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Pittsburgh knows all about recessions. This city was left for dead when steel and heavy manufacturing were smothered by globalization that started some 20 years ago. Pittsburgh never had a housing boom. How could it, when a quarter of the population evaporated when the jobs did? Pittsburgh's finances were so awful that it became a virtual ward of the state in 2003. Is your burg afraid of losing airline service? USAir's business crashed here in 2002. The spacious airport is half empty on a Sunday...
...will it get? The answer depends in large part on how local economies like Pittsburgh's adapt. And here's a surprise: for a metropolis synonymous with America's declining industrial might, the no-longer Steel City seems in a better position to withstand a downturn than many other places...
...Bending Steel...
That in turn has created opportunities for the specialty high-value metals that Allegheny Technologies (ATI) makes. "We have manufacturing operations that no one else has," says spokesman Dan Greenfield. The company handles specialty alloys such as titanium and zirconium, as well as grain-oriented electrical steel used in the energy, power and aerospace industries. ATI is spending $1.16 billion over four years to improve its capability to do the most difficult metal rolling, which should preserve the 2,900 ATI jobs in the area. That funding is expected to be internally generated, so ATI doesn't have to worry...
Most important, Pittsburgh has diversified its economy to replace the lost jobs of thousands of steelworkers. To get a real sense of that transformation, go to the CEO's perch on the 62nd floor of the U.S. Steel building--a floor that sat empty for seven years. "What made Pittsburgh great is exporting the steel that it made, and the money came back," says Jeffrey Romoff. Understand, Romoff does not work for U.S. Steel, which has been doing fine, mind you. Instead, he's the CEO of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), the thriving $7 billion health-care...