Beyond the Furnace: Concrete, Conservation, and Community in Postindustrial Pittsburgh

Abstract

The year 2009 was especially significant for Pittsburgh. The city had just celebrated its 250th anniversary with a year-long series of concerts, parades, and other public spectacles. Among these were renovations to the iconic Point State Park, the completion of the Great Allegheny Passage bicycle trail to Cumberland, Maryland, and a "Parade of Champions" at the Senator John Heinz History Center featuring the legends of Pittsburgh sports. City leaders saw in these festivities an opportunity for fostering "improved regional perceptions of Pittsburgh" and "defining a vision for our region's future." The marketing blitz paid quick and unexpected dividends when in May the Obama administration announced the community would host an upcoming G20 Summit. The president's emphasis on "the green economy" meshed perfectly with the booster narrative of Pittsburgh as "a great poster child [for] economic transformation." Combined with the Steelers' Super Bowl victory and the Penguins winning the National Hockey League's Stanley Cup, by the end of the year residents of the 'Burgh had plenty to justify claims that they were back from the ruins of deindustrialization.

Though marked by less fanfare, 2009 also witnessed the publication of two fascinating books by the University of Pittsburgh Press that drew heavily on these same themes of economic and environmental transformation. Designed explicitly for an audience beyond the confines of the academy, Franklin Toker's Pittsburgh: A New Portrait and Edward K. Muller's edited volume, An Uncommon Passage: Travelling through History on the Great Allegheny Passage Trail, are also of importance to scholars for their insight into the process of community and regional regeneration in the postindustrial era.