When my youngest child was just three years old, we traveled south for a vacation. Packed into our station wagon, the five of us stopped on a Saturday night in North Carolina, where someone asked where we “were from.” The three-year-old said confidently, “We’re from America.” Today, when that three-year-old, who travels widely as a consultant and speaker, is asked to identify “where he is from,” he typically says, “Pittsburgh.” But he’s not; that is, neither he nor we ever lived within the boundaries of Pittsburgh. Yet, what he says is not a lie; we are, as southwestern Pennsylvanians, as much “from Pittsburgh” as are those who live in the urban center. And for various reasons.
First, like so many others who live near, but not in cities, we identify with an economic center. Second, as in much of the country, we identify with sports teams, specifically with the Steelers and Pirates, and also with a major university football team, the Pitt Panthers. Third, many in the area identify by companies located within or on the periphery of the city. At one time, those companies were the massive steel mills that employed tens of thousands. And at the heart of the downtown district in the pre-and post-WWII, lay a central shopping district with three very large department stores that anchored hundreds of other businesses—all, for the most part, now long gone. Fourth, the city houses the local TV stations and major theaters, as well as museums, major hospitals, research universities, revitalized neighborhoods, and traditional bar and restaurant agglomerations: The South Side, the Strip District, and a number of other popular spots from Shadyside to the North Side. Pittsburgh draws the allegiance of western Pennsylvanians. In that sense, my three-year-old now grown up is “from Pittsburgh.”
Anyway, isn’t it just easier to say “I’m from Pittsburgh” instead of saying, “I’m from some town you never heard of that lies in a region generally known as southwestern Pennsylvania”? Dotted by villages and townships plus some actual “towns” and “boroughs,” the region has one overriding identity: Pittsburgh. And the same, I dare say, can be said for other regions: Chicago, Atlanta, Savannah, etc. When the place where one lives has no national significance, then the closest place with such significance becomes the center.
There is a large body of literature that centers on urban centers. The sociology of cities is replete in hypotheses and theories, some of them purely numerical analyses of why cities use the space they confine and house the people they house. Much of that literature is at best esoteric, using statistical models that do not seem to capture the life of those who live in cities or associate their identities with them.
And that makes me think of an argument I once had with a sociologist. He said, following a model of cities he favored, that medieval European cities were walled with a central large structure, the cathedral. It was that wall and that dominant structure that defined the personality of the people: It’s how they identified as being “from” somewhere. He then argued that the modern city was amorphous, the product of suburban development enhanced by commuting that decentralized life that was once limited to the walkable city neighborhoods. No longer, he argued, could one identify with a city center, a major plaza, or a majestic cathedral.
To which I responded with a single word: Steelers. Not that I might put professional football and a stadium at the heart of a city—though the stadium in Pittsburgh is, in fact, a “heart”—but symbolically, the football stadium and the baseball stadium are both “in the heart” of the city. In other words, whereas my friend saw suburban development as a dissolution of the centripetal forces that make a city a “center,” I saw a cathedral replacement in the symbolic center. That one can easily find as many if not more people focused on a Sunday on the Steelers as are focused on a local cathedral, is indicative that a city is more than a walled space with only those contained within labeled as “from Pittsburgh.” And the “cathedral” of sports casts a shadow over communities far and wide: One can find a “Steeler bar” in Reno, Nevada, and fans of the city’s team in other communities both in and outside the country. Pittsburgh isn’t a walled city. It’s a symbolic center. The stadium is, as St. Peters in Rome is for Catholics, a center that holds.
As the steel mills failed in the 1970s and 1980s, Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods also failed. Where pride in the community declined with a declining population, disrepair became the signature feature punctuated by occasional attempts to revitalize. But a bit too late, I might add. The suburbanization of the region had begun. Yes, the region became physically amorphous by comparison to the city of the pre-and-post-war years, but it had retained a loyalty among the suburbanites so much so that they still identify as being, in the eyes of outsiders, “from Pittsburgh.”
And now, especially after a pandemic and the development of cyberspace, the center is changing again for those once located within city boundaries. Is the concept of a “city” undergoing another change? Remember the emigration of New Yorkers during the pandemic? Will they return physically, or will they reconnect to the city via Zoom or some other cyber mechanism? Do those who leave carry their city-identity with them forever? Is a "brand new Floridian" just an "ex-New Yorker"?
