Will you be Pittsburgh or will you be Detroit?

Last week, the NY Times profiled Pittsburgh. While the nation slides deeper into the economic abyss, Pittsburgh thrives in comparison.

The paper reports: "Unemployment is 5.5 percent, far below the national average. While housing prices sank nearly everywhere in the last year, they rose here. Wages are also up. Foreclosures are comparatively uncommon."

Times haven't always been this rosy in the city with three rivers. After the steel industry imploded, unemployment was rampant and many feared Pittsburgh would crumble. Before the collapse of the steel industry, steel workers made up 10 percent of the Pittsburgh work force. Today, the number is less than 1 percent.

Sound familiar? Just look 285 miles away. Detroit's unemployment rate is soaring, its housing market is crumbling and the auto industry as we've known it for years has ended. It's a city in transition, fighting for its very existence.

Detroit should take a page out of Pittsburgh's playbook. In the 1980s, the state used local universities to pour funds into technology research. What blossomed was a thriving entrepreneurial community. The largest industries? Computer software, biotechnology, education and health care, all of which have held up well of late.

To be sure, Pittsburgh reinvented itself during a run of prosperity. It didn't happen overnight and it didn't happen without a tremendous amount of federal, state and local support and vision. Skilled workers who couldn't make a living in Pittsburgh moved elsewhere, to thriving cities like Phoenix and Vegas.

Michigan workers aren't as lucky. The national and global economic backdrop for Detroit is bleak. But transition is still possible and the auto workers who comprise 4 percent of Michigan workers need to reinvent themselves along with the local economy.

Many of us are faced with the same issues that Pittsburgh and Detroit faced - unemployment, growing debt, lost wealth, skills that are no longer valued or even needed at all. Quite simply a total shattering of all that we thought was true about corporations, the economy, rational markets and ourselves.

Out of this turmoil comes the ability to transform. MBAs on Wall Street are now building social games. Lawyers are now teaching. Traders are now traveling the world.

As you are hit with adversity in whatever form it presents itself, will you transform? Will you become Pittsburgh and thrive in these challenging times? Or will you flounder like Detroit, unable to adapt?

Comments

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http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/the_bonus/01/07/detroit/index.html

[Ike]

Add Birmingham to your list. Like Pittsburgh, Birmingham was a steel town with more than 25,000 employed in smelting and ores. Both cities made transitions to the point that the top two industries in each are education and health care. Parks and museums and culture are better than advertised.

Adaptation takes vision, focus, and commitment.

[Snort1962]

Great article and true. I've traveled sporadically to Pittsburgh over the years and it has been a great transition. One other thing to note is that the steel industry itself has gone through a significant transition and now thrives in America. It's more efficient and industries like auto use less both because they build less and because they have found lighter and/or less expensive substitute materials but the industry thrives and the remaining workers still make an attractive living relative to the rest of the mfg world even if less than their formerly exorbinant union pay.