It’s a very unique city with great bones— very walkable, fairly dense, and pretty culturally diverse for its size. Very significant architecture, a rich history, and a bright future. No real severe weather or natural disasters. Relatively affordable. Overall a great place to live.

Six degrees of separation is more like one or two degrees of separation here. It can be a pro and a con depending on how you look at it! Overall I love the feeling of closeness I have to other people, and the sense of community I have here.

Awesome! We are most likely moving in April if my wife gets the job.

I love the industrial history, the walkable downtown, and the access to the river and trails

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Any place you’re at, seeing the hills and layers of streets around you. My eyes get so bored in flat places.

The industrial history, architecture and being surrounded by water without the life threatening occurrence of hurricanes and nor’easters (for the most part). The public spaces and parks here are gorgeous compared to other places. I love almost everything about Pittsburgh except for the air quality issues.

What’s wrong with the air quality? Lots of allergies or something?

Tell me about it. We have been in Texas the past couple of years and cannot stand it. It’s so flat and ugly. Ready for something new.

The neighborhood structure. I know some other cities have it, but being able to have effectively a walkable small town where I am, and a 10 minute bus ride to the next neighborhood being essentially a "fun day out" is awesome. There's always more to explore, despite the city's small size, and you get to know the faces.

How is the driving there? Do most people use public trans?

Public transit is only good if you take the T from the south hills.

We have a Shell cracker plant to the west and Clairton coke plant to the south. They emit a lot of air pollutants and aren’t tightly regulated. Makes the air smell like industrial sulfur. You can find a lot about it on this sub by searching if you’re interested. There has been tons on it the last few months.

But it is the only thing I really have bad to say about Pittsburgh. Our roads are shite and full of potholes (and sometimes sinkholes) but I don’t mind rally karting around. They are working on this since Fern Hollow bridge collapsed.

Agh. I see.

Would you say traffic is pretty bad? How about a grocery store super packed?

East Busway is actually better but people love trains.

Traffic here is gloriously wonderful compared to other cities. It gets congested around rush hour but it’s tolerable. Most traffic is caused by construction more than volume or lack of thruways.

Tons of grocery stores. If you go during a Steelers game, you’ll be one of a few souls shopping. We have Aldi, TJ, WF, Giant has Giant Eagle and Market District and Shop N Save. No Wegmans, Safeway, Kroger, Harris Teeter. Giant Eagle has a monopoly here.

Pro and con: running into people I know every single day.

I can walk my dog any time I want without looking over my shoulder.

Nice! Sounds lovely :)

Too many good coffee shops.

Rick Sebak

What’s that lol

Cultural Trust

Yep. Two to three moves and we’ve had similar pals.

Slightly less grocery stores because we don’t have the major national stores like Kroger and Safeway. Pittsburgh is in a weird middle ground between the east coast and the Midwest so sometimes we can be late for national chains to locate here. Traffic is better than larger cities like Houston and Seattle but worse than smaller cities like Buffalo.

The steel mill emits sulfur witch stinks really bad but if you don’t live near it you won’t smell it. So many coal power plants have closed in the last ten years our rankings have improved greatly in the air quality categories such as soot and ozone. Many large cities have worse rankings. If you are interested in reading about it here is a ranking https://www.lung.org/research/sota/city-rankings/most-polluted-cities

Fave: gallery crawls and the craft markets on summer nights pre-COVId

Cons: public transport really depends on neighborhood in terms of reliability, it's sort of a medium sizes transport system. Also the cloudiness.

Pro: the parks & trails, especially riverfront trails Con: Not enough off-leash dog parks/dog bars

He’s a local documentarian on the PBS station. My wife and I are Pgh transplants — we spent an entire weekend watching a bunch of his documentaries shortly after moving here. We then had a list of interesting places and neighborhoods to explore. About 5 years later, we met him at an event. He is every bit as friendly IRL as he sounds in his programs. The man is a local treasure.

The great deals on homes. Especially out near/in The Senator elect area. Friggin getting them for pennies and renting them out to all the new Afghan and other refugees. Section 8 baby !! checks never bounce and the utilities always paid by Gov. 🙏 Thank God Trump was defeated.

