Dear President Obama.
We, the people of Pittsburgh, sincerely hope that you will enjoy your visit to our lovely city later this week as you chair the exhilarating G-20 summit that you so thoughtfully chose our city to host, not knowing whether we could afford it or whether we can afford it.
But please, Mr. President, do not think that the disordered, barricaded and over-controlled city you will see is anything like the real Pittsburgh we know and love.
The summit of finance ministers and central bankers from the world’s 20 largest economies will be held Thursday and Friday in downtown Pittsburgh’s “Golden Triangle,” a wedge of skyscrapers and priceless elderly office buildings that sits between the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, which join to form the Ohio River. .
Normally, Mr. President, the streets and sidewalks in downtown Pittsburgh are serene and peaceful, as if almost dead and lifeless.
It is certainly not a mere tourist destination for protesters and anarchists from around the world, like those who, thanks to you, are here to express their dissatisfaction with the global economy in tens of thousands, disrupting order in our city and breaking as many windows as they can.
Typically, our center is not cut off from traffic and pedestrians like Baghdad’s Green Zone, nor is it guarded by 3,000 policemen in riot gear, as this will last from Wednesday evening to Friday. And we usually don’t have to show ID at barricades when we go to work in the city center.
We are grateful that federal taxpayers will cover the majority of the more than $20 million allocated for additional security personnel. But we hope you didn’t choose us to host the G-20 summit because you think we can afford it or because you truly believe, as you recently said, that Pittsburgh is “a bold example of how to create new jobs and industries during a transformation.” to the 21st century economy.”
That sounds sweet to the ears of local supporters, Mr. President. But it’s not really Pittsburgh. In the real world, Mr. President, this city is what urbanologists and economists technically call a “basket case.”
It’s true that unemployment and foreclosure rates are lower than the national average. And housing prices, notable for their low levels, remain stable or escalate slightly. But it’s all relative.
Much of the rest of the country is in a deep recession after a crazy housing boom. Pittsburgh’s Eds & Meds economy is neither booming nor busting: it is stuck in the same stagnation or slowly growing mini-recession that we have been in since we began deindustrialization in the 1970s.
The city you chose to host the G-20, Mr. President, is effectively bankrupt and in receivership due to decades of chronic mismanagement, stupidity, and generous pension deals that previous generations of political hacks promised their employees but failed to deliver. pay them .
For at least the last 30 years, Pittsburgh’s power brokers have wasted billions of federal and state tax dollars on a series of devastating urban renewal programs, wasteful redevelopment, and wasteful mass transit projects.
Almost everything novel and shiny you and Michelle see in downtown Pittsburgh or on its shores was built with government money or multimillion-dollar taxpayer subsidies – whether it was the nearly completed downtown skyscraper PNC Financial Service or novel homes for the Pirates, Steelers and (soon) Penguins.
This kind of government intervention may not bother you and your crew of czars. But if you and Michelle get a chance to walk downtown this week, look for the substantial hole in the street in front of Fifth Avenue Place. It’s tough not to notice it.
This hole – part of a construction site that has been destroying parts of downtown for several years – symbolizes everything that is wrong with Pittsburgh.
It is the downtown terminus of the infamous North Shore Connector, a 2.2-mile transit tunnel that was built under the Allegheny River and leads to the palaces of professional baseball and football players. We call it our “Tunnel to Nowhere.”
Our wise Democrat and Republican politicians, 1960s planners and mass transit apologists thought the tunnel would be a great way to waste at least $600 million of “free” federal and state money on transporting less than 10,000 people a day to and from back (under) the river.
There is much more evidence of City Hall’s sloppy work downtown, Mr. President, but it’s time to end this note with a elementary request. Next time you want to “honor” a city with a G-20 summit, choose Chicago.
