Posted on 12/26/2012 3:15:00 PM PST by surroundedbyblue
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – Paris — the city of lights and love, and a destination for millions of tourists — could that be the future Pittsburgh with some sensible, healthy-focused city planning?
“Pittsburgh has wonderful parks, and you also have that wonderful next to the river walking pathway,” says Dr. Richard Jackson, a physician and urban designer.
Jackson, who teaches at UCLA, says Paris is a good example of a healthy city that Pittsburgh could become.
(Excerpt) Read more at pittsburgh.cbslocal.com ...
More trash from the enviro-weenies. Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh, it snowed like crazy today & the roads were largely untouched. But what do you expect from a city run by dumbass Democrats???
Just what I would want to do, ride the subway unarmed with a subway car loaded with Holders People. Thank God I live in the sticks.
Philly cheesesteaks with Swiss cheese, just like Kerry loves...
The Eiffel tower is starting to rust out, it’s probably time to move it to Pittsburgh.
In Paris, the beautiful parks and avenues are the result of a thriving economy -- not the cause. But liberals believe that if you create the appearance of prosperity, the real thing must necessarily follow.
It's what drives them to constantly increase welfare. They mistake the trappings of the middle class [house, cars, education] for the cause. Instead, though, they are the effect of a good work ethic and solid morals.
Putting the eternally-poor into decent housing and giving them a lower-middle-class income will not make them middle class. If anything, it will encourage them to become even more slothful.
Northeastern libs in cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, etc. drink this stuff like fine wine, though.
I’m a Cleveland Brown’s fan . . as long as that despotic city puts up with the like of the Steelers, it will NEVER be a Paris!!!
Sneaky.
The author poses a romantic notion that Pittsburg can become the urban mecca that Paris is, if we just give up our cars.
No problem with making Pittsburg a better place, it’s just that the unsaid implementation means forcing people out of cars, except for government officials who are too important to walk or take public trans.
Disclaimer: I moved to a city where I have to walk alot, by choice.
These photos capture the Pittsburgh of my childhood when J&L and USS afforded near full-employment to anyone able to work. Sure, the air was thick with the fumes from the mills along the three rivers but it was the smell of prosperity in what was a working man's town. Given a choice between the "Paris on the Confluence" and the Pittsburgh I recall, it's an easy choice for me. Bring back the smoke!
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IBTHP.
In before the 'h' posting.
Please, please.
We may love knocking the French, but Paris is still one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
(At least for a while - until the muznuts take over and convert it into a replica mid-east slum,)
Ahhh...the French featuring a plastered Orson Welles.
Progressives want to get us out of cars and single family homes and into trains and mass housing.
Their agenda is evidenced many, many ways.
Personal experience being my company's now closed manufacturing plants in both Red Lion and Philadelphia...........
Even their lame attempts to appear friendly was obnoxious.......
We'll always have Pittsburgh.
hearty guffaw...
Boy, is it ever. And it's a city made for walking.
People complain about Parisians and rudeness, but they're no worse than New Yorkers.
"Don't worry about it." explained a French friend. "The Parisians are rude to everyone."
I've traveled a fair bit in France, and perhaps it has been because I was traveling with small children, but the French have always been very kind and thoughtful towards me and my family.
Go to the south and visit Provence. That's where the French Freepers are.
And Detroit can be the new Rio.
Have you ever been to Paris...???
This has long been the liberal dream. I heard Hubert Humphrey say the same thing in a speech in Pittsburgh in 1974.
So we can assume the professor does not drive nor own a dirty car?
It's also too much of a consumption centered vision. Old Pittsburgh wanted to produce goods for the rest of the world and did so, well and on a large scale. That was a good enough destiny for any city. After that, crepes and aperitifs is a major comedown. You're not going to get back the identity and sense of purpose that steelmaking gave the city by inviting in artists and hipsters who'd just as soon be somewhere else.
You're right that the vision of the "new Paris" is the bait people are offered to swallow the "carless future" idea. But I wouldn't be too down on that idea. Who can say what conditions will be like 50 or 100 years from now?
Children who grew up a century ago in the real mansions of Fifth Avenue and Newport got really sick of those environments and came to prefer apartment living. Who's to say that the kids in today's minimansions may not follow a similar path?
Already a lot of retirees are moving back to cities, glad to be rid of the hassles of suburban existence. Of course the freedom and mobility cars bring shouldn't be surrendered, but if people choose otherwise for themselves without diminishing your options, is it really a bad thing?
Is there enough dogcrap on Pittsburgh’s sidewalks to resemble Paris?
Dr. Richard Jackson, Chair of the School of Health at UCLA, and former head of the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), argued that how we shape our environment impacts our health. There are now deep-rooted structural issues with the built environment that are creating epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and depression. Also, the current way of dealing with these structural issues is only just increasing the annual amount of spending on healthcare (now at 17 percent of GDP), instead of addressing the underlying problems. “We are now medicalizing the problems people are experiencing with their environment. We are no longer creating wellbeing.”