He's a legend. Does local public broadcasting and is generally a really cool guy.

The trading card / comic book /video game scene here is pretty awesome and thriving.

Library!

Car was in the shop- took it earlier this week for the first time in a few months and this checks out (plus was very scenic what with the spray-coating of white from last weekend on everything)!

Compared to other places I’ve lived 100% the community, I love it and is a reason we are planning on buying a house here. So many conversations with random people, it’s great. I also love the culture,uniqueness of neighborhoods, and it being easy to get around. Negatives, It definitely feels small compared to somewhere like Philly, and pollution around the area.

All of the mattress stores.

Haha what

I second everything you said here!😊😊

If you live and work in the city, driving is easy IMO. There’s always another way to get where you’re headed if you run into a backup. Been living in the city for 20+ years and I never sit in traffic.

Buses are decent if you live in certain neighborhoods, but are terrible for many.

Cost of living, sports culture, general friendliness of everyone, and the great brewery/food scene.

Favorites have to be the food, the diverse culture, and honestly, the people. I just love the “family” feel of our city.

Cons would just be the weather at times, our professional baseball team, and travel/traffic at times. But, those are all things that aren’t that big a deal most of the time. Just my impatience. Haha!

The man!

Food and beverage scene comparable to any major US city. Maybe not as big, but just as good.

Ditto the music scene.

Easy to get around. Don't trash this unless you've tried navigating Chicago, SF, Seattle, NYC &c.

My house in the equivalent walkable neighborhood would cost 2-6 times as much in many other major US cities.

Most people aren't jagoffs.

Great universities.

Four seasons.

Cons? It gets cold. Boo-hoo. Airport isn't a hub, so flying can get pricey.

Housing prices.

Commute times and proximity to anything. Regardless of where you need to go it's never more than 25 minutes away. Going to IKEA is 25 minutes and that's considered "far".

Skyline and view from Mt Washington.

Cost of Living. Coming from the Greater Philadelphia area, it’s insane how affordable this region is.

When you combine the arts, amenities, sports, schools, architecture and people, it’s absolutely amazing that Pittsburgh doesn’t cost 2-3x more than it does. Seriously, it’s a total steal to live here.

Steel mills & cracker plants provide steel, NG, plastics & support to the economy. Where should we put these if not Pittsburgh. I worked in Pittsburgh area steel plant. Windmills & solar don't provide base load energy.

As someone fairly new to the area, something I've been loving is that there are so many kinds of people all just being themselves. There's a really unaffected uniqueness that I find super endearing and welcoming. I've lived in Austin and some other places that value their identity as "strange"/"weird" but I've never been someplace where that vibe was so free and un-self-conscious.

I don't know if it's because Pittsburgh itself kinda sits on the border of the Midwest, the Northeast, the Southeast, and Appalachia. Or if it's the history of philanthropy and all the culture supported here, or what. But it rules

Pro: the history, sports teams (hey bob nutting could you sell the buccos plz) and the topography is rad. Con: everyone moving here because of our “affordable cost of living” driving up our cost of living.

Tbf, the Steelers mill is 9 miles downwind of downtown, and the cracker plant is 33 miles west.

And if you see him on Babcock Blvd, assume he's lost.

It would be preferable to build them far from dense areas. I don’t know how far is good enough. It would also be preferable to update some of the more ancient parts of the mon valley works but that project was canceled a couple years ago. Nuclear can be used as base load source along with pumped storage hydro like the Niagara falls power plant. Windmills and solar can provide base load via batteries and hydrogen generation. Technology will continue to advance. Pittsburgh had sixty days out of epa compliance in 2000 and only about ten in 2020.

Leaving Texas in just over a week to move to the Pittsburgh area. Excited to be going back east. Texas was nice but you can drive a hour and still be in Houston. Tired of how flat and hot it is.

Coming from Austin. Can’t stand this place and really hoping my wife lands the job there. Sounds wonderful.

