From Steel To Tech, Pittsburgh Transforms Itself

Some people still call Pittsburgh the Steel City.

But with an unemployment rate nearly 2 percentage points lower than the national average, 1,600 technology companies and a growing population — the city has largely moved on from its industrial roots.

Still, during the early postwar years, it produced half the country's steel and a lot of its soot.

"It was so bad that you had to have the streetlights turned on at noon for a number of days during the winter and fall," says Joel Tarr, a history professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

That was no way to live, and the city's future was as murky as the pollution gripping it. But in this period, a surprising coalition called the Allegheny Conference on Community Development formed to clean things up. Leaders from business, universities, nonprofits and government joined together to create smog controls and clean-water rules.

Even so, when Steve Lee came to Pittsburgh in the early 1970s to attend Carnegie Mellon, steel production was still taking a toll.

"And I'd come to school at the end of summer vacation, and for two weeks my eyes would run," he says. "I'd have a sore throat from all the junk that was in the air."

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