Friday, February 12, 2010

Colleges and Incubating (and taxing) Towns


These so-called transformational cities like Pittsburgh, well, so much is riding on the social capital, the educational frames, and the engines of innovation and development that colleges and universities can provide. Read the post below I wrote as my job as Spokane commentator in the weekly, Pacific Northwest Weekly Inlander.
.
Another CHRONICLE of Higher Education article on this aspect, and others, tied to U-Districts, etc.
.
Current college students, like generations before them, probably got their first civics lesson courtesy of Fred Rogers, the cardigan-wearing children's television host who broadcast his iconic show, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, from WQED, a public-television station in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood. "Won't you please, won't you please," he sang in the opening of every episode, "please won't you be my neighbor?"
.

Today, Mr. Rogers's neighborhood is bustling. filled with cafes, beer bars, and even a hot-dogeria, Essie's Original Hot Dog Shop. Backpack-toting students and scrubs-clad physicians from the nearby University of Pittsburgh Medical Center throng bus stops along Fifth and Forbes Avenues, Oakland's main arteries, while culture hounds flock to the stately Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History. The neighborhood—which is home to Carlow and Carnegie Mellon Universities and the University of Pittsburgh, as well as its affiliated medical center—ranks behind only downtown Pittsburgh and Center City Philadelphia as among Pennsylvania's largest commercial cores.
.
Spokane's U-District push:
.

No comments:

Post a Comment

This blog is brought to you by

This blog is brought to you by
Paul Haeder

Fuse Washington

Fuse Washington