{"id":116,"date":"2024-10-20T19:14:49","date_gmt":"2024-10-20T23:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/samsonlarsen.org\/?p=116"},"modified":"2024-10-20T19:16:34","modified_gmt":"2024-10-20T23:16:34","slug":"why-did-population-decline-and-keep-declining-in-the-city-of-steel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/samsonlarsen.org\/?p=116","title":{"rendered":"Why did population decline and keep declining in the City of Steel?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The story of population decline in Pittsburgh is on its face, simply due to the outsourcing of industry and steel jobs in the 80’s. In my previous blog post, I dug deeper and discovered that the decline was already occurring before the 1980’s, and the downsizing of U.S Steel1<\/a><\/sup> and the shuttering of factories was only a more immediately visible sign of a decay that was ongoing. The effects of suburbanization and the much longer term reality of the fragile and over-specialized nature of Pittsburgh’s industry were going to have an effect, and these factors are just as important when discussing the decline of population as we can see on the graph above. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These explanations are discussed in more detail in my previous post, but after looking at the graph again, the reason I discuss are valid for why the decline happened, but they don’t explain why it continues to this day. Cities in the U.S have survived and become even greater after far worse events than the main industry leaving town, Atlanta and Chicago were both burnt to the ground and they grew to unprecedented heights afterwards. What are the reasons that this exodus of population continued and still continues to this day, barring some unexpected data from the 2020 census?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One reason that goes along with the singular focus of the Pittsburgh steel industry is the lack of any meaningful alternative employment opportunities for steelworkers who lost their jobs. Many of the workers had followed in their father’s and even grandfather’s footsteps, benefiting from the rights and contracts won by the unions, and for these workers who had known no other employment than steel, they had no option other than to leave the area.2<\/a><\/sup> The city was also not prepared for the event of a massive collapse of the steel industry, and it did not begin implementing any plan to try and solve the decay until after the major steel closures of the 1980’s, and the effect local government could have on the decisions made by U.S steel was limited anyway. And further compounding the issue, the mot economically vulnerable steelworkers who were unable to afford a move to the suburbs were still living in Pittsburgh, and as a result would have to leave and directly effect the city population, instead of outlying and unincorporated suburbs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The city had a plan for revitalization, focusing on investment in the healthcare sector and other jobs requiring higher educational attainment, attempting also to leverage the connection with Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh within the city to turn out graduates to add to this workforce.3<\/a><\/sup> This focus did succeed in adding many jobs and the percentage of Pittsburg residents employed in the healthcare sector is now at 21.4 percent as of 2012, above the national average.4<\/a><\/sup> Unfortunately for the population numbers, the much higher requirements for a career in medicine preclude many people from these opportunities, and though service jobs such as food service and retail that cater to healthcare professionals have increased somewhat, these low-paying jobs are not a solid basis for attracting lower-income and less educated individuals to the city, and given that rent in any urban area is much higher than in outlying areas, particularly given the devastated smaller steel communities outside of Pittsburgh that have much less expensive rent, any people who do work in the service sector are likely to commute into the city rather than live within it’s bounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, Pittsburgh’s continued decline, in population numbers at least, is due to a lack of any re-adjustment or retraining process for out of work steel workers and an absence of planning for this eventuality. The other major factor contributing to continued decline in population is a high barrier of entry to the main employment sector of the economy and the lack of incentives and financial ability for lower-income individuals to become residents of the city. Whether a focus on a economic model that allows for flight of lower income individuals will ultimately be sustainable for the city remains to be seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n

  1. Beazley, J. Ernest. “U.S. Steel Corp. Makes its Steel Business A Separate Unit, Changes Name to USX.” Wall Street Journal, Jul 09, 1986. 1, https:\/\/www.proquest.com\/newspapers\/u-s-steel-corp-makes-business-separate-unit\/docview\/398086561\/se-2. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  2. Roy Lubove. 1996. Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh, Volume Two\u202f: The Post-Steel Era<\/em>. pg.12 Vol. 00002. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. https:\/\/research.ebsco.com\/linkprocessor\/plink?id=39aa38ac-1ec4-33c6-a385-988d509d437f. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  3. Roy Lubove. 1996. Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh, Volume Two\u202f: The Post-Steel Era<\/em>. pg.41 Vol. 00002. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. https:\/\/research.ebsco.com\/linkprocessor\/plink?id=39aa38ac-1ec4-33c6-a385-988d509d437f. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  4. Deitrick, Sabina. 2015. \u201cCultural Change in Pittsburgh: A Demographic Analysis at City and County Scales.\u201d Pennsylvania Geographer<\/em> 53 (2): 85 https:\/\/research.ebsco.com\/linkprocessor\/plink?id=0c19c5f5-91b9-3300-b35c-60a62aff4a78. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  5. Erik Steiner, [Spatial History Project][], [Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis][], Stanford University Jason A. Heppler, [Department of History][] and [UNO Libraries][], University of Nebraska at Omaha. This dataset is a compiling of data from the 1790 to 2010 census’ that regards the population of major cities. Pittsburgh’s population numbers are based on the data from Steiner’s dataset. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The story of population decline in Pittsburgh is on its face, simply due to the outsourcing of industry and steel jobs in the 80’s. In my previous blog post, I dug deeper and discovered that the decline was already occurring before the 1980’s, and the downsizing of U.S Steel1 and the shuttering of factories was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-projects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/samsonlarsen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/samsonlarsen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/samsonlarsen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samsonlarsen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samsonlarsen.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/samsonlarsen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120,"href":"https:\/\/samsonlarsen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions\/120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/samsonlarsen.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samsonlarsen.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samsonlarsen.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}