Pittsburgh still attracts suburbanites because it has retained theaters and restaurants, sports teams and universities, museums and boutique shops. It still runs festivals that attract “outsiders.” But it isn’t the city it was of a half century ago. Yet, in its difference, it somehow still centers identities of western Pennsylvanians and emigrants to other parts of the nation. It is a center that “holds.”
This leads me to ask you, “Where are you from?”
First, like so many others who live near, but not in cities, we identify with an economic center. Second, as in much of the country, we identify with sports teams, specifically with the Steelers and Pirates, and also with a major university football team, the Pitt Panthers. Third, many in the area identify by companies located within or on the periphery of the city. At one time, those companies were the massive steel mills that employed tens of thousands. And at the heart of the downtown district in the pre-and post-WWII, lay a central shopping district with three very large department stores that anchored hundreds of other businesses—all, for the most part, now long gone. Fourth, the city houses the local TV stations and major theaters, as well as museums, major hospitals, research universities, revitalized neighborhoods, and traditional bar and restaurant agglomerations: The South Side, the Strip District, and a number of other popular spots from Shadyside to the North Side. Pittsburgh draws the allegiance of western Pennsylvanians. In that sense, my three-year-old now grown up is “from Pittsburgh.”
Anyway, isn’t it just easier to say “I’m from Pittsburgh” instead of saying, “I’m from some town you never heard of that lies in a region generally known as southwestern Pennsylvania”? Dotted by villages and townships plus some actual “towns” and “boroughs,” the region has one overriding identity: Pittsburgh. And the same, I dare say, can be said for other regions: Chicago, Atlanta, Savannah, etc. When the place where one lives has no national significance, then the closest place with such significance becomes the center.
There is a large body of literature that centers on urban centers. The sociology of cities is replete in hypotheses and theories, some of them purely numerical analyses of why cities use the space they confine and house the people they house. Much of that literature is at best esoteric, using statistical models that do not seem to capture the life of those who live in cities or associate their identities with them.
And that makes me think of an argument I once had with a sociologist. He said, following a model of cities he favored, that medieval European cities were walled with a central large structure, the cathedral. It was that wall and that dominant structure that defined the personality of the people: It’s how they identified as being “from” somewhere. He then argued that the modern city was amorphous, the product of suburban development enhanced by commuting that decentralized life that was once limited to the walkable city neighborhoods. No longer, he argued, could one identify with a city center, a major plaza, or a majestic cathedral.
To which I responded with a single word: Steelers. Not that I might put professional football and a stadium at the heart of a city—though the stadium in Pittsburgh is, in fact, a “heart”—but symbolically, the football stadium and the baseball stadium are both “in the heart” of the city. In other words, whereas my friend saw suburban development as a dissolution of the centripetal forces that make a city a “center,” I saw a cathedral replacement in the symbolic center. That one can easily find as many if not more people focused on a Sunday on the Steelers as are focused on a local cathedral, is indicative that a city is more than a walled space with only those contained within labeled as “from Pittsburgh.” And the “cathedral” of sports casts a shadow over communities far and wide: One can find a “Steeler bar” in Reno, Nevada, and fans of the city’s team in other communities both in and outside the country. Pittsburgh isn’t a walled city. It’s a symbolic center. The stadium is, as St. Peters in Rome is for Catholics, a center that holds.
As the steel mills failed in the 1970s and 1980s, Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods also failed. Where pride in the community declined with a declining population, disrepair became the signature feature punctuated by occasional attempts to revitalize. But a bit too late, I might add. The suburbanization of the region had begun. Yes, the region became physically amorphous by comparison to the city of the pre-and-post-war years, but it had retained a loyalty among the suburbanites so much so that they still identify as being, in the eyes of outsiders, “from Pittsburgh.”
And now, especially after a pandemic and the development of cyberspace, the center is changing again for those once located within city boundaries. Is the concept of a “city” undergoing another change? Remember the emigration of New Yorkers during the pandemic? Will they return physically, or will they reconnect to the city via Zoom or some other cyber mechanism? Do those who leave carry their city-identity with them forever? Is a "brand new Floridian" just an "ex-New Yorker"?
Pittsburgh still attracts suburbanites because it has retained theaters and restaurants, sports teams and universities, museums and boutique shops. It still runs festivals that attract “outsiders.” But it isn’t the city it was of a half century ago. Yet, in its difference, it somehow still centers identities of western Pennsylvanians and emigrants to other parts of the nation. It is a center that “holds.”
This leads me to ask you, “Where are you from?”
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