From Steel to Silicon: Urban Development and Image Making in Twentieth-century Pittsburgh

Stefan Lorant , Pittsburgh: The Story of an American City ( Pittsburgh, PA: Esselmont Books, 1964/1975/1980/1988/1999 ), 373. Quotation is from the 1999 edition.

For a broader analysis of this theme, see Michael A. Pagano and Ann O’M. Bowman, Cityscapes and Capital (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).

"Pittsburgh: The Story of an American City," New York Times, December 15, 1964, 62.

Bob Hoover , "W. Eugene Smith: 46 Years Later, His Images Continue to Inspire Other Photographers Trying to Catch the Spirit of Pittsburgh," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 9, 2001 .

Greg Hise and William Deverell , Eden by Design: The 1930 Olmsted-Bartholomew Plan for the Los Angeles Region (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).

Jon Peterson , The Birth of City Planning in the United States, 1840-1917 ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).

Roy Lubove , Twentieth Century Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996).

Robert Moses , Arterial Plan for Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh Regional Planning Association, 1939), 2, 9.

Jane Jacobs , "Downtown Is for People," in William H. Whyte, Jr., ed., The Exploding Metropolis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 159. This essay was originally written for Fortune in 1958.

10. Howard Gillette, Jr., Camden after the Fall: Decline and Renewal in a Post-industrial City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); Mathew Countryman, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Bryant Simon, Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

Richard Caliguiri , quoted in Lorant, Pittsburgh , 619.

Margaret Pugh O’Mara , Cities of Knowledge-Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).

Alison Isenberg, Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New York: Vintage, 1992); Michael Sorkin, Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992).

For example, in one advertisement Pittsburgh-based Consolidation Coal’s claim that "wind turbines, solar cells, and geothermal power are only some of the alternative energy sources that companies here are investigating" is overshadowed by adjacent pictures of oil rigs, nuclear cooling towers, and a coal loading facility. "Dynamic Pittsburgh," advertisement, Wall Street Journal, October 29, 1981, 13.

15. Doron P. Levin, "Big New Buildings Going Up in Pittsburgh Raise Fears of Another Office-space Glut," Wall Street Journal, February 25, 1982; Dan Fitzpatrick, "Stuck with Steel," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 3, 2002.

Richard L. Florida , The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life ( New York: Basic Books, 2002), 230-31.

For comparative examples of the role of metropolitan development in the agendas of postwar pro-growth boosters, see Robert Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003); Joseph Heathcott and Máire Agnes Murphy, "Corridors of Flight, Zones of Renewal: Industry, Planning, and Policy in the Making of Metropolitan St. Louis, 1940-1980," Journal of Urban History 41, no. 2 (January 2005): 151-89.

It should be noted that Muller has extensively explored the growth of metropolitan Pittsburgh in his research. See Edward K. Muller, "Metropolis and Region: A Framework for Enquiry into Western Pennsylvania," in Samuel P. Hays, ed., City at the Point: Essays on the Social History of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989); Edward K. Muller, "Industrial Suburbs and the Growth of Metropolitan Pittsburgh 1870-1920," Journal of Historical Geography 27, no. 1 (2001): 58-73.

A number of recent edited volumes have begun to better situate Pittsburgh within its metropolitan regional context, though none systematically address the evolving relationship among rural, urban, and suburban communities during the latter half of the twentieth century. See Joel A. Tarr, ed., Devastation and Renewal: An Environmental History of Pittsburgh and Its Region (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003); Joseph L. Scarpaci and Kevin Joseph Patrick, eds., Pittsburgh and the Appalachians: Cultural and Natural Resources in a Postindustrial Age (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006).

"When We Brag about Our Area’s Growth, We Mean White Oaks and Mountain Laurel, Too," Wall Street Journal, March 22, 1972.