The History, the people, and its cheap enough to live here that when I get tired I still have money to leave for vacay.

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Love Jay walking Hate crosswalks

Don't live there anymore but when I did, what I liked: solid art and music scene for a city of its size, including cultural institutions like museums and operas that make it feel like a much larger city than it actually is; good walkable neighborhoods and business districts; nice park system; good # of gay bars with different vibes.

Disliked: can be hard to travel to and from bc the airport sucks; sense of provincialism (lotsa hometown pride from people who really just haven't traveled much); streets in most neighborhoods aren't vibrant after dark; housing stock overpriced in trendy neighborhoods (sorry but a Lawrenceville row house is still a Lawrenceville row house no matter how nicely designed on the inside).

How at the top of hills a few miles away you can see it! From my childhood home if you peer through the trees super far you could see the UPMC building! It’s a nice reminder you’re in Pittsburgh even when you aren’t in city lines

Pretty much everything.

Except the pirates.

The variety of great craft beer

I’m from Cleveland originally, and I didn’t realize how much I loved hills and valleys, didn’t realize what i had been missing all along was the comfort and coziness of terrain until i moved here. (BTW—no one describes this better than Annie Dillard in the first few pages of An American Childhood.)

Google is actually responsible for most of the smells. They have been planting what are known as "stupid tech nerd stink stations" all over town, spouting bad ideas, smells, and general uselessness all over the city. It's a real problem. They don't contribute to society in ay meaningful way, and now they're using the equivalent of the 1980s toy "stink'ums." Rumor has it they were upset that there wasn't literal human shit all over the streets like in San Francisco, so they're trying to recreate a comfortable environment for themselves. It's also why there is a rise in homelessness. Without people suffering all around them, Google just can't operate with efficiency. Human suffering is joy to the average tech worker.

Housing is inexpensive. Unless youre poor, which means it's expensive everywhere for you and thus not a Pittsburgh problem.

It’s just a low pressure place to live. The cost of living, the commutes, the people, it’s like someone just took a bit of pressure out of the tires. It’s a small big city. It has all, or at least most, of what people want in a big city, sports, museums, universities, proper urban areas, it has a lot of big city stuff while being small.

Cons are air quality, lots of cloudy rainy days, little if any population growth, low cultural diversity.

The rivers. I love the rivers. I’ve loved rivers since I was a kid. I like boating on them or just sitting on the bank watching them roll by. I also dig bridges. I know I could get both things elsewhere, but I’m already here.

Pros: Cost of living, you can actually afford to buy a house here, the size makes it easy to get anywhere in the city within like 30 min, plenty of hobbies to get involved with around the city, and the affordability of the city means you can probably actually afford to engage in those hobbies.

Cons: That house you can afford to buy is probably 100 years old making maintenance way more expensive, the geography makes the roads pretty bad, depending on the hobby you might only have one place or group to enjoy it with which could be a problem if there's a falling out, and I've heard it echoed in other threads that dating here can be difficult compared to larger cities like NYC or Chicago which I've personally found to be true.

Pro: Perpetual clouds

Con: Perpetual clouds

Is it very humid?

The one thing that I don’t like is the lack of main streets in suburbs. Having friends and family in Buffalo / Rochester, I like how most of their little towns have nice main streets with shops, and bars & restaurants.

I love the density of the city. I can take the bus and walk to so many different parts of the city. Makes living without a car much easier

Note: Giant and Giant Eagle are completely different companies

It can be, but not as bad as DC or the southeast. Not an everyday thing but on average, a few days a week in the summer are muggy but rarely too far above 90 degrees

Super chill and low key for a large city and I love the geographical location of Pittsburgh.

Google offices are in Mountain View which is a wealthy and clean suburb of San Fransisco. California has a lot of homeless people because they don’t have cold winters or hot summers.

9 miles downwind sounds like a lot but when there is an atmospheric inversion the sulfur smell makes its way into the east parts of the city

Ugh this thread is making me home sick 😪

I actually tend to like the hometown pride. Generations of people staying here because it's where they grew up and want their kids to do the same. You walk in the deli, you chitchat with someone and they knew your dad or your grandma. You know your neighbors because you care about your town. You open small businesses to fill a void or to help out. It's not something I ever want to give up, and I'd never name it a con

air quality

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes.

