Past Perfect

[ornoth]

When I moved from Boston to Pittsburgh, one of my friends was interested in how the two cities differed. After living here for a year, I now feel like I can make some somewhat informed contrasts.

Here’s my list of the top twenty differences between Boston and Pittsburgh.

• Time is a little bit different. Pittsburgh is a little further south than Boston, so its days are a little longer in the winter and shorter in the summer. But more importantly, Boston is at the eastern edge of the time zone, while Pittsburgh is at the western end; so the sun rises and sets about 30-45 minutes later.
• Pittsburgh doesn’t get Boston’s cold onshore sea breezes in the spring. On the other hand, Boston doesn’t get Pittsburgh’s periodic light lake effect snow.
• There aren’t many evergreens in western Pennsylvania. It’s mostly hardwood, unlike New England.
• Obviously Pittsburgh is hillier, but the soil is also different. Boston is granite and glacial till, whereas Pittsburgh is all sedimentary rock: visible strata of limestone, sandstone, and shale, a whopping three miles deep!
• Surprisingly, western PA has a lot fewer lakes than New England. Most rainfall winds up coursing down narrow canyons and into the major rivers.
• Because of this lack of natural reservoirs to trap and hold rainwater and snow melt, combined with the steepness and softness of the underlying rock, western PA is very prone to flash flooding and debris in the roads. The only time New England floods is during spring runoff, and that rarely washes debris into the roadways.
• Aside from its tiny downtown, Pittsburgh is a much less walkable city. Distances between points of interest are greater, and the outlying towns don’t have dense commercial or cultural centers, so it’s mostly undifferentiated sprawl.
• As such, Pittsburgh is a much more car-oriented city. There’s no subway, no commuter rail, and minimal public transportation. The automobile is a necessity here, whereas they are a liability in Boston.
• Despite that, the landscape and street design makes it stunningly difficult to get from Point A to Point B in Pittsburgh. Unlike Boston, where you can pick between several bad routes, there’s usually only one way for Pittsburghers to get where they need to go. That in turn creates horrible blighted sections of roadway like Bigelow, Liberty, Washington Boulevard, Second, Fifth, Penn, Carson, Ft. Duq, 51, and BotA.
• Because of the poorly-designed infrastructure, and Penn DOT’s unconcealed hostility toward accommodating cyclists and pedestrians, there are fewer road cyclists in Pittsburgh, and more of them are killed by motorists than happen in Boston, where government is more responsive and the cycling and pedestrian advocacy groups are better organized.
• Between that and the lumpy terrain, there aren’t as many century rides in western PA as there are back in Massachusetts.
• Pittsburgh does have a ton of railroads and former railroad and mill property. There’s a lot more post-industrial wasteland than you find in Boston, where most of it has already been cleaned up and redeveloped. In that sense, Pittsburgh is more like Lawrence MA, only on a vastly larger scale.
• There’s certainly more poverty, abandoned and/or condemned property, and overall urban blight in Pittsburgh. Property values are too high in Boston for space to sit unused and uncared-for very long.
• There does seem to be a greater rate of crime, murder, and drug problems in Pittsburgh, as well.
• There are, of course, certain neighborhoods in Pittsburgh that are gentrifying, but it’s decades behind Boston in rehabilitating itself overall. Tho they’ve made a lot of progress from their industrial past.
• In addition to property prices being lower, salaries are also much lower in Pittsburgh than Boston, which has always been a tech hub. On the other hand, groceries in Boston are considerably less expensive than western PA.
• There’s less ethnic diversity in Pittsburgh than Boston. Sure, there are some small enclaves, but Boston is far more integrated than Pittsburgh, with a greater variety and diffusion of immigrants from all kinds of ethinic origins.
• At the same time, western PA has a whole lot more uneducated, low income white folk. The substantial redneck population reminds me a lot more of rural Maine than cosmopolitan Boston.
• Pittsburgh might be widely known for its food, but I find it pretty uninspired. Their signature pizza places don’t even deliver! Frankly, I don’t know how they stay in business, because delivery makes up the majority of most pizza joints’ orders. Oh, and they call them “cuts”, not “slices”. Stupid.
• On the other hand, Verizon doesn’t sell its Fios fiber optic internet service in Boston. It does in Pittsburgh, and that’s a noteworthy plus!