[PRCo] Re: New York Times Streetcar Article

[Schneider Fred]

Bob:

I'll jump in and give you mine as a labor economist.

Columbus is a state capital and most of them are typically much  
healthier than cities which are strictly old line manufacturing  
cities.   The only state capital that comes to my mind that is having  
real economic problems is Trenton NJ, which for years had a sign on  
the bridge over the Delaware River that read, TRENTON MAKES, THE  
WORLD TAKES.   For that reason, Trenton is having problems.  Albany  
NY isn't wonderfully healthy.    The capital cities also tended to be  
a place where racial minorities also gravitated in the 1960s because  
jobs were easier for them to obtain ... didn't make much difference  
whether it was Trenton or Sacramento or Annapolis or Cheyenne or  
Madison or Harrisburg or Columbus.   That also tended to push  
unemployment up to some degree over what you might have had if  
everyone was white northern European.

Columbus is both a north-south and an east-west railroad center (the  
old N&W into Columbus from the south and the PRR to Sandusky, which  
later became the N&W only, and the PRR east west, and the NYC from  
Cleveland to St. Louis, and the B&O.   Today it sits astride  
Interstate 70 east-west.

http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.oh_columbus_msa.htm

Look at the link above.   Two thirds of the employment is in  
government, private education, health services, professional and  
business services, transportation, retail and whole trade and public  
utilities (railroads and trucking would heavy).   Government is not  
just the state capital but also public education and, in the case of  
Columbus, Ohio State University is huge.   Ohio publishes their urban  
area unemployment rates on a non-seasonally unadjusted basis ... 5.7  
percent in June doesn't alarm me because OSU and all the local  
schools let out in June and that pushes unemployment through the roof  
at that time of the year.

Pittsburgh had a huge number of people working in steel mills,  
machine shops and steel related industries.   Its major employers  
WERE Alcoa, Kennametal, US Steel, Jones and Laughlin Steel, Wheeling  
Pittsburgh Steel, Mesta Machine Co., Crucible Steel, PPG, Gulf Oil,  
Westinghouse Electric, Westinghouse Air Brake (WABCO), Union Switch &  
Signal, Dravo Corporation and others.   It was all heavy  
manufacturing.  I have no idea how many people were involved in steel  
but I know that on one Friday in 1982 US Steel handed out 20,000 pink  
slips.   While US Steel is still one of the ten largest employers in  
Allegheny County, it is not the biggest like it once was.   The top  
end today is either one of the hospitals or government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh,_Pennsylvania

Wikipedia has some very interesting reports on many cities.   Try  
just typing Columbus Ohio Wikipedia into your browser or substitute / 
Columbus,_Ohio for Pittsburgh,_Pennsylvania in the one above it will  
pull up Columbus.

By the way, Columbus today has a population of 747,000 ... larger  
than the city of Pittsburgh was at its prime.   Of course that isn't  
as big as Pittsburgh plus McKees Rocks, Homestead, Wilkinsburg, East  
Pittsburgh, North Braddock, Braddock, Rankin, McKeesport, Brentwood,  
Castle Shannon, Mt. Lebanon, Bethel Park, Fox Chapel, Ambridge, etc.,  
etc., etc., etc.   I think Allegheny County was probably around 1.5  
million before the collapse came.     But while Pittsburgh and the  
inner boroughs have shown huge declines, Columbus has continued to  
expand year after year.   You might look for a good Ohio map and see  
where the city boundary is ... it might be far enough out that it  
problems in the bad neighborhoods are not affecting the total for the  
city.

fws




On Aug 17, 2008, at 2:07 AM, robert simpson wrote:

> Hi Derrick;
>
>   Would like to read your thoughts on the reason(s) for Columbus  
> flourishing and Pittsburgh's stagnation.  You have whetted my  
> interest.
>
>   Robert Simpson
>   from Krazy Kalifornia
>   - where English is sometimes heard
>
>   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> Derrick J Brashear <shadow at dementia.org> wrote:
>   On Fri, 15 Aug 2008, Derrick J Brashear wrote:
>
>> I'm kinda of sad Strickland won the Democratic primary for  
>> governorship of
>> Ohio and not Michael Coleman, but he seems to be good for  
>> Columbus. While
>> I love Pittsburgh I have to admit the lures of Columbus continue  
>> to be
>> attractive, and I formulated some thoughts on why Columbus is  
>> flourishing
>> while Pittsburgh stagnates. At some point I should write them down.
>
> Worked. Shopped. Baked. Cooked. Wrote.
> http://mistergrumpy.livejournal.com/130473.html#cutid1
>
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