Plenty of inner ring Pittsburgh suburbs have main streets. It's just when you get further out that it becomes strip mall hell.

"It would be preferred to be put away from dense areas"? Okay who should work there then? I am familiar with the nuclear industry we can't build enough. Batteries currently cost too much.

I've lived in African countries for about 15 years. Thought I couldn't manage usa again due to the loneliness. But Pittsburgh proved me wrong. After buying a house here, I immediately knew all the neighbors, they now have keys after like a few weeks. And random strangers pause on the sidewalk to offer to help me carry things. A jogger stopped to help me load my car. Hell, a drunk woman in pajamas staggering down the sidewalk at 11pm one night stopped and said she was so "rude" for not offering to help me carry my 4 grocery bags. I adore this city. My current team in Uganda, who are like my family (and are Ugandan), have decided it's the only place they'll "allow" me to live in the USA as it's the only one they've heard of that meets their criteria of a place where people take care of each other appropriately. I've travelled to or worked in maybe 60 different countries. Lived in 4 different countries and 5 states in the USA. Pittsburgh is a gem like none other.

I saw that you’re in Austin. Before you leave you should spend some time in the hill country. It’ll make up for the drudgery of living in a hot and cramped city. On my days off I used to drive to Dripping Springs, Fredericksburg—hell, even just up and down 2222 for a change of scenery. But it’s nice to be living in hill country 24/7 now.

Pro- the view of the city when driving out of the Fort Pitt Tunnels.

Con- everything else about the Fort Pitt Tunnels.

i don't mind getting to experience all the different weather

I don't mind getting

To experience all the

Different weather

- cheeseguy412

^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^Learn more about me.

^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")

How many Niagara Falls are there? Let's be realistic people need energy, plastic & jobs. We all can't work from home.

I miss the Texas skies everyday when I’m in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh’s endless gray from December through March/April is truly depressing for me.

I love that there is a Jean Claude Van Damme flick set here.

Dripping Springs? God, why? I'm just thinking of all the roundabout backroads. Worst GPS route ever.

Lived in Fort Worth, and went to Texas State for college. I couldn't agree more.

I never had that experience. Although roundabout backroads sounds exactly like the kind of thing I would’ve been into on one of my joy rides.

Definitely could be. Though not so much on a "Are we flooded, or just really rainy today?" drive to a job interview

Haha, fair.

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Google has been (purportedly) smearing human feces onthe sidewalks of cities and towns all across the USA daily since they removed "don't be evil" from the mission statement.

The entire mon valley operation is 3000 people. It could be out in Washington or Westmoreland county. Whether Beaver county is far enough is more an issue of being upwind from the city instead of downwind. Just because I think heavy industry should be scrutinized and held to a high environmental standard doesn’t mean I think we can live without steel and plastic. Battery cost is rapidly decreasing and if you factor in healthcare costs of poor air quality from pollution from fossil fuels, it actually can save money in the long run. Obviously industry isn’t going to change overnight and it will take another 20 years to replace fossil fuels but it does seem a lot more possible than it did 20 years ago when when nickel cadmium and lead acid batteries were the best available.

You need medical help or a job writing for South Park but I’m not sure which

cheap

Grew up here and lived in Cleveland for several years. While the hills and valleys are nice here, I do miss the layout of Cleveland (especially when commuting). The nice thing is both cities are only two hours away, so if I miss something, I can just have a nice day trip

We're the next nice city outside of the megalopolis. The vibe here is very hustle and bustle, but not too demanding. It's a healthy balance. I've traveled the realm, and Pittsburgh is uniquely laid out. idk there really is just nothing else like Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh born and raised, I get extremely uncomfortable when I’m somewhere that’s super flat, like the middle of Ohio or Florida or somewhere like that

I grew up in Arlington!

Walking in the parks and around my neighborhood..

