By Rodger Morrow, Editor & Publisher, Beaver County Business
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Pittsburgh has always been a city with a shy sort of confidence, the civic equivalent of a prize-winning dog that insists on hiding under the kitchen table. Ask a Pittsburgher why anyone should move here and you’ll get a shrug, a muttered “because it’s nice,” and perhaps, on a good day, a flash of enthusiasm quickly disguised as modesty. So the latest Pittsburgh Tomorrow panel took on the question the region never asks out loud: Why Pittsburgh? The consensus, after an hour and a half, was essentially: Why not?
Duolingo’s Jocelyn Lai recalled her first interview with the company, back when the office lacked both a lobby and a doorbell. This did not deter her. She’d lived through Austin’s preboom years, when the only people moving there were exhausted New Yorkers in search of a backyard. Pittsburgh, she realized, didn’t have a talent problem—it had a storytelling problem. So Pittsburgh Tomorrow is now telling stories large enough to make Times Square blink: “Your dog wants you to move to Pittsburgh” beams across Midtown, urging knowledge workers to obey their Labradoodles. At the airport, a campaign originally titled “Home for the Holidays” now reads “Home for good,” which is about as subtle as a surprise proposal in Concourse B.
U.S. Steel’s Mike Williams arrived with his wife and a newborn, the three of them squeezed into a Chicago loft that shrank dramatically once the baby came home. Pittsburgh did not enchant his wife immediately. One afternoon Oprah was interrupted to report Ben Roethlisberger’s motorcycle accident, prompting her to ask, with some alarm, “What is wrong with this city?” But Pittsburgh plays the long game. Two decades later, she’s fully acclimated, which is more than can be said for the forty-odd Nippon Steel expats Williams is now helping settle. His team has devised a “buddy system” pairing Japanese families with Pittsburgh families—people who can guide them through local mysteries such as school enrollment, youth soccer, and determining which Giant Eagle is the “good” one.
Then there was Dr. José-Alain Sahel of the UPMC Vision Institute, who chose Pittsburgh almost on a colleague’s recommendation—hardly the formal recruitment one expects for a globally renowned ophthalmologist. He contrasted Pittsburgh with Cleveland, where officials worked hard to sell the city. Pittsburghers, he noted, assume the city’s appeal is self-evident. It isn’t. Newcomers need onboarding, orientation, and perhaps a hotel clerk who doesn’t look startled when someone asks where the Innovation District is.
What emerged from the panel was not a flashy sales pitch but a truth Pittsburgh rarely says aloud: people come here because the people here make it work. They arrive strangers and leave with buddies, mentors, translators, and recruiting coordinators who double as tour guides. In a world full of cities shouting for attention, Pittsburgh simply smiles, shrugs, and offers to help you find the parking garage you missed twice already.
Why Pittsburgh? The panel never quite said it outright, so I will: because it’s Pittsburgh. Why not?
