Maybe Pittsburgh-Rich is Rich Enough

by Joshua Michtom

Further to Mike’s post about how much money people think they need to feel rich, and my own recent suggestion that we learn to be content with more modest artistic achievements, here is a synthesis of reasons why maybe you shouldn’t move to New York or San Francisco.

The article’s a little bit scattershot, and it gets confusing when comparing Austin, New York, and Pittsburgh while quoting Richard Florida (whose name is a place!), but here’s the TL;DR: Brooklyn and other traditional go-to places for those in search of artistic ferment are so expensive that creative people are finally willing to settle for a place like Pittsburgh, “where you can have a part-time job at a coffee shop, still afford a mortgage payment and be able to go out once a week.”

I’m guessing that bit about the mortgage is hyperbole, but the point stands: New York-poor is not just Pittsburgh-rich, it’s practically-everywhere-else-rich. So the questions that remain are, (1) is it enough to flourish creatively in Pittsburgh? and (2) are Pittsburgh, Hartford, Omaha, and all the other as-yet-ungentrified, small, post-industrial cities simply farther down the list of places that capitalism will ultimately embrace, devour, and make inaccessible to people of modest means?

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