There will be frustrating things in the transition for sure, but I much prefer Pittsburgh

YES

Now I want to rewatch kids on the slope

The topography.

Secret routes that beat rush hour traffic.

The two weeks in October with clear skies and no humidity that the city looks its best.

Low cost of living.

Food scene that bats way above population size.

Absolutely absurd interactions with strangers. Chronic oversharing. Extreme and weird generosity and crankiness. Personalities and stories that seem fictional but aren't. There's some magical realism in the blood of this place.

Cons: I have heard from many transplants that the town feels insular and they have a hard time breaking in socially. I am friends with more than a few transplants and I feel like as long as you make friends normally at work and/or do an activity (climbing, etc.) and/or get involved in something (a church, the elks, whatever) it's not a problem. That said, I have heard it.

Pros: Wonderful parks. Walkable neighborhoods. Good restaurant options. Some nice old homes with character.
Cons: Air pollution. Travel between neighborhoods can be a PITA. Crap public transit. Pathological sports mania. Horrible humid summers. Mud-soaked winters when everything is gray and brown and looks like a World War I battlefield. Many ugly, run down neighborhoods covered in litter. Provincialism. Scary infrastructure.

As a life-long Pittsburgher, this makes me so happy to hear!

Aldi, tj, wf, giant eagle, community, and shop & save are basically the east end & bloomfield/lawrenceville. one's grocery store choices drop as soon as one is no longer between the rivers.

and to confirm giant does not own giant eagle.

Appreciation for libraries and welcoming library culture

25 minutes?! Lol try 45 or more

How about weather compared to Austin?

Unless I missed it, our grocery stores... excuse me... store isn't the best. Giant Eagle almost has a monopoly.

Though it has absolutely gotten better in recent years.

Self-described weird places are the worst, I lived in Portland before here, Brooklyn as well, the ppl are much better and more interesting here, no pretensions

Where do you live?

I live in the city, and I'm 25 minutes from literally anywhere worth going to. Only place that's further than 25 minutes is the airport and Cranberry, which is 30 minutes.

I love being able to just decide on a random week night that I want to go to the penguins game and (depending on who's playing) being able to get tickets for <$40 a pop. Before I lived in Pittsburgh, going to a game was like an annual treat and now it's just something I casually do fairly regularly.

pros: you get to eat some good food, you can brag to your british friends that your hometown is the reason why their beans exist, you get used to walking up hills

cons: bipolar weather, narrow ass roads, potholes, and the pittsburgh toilet

The parks! In the spring I spend hours in Schenley.

Low cultural diversity? Compared to where- one of my favorite things about living here is all of the different neighborhoods and ethnicities here...now if we could only get a decent Persian market 😀

Personally, I don't like Austin's heat. I also don't mind the gloom in Pittsburgh at all and enjoy when it's cold, so for me it's no contest

Yes. Very underrated part of Pittsburgh

The toilet?!

Could be worse at least your not in Houston!

I hate the heat so I’m excited for cooler weather. Spring and summer were all above the 100’s with intense humidity this year. It was really depressing just going from one building into the next and not being able to go outside really.

The food is better in Houston though! Plus they have museums. Austin doesn’t have much but bars and I don’t drink.

I’ve been to Houston and I wasn’t impressed by the food. There was a big emphasis on quantity over quality. It wasn’t bad but I was hoping for better creole and bbq. The brisket sandwich at Bucees was probably the best meal I had in Houston. There was a good pierogi restaurant which was a surprise. I was mostly on the east side of the city which is an industrial wasteland of oil refineries but Galveston island was a cool mini New Orleans and the Johnson space center is super cool. I didn’t make it to any of the museums but I wanted to. What kind of food do you like?

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They have better Asian food there and Indian. Everything is tacos here and the hot sauce is just way too spicy with no flavor. Not a fan of Texas BBQ it’s too sweet and smoky. I like a more vinegar based BBQ so like Kansas City style.

I really enjoy Asian, Ethiopian, Indian and a good burger and seafood. I’m not super picky at all to be honest.

Me too