mills in the early 1980s led to a mass exodus and a stark decline.

“We had to reinvent ourselves,” said Bill Peduto, Pittsburgh’s mayor.

And they have. Over the last decade or so, the city has been the beneficiary of several overlapping booms. Cheap rent and a voracious appetite for culture have attracted artists. Cheap rent and Carnegie Mellon University have attracted companies like Google, Facebook and Uber, seeking to tap local tech talent. And cheap rent alone has inspired chefs to pursue deeply personal projects that might have a hard time surviving in the Darwinian real estate microclimates of New York and San Francisco.

No one can pinpoint whether it was the artists or techies or chefs who got the revitalization rolling. But there’s no denying that restaurants play a starring role in the story Pittsburgh now tells about itself."

Pitt seeking input on new strategic planning initiative; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2/27/15

Bill Schackner, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Pitt seeking input on new strategic planning initiative:

"The University of Pittsburgh on Friday said it has launched an ambitious strategic planning initiative, looking at every level of the institution to identify both opportunities to continue to flourish as well as threats to its stability and standing.

The university has scheduled a series of campus town hall sessions for next month to solicit input, officials said at Friday’s board of trustees meeting. But already, groundwork has been laid by approaching a wide swath of constituencies for their views, among them school trustees, faculty, staff and student leaders.

The effort will be informed in part by previous initiatives and documents, among them a 1995 mission statement and the Statement of Aspiration and Strategic Priorities, last updated in 2014."