c2check

Washington DC or Boston, perhaps?

I guess Boston or Cleveland

It's PITTSBURGH!!! The South Side to be exact! One of my favorite places :-)

Yes, that's definately DC

No, the biggest eyesore is defniately the J Edgar Hoover building (says the architecture student in DC) :-p And the Pentagon is ok but its in a crappy place, (ie in the middle of a big parking lot and stuff). The Watergate is out of place but its not too bad. Ok onward...

The Pentagon (it would be the "biggest" indeed) or the FBI Building (which is most certianly an eyesore!)

Pittsburgh: Universtiy of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, the 2nd tallest educational building in the world (next to Moscow Univ.) and a beautiful piece of neo-gothicism HH Richardson's Allegheny Country Courthouse & Jail Here it is with the City/County building as well Pittsburgh has lots of bridges, more than anywhere else in America and perhaps the world (stats are disuputed) so they're all landmarks in their own right: East Liberty Presbyterian which is just enormous The USX Tower (at right), the tallest in Pittsburgh one of the tallest buildings in the US, as well as the neo-neo-gothic PPG Place (the one with all the spires at left) And finally, the whole shabang with the Duquesne incline in the forebround [Please stay within the 800 x 600 limit] Marc

Pittsburgh needs to stop building far from the city, and concentrate development of Allegheny county (the one the city's in). People have to move back to the city. We need to increase housing density and use sustainable, smart, mixed developemnt. No new suburban developments. Install incentives for people and companies to move to the city to make public transport more efficient.

And Piran, Slovenia

Pittsburgh!!! I guess that should be enough :-) [Please keep all images within the 800 x 600 limit] Marc

Berlin's is nice...they have a lot of stuff, and it's cheap, fairly clean, and quite efficient. 9 U-Bahn lines that run through a nice and compact city center...some stations are very nice,.. though others can just be average or not too nice, but still not bad. They also have 15 S-Bahn (commuter rail) lines which run further out into the area around the city...it's also good for traveling inside the city, but can take you nice and far away to other towns or even forest-y areas. Then they have trams which run pretty extensively through the former east. And of course also the normal DeutscheBahn, inter-city rail. A lot of their stations are, like I said, pretty nice. The Hauptbahnhof is not only beautiful, but it's really a happening place with lots of shops and tons of people on many levels, serving the DB and S-Bahn, and soon, the U-bahn too with an extension set to open this year. Berlin's system is pretty great...most people have no need for a car at all

Fine, whatever. Just stop comparing Pgh (or anywhere else) to NYC. Try to understand what the city is, why it is like it is, and appreciate what is good. Not everywhere is perfect, but every city is special and has something to teach about architecture and urbanism. Even Cleveland (probably). It's all about genus loci :-p