Instead of addressing the public health impacts of the absence of trees, low-albedo streets (which contribute to the urban heat island effect), as well as a lack of sustainable transportation planning, which can help spur the growth of public transit options, we are instead “looking at the end of the pipeline,” the medical effects. Our environment is sending us a message: “We are appendages to our cars.”
While in California he helped establish the California Birth Defects Monitoring Program and state and national laws to reduce risks from pesticides, especially to farm workers and to children. While at CDC he established the national asthma epidemiology and control program, oversaw the childhood lead poisoning prevention program, and instituted the federal effort to “biomonitor” chemical levels in the US population
Tall and tan and young and lovely,
The girl from Pontiac goes walking
And when she passes,
Each one she passes goes - yo!
No, I heard it was too much like Pittsburgh.........
I find the Shanghai transformation astonishing,especially in such a brief period of time.
One of my sons visited Shanghai about a year ago and loved it,especially the way it lights up at night.
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I don’t think most people go on vacation so they can jog and ride their bikes — walk maybe from their hotel to wherever, maybe. But their primary reason for going on the vacation is not to walk from one place to another.
Now, does Pittsburgh have adequate tourist attractions? I’m not so sure....Carnegie Science Center is nice, but a lot of major cities have hands-on science museums now. Some will come for the ball games (Pirates, Steelers, Penguins, even Pitt) but most major cities have that too. I don’t think anyone goes on vacation for the parks and greenways, unless it’s a big park and you can camp overnight.
They built a large convention center some years ago....I don’t think they had the hotel space to support large conventions though. I’ve been away for a while; I get back occasionally so maybe the hotel space has caught up.
I’m looking over the convention center’s schedule....RV Show, Auto Show, Bead/Jewelry Show, Home and Garden Show...I think these are things people from the metro area come to look at rather than stay overnight for.
I thought he was going to say “Ahhh, the French, they are a funny race, they fight with their feet and f...”
Wow!!!
“Of course the freedom and mobility cars bring shouldn’t be surrendered, but if people choose otherwise for themselves without diminishing your options, is it really a bad thing?”
It is a bad thing when it’s “encouraged” by the political elite & us serfs are nudged toward carlessness & public housing. That, to me, is the insinuation here.
Perhaps you ought to read “Agenda 21”. Although it’s a work of fiction (written by a woman from Pittsburgh, ironically) it gives you a good glimpse into where this type of thinking is leading.
‘burg ping!
Ispierd mmmmmmm Buy Dat Same French Excliance.
It is a Rich Full Bodied Wine, sensibly priced at a Dollar a Jug.
They are full of Country Goodness and Green Pea-ness.
Ok....I live here & that’s a little TOO SCARY!!! LOL!
The story specifically mentioned tourism, so that’s where I went with it....but you’re probably right that there is a hidden agenda here.
Pittsburgh is not a particularly easy city for tourists to get around....its city blocks are not necessarily square (due to the triangles of the river and the hills)...so you can take 4 right turns and not wind up where you started.
I think your post is EXCELLENT & expresses what I have been thinking & could not quite put into words. Thanks!
They’re always big on the part about not driving cars like European cities, but not so big on putting enough busses on the street to make riding them feasible.
The do-gooder environmental idiot come to my door regularly about Mital and the proposed incinerator for Cleveland Power. I all but physically throw them off my property and give them a lecture about the trade offs between a pristine environment and economic viability. I often chase them down the street.
Looks like Pittsburgh lost World War Z to the Zombies
Besides Pittsburgh IS NOT Philadelphia. It is an entire state away and is much cleaner and inhabited by more hospitable people. Even though they speak like they have a mouth full of quarters. Yens understands what I mean?
The only US city we enjoy for walking is San Antonio’s canal system. Venice Italy is a walkable canal city.
Another reason people would go to these cities is one of a kind arts. Paris has the Louvre, D’Orsay and Versailles. Not to mention restaurants and cafe’s. These amenities go hand in hand with walking.
How Pittsburg would pull this off remains to be seen, but I would advise them to build canals. It would take guts for the planners, but they have to think big and bold.
Jones and Laughlin who needs them, we have our Asia made ipads. That’s the way to national prosperity.
Same thing with Obama/Democrats obsession with high speed rail. The thriving economy should come first to justify it. But the Dems think you rev up the states economy by building the high speed rail first. They are that stupid in addition to these projects being a payoff to their union buddies
Who knows - teach ‘Burghers to stop bathing and using deodorant and to start peeing in the streets - it could happen.
I staid at a hotel just outside of downtown once. I wanted to get a sandwich at the Subway sandwich shop accross the highway, I could see it from my hotel room . I spent the next two hours lost trying to get there. I found my way back to the Hotel, asked the front desk clerk how to get to the Subway across the highway.
“You can't get there from here, you'd never find it!”
Morning cicero2k!
Ever been to Pittsburgh? They don’t need canals; They got RIVERS! Three of them, to be exact! BIG ones! :-)
Pittsburgh is a world away from Philly. It may be full of libs - it’s an old union town, after all - but it is as homey and friendly a place as you’ll ever want to visit.
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