Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Hidden Mt. Lebanon, Chapter Six

Hidden Mt. Lebanon thought number six is this:

In almost every significant respect, culturally Mt. Lebanon is a microcosm of Pittsburgh.

To a lot of people both living in Lebo and living elsewhere in the region, that's counterintuitive. What about Lebo's high average household income? (It is clearly higher than the regional average.) What about the great schools? (They are very, very good.) What about the leafy streets and the friendly neighbors? (Not uniquely Mt. Lebanon, however.) What about the stereotypical Mt. Lebanite holier-than-thou attitude and the stereotypical Dad-works-Downtown-while-Mom-manages-PTA family unit? (Stereotypes are made to be broken down.)

Set those things aside.

Mt. Lebanon shares two key things -- very important things -- with the City of Pittsburgh and with the Pittsburgh region.

One is a collection of extraordinary cultural assets. Mt. Lebanon has the people, the money, and the other raw materials needed to make itself into a sparkling jewel of a little town. It's a very nice town right now, but it's on the sleepy side. Lots of folks like the fact that it's on the sleepy side. Some folks would like a bit more blood pumping through those arteries. There's an interesting dialogue going on between groups invested in those two points of view, and I can't predict the outcome. But that dialogue is going to get increasingly public (on this blog, among other places), and while the tone is likely to remain respectful (I hope), not everyone is going to be comfortable with everything that gets said. Some of the dialogue has been and will be about the future of commerce in Lebo; some of it has been and will be about art and other culture, education and recreation.

The City of Pittsburgh and the region as a whole likewise benefit from some extraordinarly assets. Compared to metro areas of roughly the same size, not to mention larger ones, it's dirt cheap to live here. "Livability," even on recent surveys of dubious validity, is high. We have high quality institutions of higher education turning out the raw materials of the businesses of the future -- technology, art, people -- and we have a well-educated and hard-working population waiting to assemble them and move forward. There is lots of (private) money locally to be invested.

Two is a paralyzing anxiety about the future, even while everyone recognizes that it has to happen. This is reflected in at least two ways, both of which show up in Mt. Lebanon as well as in broader Pittsburgh. There is the "glass-half-empty" mentality, which keeps people from taking risks and initiating change. Pittsburgh doesn't make it easy to start and grow and finance new businesses and other new enterprises. Pittsburgh doesn't welcome the critique of the status quo that begins, "This would be better if . . . " (In fact, Pittsburgh doesn't handle criticism well under any circumstances!) Pittsburgh doesn't deal well with provocation, or with risk. All of this is true of Mt. Lebanon. And there is simple though innocent ignorance of the skill set that is required to move past or around or through that fear. Living in the Bay Area and then living near Boston, I arrived in Pittsburgh armed with the naive assumption that anyone with more than a year or two in business would understand that to start and grow a new business, and to energize the beginning and growth of related businesses, you have to construct a not-very-elaborate network: Innovators and entrepreneurs. Idea people (inventors, artists, others). Real estate people. Investors. Accountants. Lawyers who understand how to link them together. There are lots of each of those in Pittsburgh -- and in Mt. Lebanon. Yet my naive assumption was entirely wrong. I've had countless conversations both in Lebo and in Pittsburgh with successful individuals in each of these groups: If you want to get the community up and moving, this is who you have to talk to; this is what you have to do. It's an Introductory course in getting-a-city-moving.

I'm optimistic that anxiety about the future of Pittsburgh is receding, that fear is being slowly replaced by hope, and that local networks -- both in Pittsburgh and in Mt. Lebanon -- are forming and getting traction. I mention my piece of getting-a-city-moving only as an example; others do this much more than I do and, I hope, do it much more effectively. I just write about it from time to time. At a meeting in the City last night, a group of us concluded that the way to stop worrying about Pittsburgh's famous insecurity was to stop worrying about Pittsburgh's famous insecurity.

If things are nice now, just wait until they get better. Because they can, and I hope that they will.

[For the first post in this series -- on the centrality of children and dogs in Mt. Lebanon -- click here.]

[For the second post in this series -- on the Fourth of July celebration in Mt. Lebanon -- click here.]

[For the third post in this series -- on the status economy -- click here.]

[For the fourth post in this series -- on high school football -- click here.]

[For the fifth post in this series -- on the Lebo Bubble -- click here.]

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10 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mike,

Great comments on what needs to happen here in Mt Lebo and the whole Pittsburgh region. Personally as a lifelong resident of both areas who has traveled extensivley, I feel that there is need for some change. Pittsburghers have always been and will always be resistant to change.
By that I mean the origainals- not the transplanted new comers, but those who have been born and raised here, and are still here. It is a generational thing. Not that I am trying to sound me, but with the excess of the aging population around here you need a good 5-10 more years before the new generation is actually able to make changes.


But they must be willing and open to change and not part of the old gaurd. This Trid,Hotel and Washington Park projects are a great start for something that we can be right here in Lebo. Let's get behind the projects and get things moving around here.

Take a look to the New East Liberty, it took about 45 years to fix, but things are beginning to shape up around Penn Circle and Highland Avenues. Lots of devolpment, housing getting fixed and great transprotation options with direct and quick access to town. The Trid idea needs to get moving and soon.