MstrViolinist2: You can't even begin to compare NYC to Pgh. So don't try. I'm an architecture student too. So I also know a bit about such things. I guess we have different viewpoints a bit :-p To begin, I've at least been to Berlin. I thought it would be a utopian city of efficiency. Not so much. Filthy in many parts, covered with graffiti, broken glass, and urine, very near the city center. (that gave it a bit of charachter in any case) Rome and Paris I've also heard are pretty dirty. I've been to New Orleans. Filthy (and not just from the hurricaine). Boston..well boston was ok in most parts. DC: you have rich, overpriced places that are nice, and then filthy crime-ridden stinkholes like in NE where my uni is. Parts of Philly were the same. The rivers smell? If you say so. Maybe I've gotten used to it. And we can't swim in them? Do you swim in the Hudson? (probably not unless you're dead) Washingtonians in the Patomac? (they've found some mutated fish in the Potomac...they're male AND female. Hm. Clean there, eh?) Do Parisians swim in the Siene or Romans in the Tiber? Pittsurgh is overgrown? Now it's like half the size it was 30 years ago. If anything, it's undergrown now. The problem is that the area is still following the national trend of spreading outwards...so while we're not gaining population, we're moving further away. Americans boggle my mind. Freaking suburbs. It's not just Pgh either. Main route into the city? I don't fully understand this one...explain. New architecture is boring. Ok..agreed. ;-) There's not much of it. Though things like the Convention center, PPG place, Children's museum additions are pretty cool. And the new building on CMU's campus looks pretty cool too (I love CMU's campus...I think it's so well-planned and beautiful for the most part) Busses: pittsburgh has a LOT of bus servie compared to other cities its size. I seriously have no clue how because it's so inefficient I don't know what to do with myself. Again, I guess you're used to tje 24hr subway and mutlitude of busses available in NYC. It also seems you haven't visited many other cities similar to Pgh. Although, admittedly, neither have I really, but from what I've read things in Pgh aren't all that bad relatively. Driving should be easy in DC. I mean, it was planned, is a grid, and has "convenient" diaganals as "short cuts" across town. Nope. You have to go in more cirlcles around that place to get where you wanna go than anywhere. Everywhere is one-way and it's never marked, or you assume you can turn somewhere and you can't. Anyhow, Pittsburgh has a challenging landscape and we've done our best. It's not THAT hard. Plus, we're generally friendly drivers, unlike Virginia, Boston...etc. You don't understand the Pgh "culture" I suppose...there are stories upon stories of people forced from Pgh due to lack of work who yearn to return. I don't think any other city has such an emotional attatchment to it. I can't tell you why entirely...but it's there evidently. Evidently you just can't appreciate somplace that's different from the 24/7 hustle of NYC (no offense). I much prefer it to DC: you either have rich snooty bastardous senators, lawyers, etc; the intern who moves to DC for a few years and makes no roots; or the poor NE/SE black family who has to pay $300,000 for a house in the ghetto. AND there's no kolbasy, halusky, etc!! AND I NEED THAT!!! That and polka :-p Pittsburgh's not the world's best city. But it's not THAT bad!! Seriously! Stop expecting it to be New York and enjoy the view B-) Although you're probably in studio all the time anyhow, so what's it matter to you!?!

From a local newspaper i think: "Pittsburgh itself is a small city (2,385,695 people called the city home in 2002). It might be more helpful, though, to think about Pittsburgh as a big small-town, a perspective you'll understand as soon as the clerk at Co-Go's calls you "hun". Be prepared to throw away any misconceptions about the Steel City. While Pittsburgh is proud of its industrial past, it's now a national financial and technological center. (The city has more doctoral scientists and engineers per capita than Boston, L.A., or San Francisco.) The food throws some newcomers: french fries on sandwiches, french fries on salads. The driving habits throw others: when a light turns green, watch for the car facing you to take a Pittsburgh left across what you might have assumed was your right-of-way. Then again, drivers are so friendly here that they will actually let you merge without taking off the rear half of your car. Pittsburgh accents and language take their share of potshots. (eg. Win yinz go t' tahn, watch fer the sputzies in Market Square n'at.) It gets easier after the 100th visit to the Jynt Iggle! And the weather's nothing to brag about: only Seattle has fewer days of sunshine. But it doesn't take most people long to fall in love with the place. Not only does the city have personality, it has character. One of the local television stations recently ran an honesty test on Pittsburghers. Fifteen wallets -- with cash -- were dropped around town. Guess how many were returned, contents intact? All of em. Welcome to the Burgh!"

Oh, MstrViolinist2: If you hate tiny, winding streets, cars parked on both sides, hills, and people who would die for their sports teams, you must hate Italy, Spain, Germany... yes, Europe is full of god-forsaken crapholes indeed! And Pittsburgh (at least inside the city, except the Hill) is very beautiful if you ask me. The parks are really nice too. I miss them a lot, even with the Mall in DC...it's just not the same. The people are great...you don't get the friendly old lady from Penn Mac or the old Greek guy at Stambooli's getting your cheese or meat or whatever in DC...and if you did, it would cost 3x more.