September 11, 2007 6:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Whenpeople like what they have, change comes slowly. Every gain involves giving something up. In order to make change happen, there must be a concensus on what to give up and what to seek. However, some comes unsought and unplanned. Most accidental change is not an improvement.

Mt. Lebanon seems to me to have more shared awareness of what it is, what it likes about the community and what it does not want to give up than most other municipalities. It does not have a common vision of what it wants to change and where it wants to go.

CLT

September 13, 2007 9:15 PM  
Blogger Mike Madison said...

CLT,

That's a very thoughtful comment.

"Every gain involves giving something up." Is that really true? That does seem to be a prevailing Pittsburgh assumption, not just in Mt. Lebanon. I grew up, went to school in, and worked for a long time in a (non-Pittsburgh) community and a culture where, I think it's fair to say, the assumption is that change typically makes things better without losing what's already good, and that unplanned change often brings unexpected benefits. Out West, change and novelty aren't always good in fact, but change and novelty are presumptively likely to lead to good things.

That's not to say that Pittsburgh has to become more culturally Californian. The West Coast approach has costs as well as benefits. Pittsburgh and the surrounding region should acknowledge, though, that its assumptions bring tradeoffs of their own.

Mike

September 13, 2007 10:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mike:

In a vacuum, everything you say in your post sounds great. Let's take some risks, shoot for positive change and make Lebo a more vibrant, growing community. Noble goals indeed.

However, your post left me wanting more. I re-read it a few times and became frustrated, much like I do after reading a column by Smizik or Cook. They are both great masters of creating controversy and pointing out the obvious negatives in our favorite teams, but they are absolutely lousy at providing positive solutions or fixes.

I realize that your goal in this piece was not to specifically idenitify what you (and I guess others) want to change about Lebo or how to change it.

However, as you teased in your post, I hope these points are soon to follow.

September 14, 2007 7:33 AM  
Blogger Yale Class of 1983 said...

More specifics will come, and they have already appeared here and there over the last two years (on this blog) and four years (at Pittsblog.
Mike

September 14, 2007 4:20 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mike,

There may be folks who resist change regardless of the possible benefits. However, there are also people everywhere like change for the sake of change. I've seen this a lot in the workplace. There are some people who mindlessly assume that any change is an improvement. For some reason, tend to get criticized much less than the people who resist all change, when both type of people are equally irrational.

September 14, 2007 7:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

There is a strong tradition in Mt. Lebanon of not jumping on the bandwagon of trends, but watching and assessing and deciding if it fits with what its residents want. Perhaps this is misconstrued as being resistant to change. I am a proud life-long resident(a Mt. Lebanonite, thank you), and am happy that my husband and I have children who reap the benefits of the traditions here, while also seeing the additions to the Uptown business district, the expansion of the shops on Beverly Road, the Farmer's Market, the Youth Sports Alliance, Music for Mt. Lebanon, the rec department, and many other welcome organizations that help to usher in change and growth.
As a child, I remember shopping at the Horne's uptown, and buying ice cream at the Isaly's; and I also know how dead the place was when I was working at a brokerage firm on Washington Road in the 80's, and the trolley tracks were being removed. People in this community had vision then, and they continue to have vision.
We have a society of immediacy, and if we don't like what's going on, we change the station, delete the picture, move on to something else. But real vision takes time and nurturing.
I applaud those developers and civic leaders who see beyond a 5-year plan, and insist on making real changes that will last far into the future.

September 15, 2007 5:13 PM  
Blogger Mike Madison said...

I think that Anon 5:13 p.m. is almost exactly right. Whether what she described is construed as resistance to change or *mis*construed as resistance change, she clearly agrees: the town is reluctant to change -- and that's a good thing.

A hypothetical to test one's intuition as to whether or not the reluctance is, on balance, good for the community:

Suppose real estate agents at Howard Hanna and Coldwell Banker got together and decided that they needed to expand their marketing efforts, given the large inventory of unsold homes in Mt. Lebanon. They decided to target African-American and Latino professionals as prospective buyers, reasoning that doing so would target Mt. Lebanon's racial and ethnic diversity problems as well as expand the usual pool of possible buyers. HH and CB contact the many large corporations in Pittsburgh, especially the ones with facilities in the South Hills, to encourage their incoming relo employees, but *especially* their relo employees of color, to consider Mt. Lebanon. HH and CB do not, however, coordinate with any municipal board or office or with any community groups.

As a Lebo resident, would you (not just Anon 5:13, but the collective "you" reading this comment) support that marketing campaign? Why or why not?

September 15, 2007 9:32 PM  
Blogger Bill Matthews said...

HH and CB should pursue every viable marketing angle they can dream up.

Further, when a new resident picks MTL as their home (whether they buy or rent) they are not just choosing a house, neighborhood or school district - they are selecting a Community. If our Community is what you want, with our Community values and amenities - - come on down!

September 19, 2007 11:04 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think this effort by the real estate community is great. However, we have new neighbors of racial and cultural diversity who are not being welcomed in the way that would encourage more minorities and diverse families moving. I think Mt. Lebabnon Magazine needs to do a profile on the benefits of diversity and inclusion in a town like Mt. Lebabnon. Additionally, we should all strive to welcome all of our neighbors and welcome their diversity into our somewhat homogeneous culture.

September 20, 2007 5:21 PM  

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