Outside Erie

The New York Times had a neat piece recently on the fact that Pittsburgh’s death rate exceeds its birth rate.
“What demographers call a natural decrease has been occurring for years in tiny rural towns and in some retirement meccas in the South,” the Times writes. “But the phenomenon is relatively new in metropolitan areas in […]

This has nothing to do with the debate going on here, but I have a reading assignment for you.
If you have a few minutes go read Ashley Weber’s Green Apple post today.
It will be worth the couple of minutes out of your day.

In case you haven’t yet seen it, I’d like to point out Sunday’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story on Erie in advance of the April 22 primary.
Writer Mackenzie Carpenter does a great job of providing context and painting a three-dimensional picture of the community. After some of the drive-by attempts at profiling the community by other media […]

The groundswell of discussion concerning the future of Great Lakes cities such as Erie is rising pretty rapidly.
We’ve written in the past that there is a gathering of Rust Belt/Great Lakes bloggers planned in Erie in July to talk about ways to use our blogs to promote growth and change in our region.
But there is […]

I heard the news on the radio this morning about the passing of former Pittsburgh Steelers announcer Myron Cope.
Cope was best known by Steelers followers and sports fans for his distinctive voice and for inventing the Terrible Towel.
But he also had strong ties to Erie — working as a sportswriter for the old Daily Times.
I’m […]

Jim Russell over at Burgh Diaspora has been spending a lot of time lately asking some important questions about the potential value of setting up formal partnerships between Rust Belt communities that would help further economic growth throughout the region.
Like we have here at GlobalErie, Russell has long seen value in tapping into expatriates who […]

The calls for an organized effort to bring together thinkers in Erie and other Rust Belt enclaves such as Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Cleveland, and Buffalo is on.
And Erie looks like the central place for having that discussion.
As I’ve stated earlier, GlobalErie would love to play a key role in making this effort happen and in helping […]

An idea is getting thrown around by Janko, the blogger behind i will shout youngstown, to play host to a regional gathering of Rust Belt bloggers in Erie.

The idea is to get together thinkers in cities like Youngstown, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Erie, and Buffalo to talk about ways to discuss strategies to help each of these […]

Yesterday’s post on the potential renaissance of urban areas — and a corresponding decline of the suburbs — generated quite a healthy discussion.
But it seems this isn’t the only venue in which such discussions are taking place.
The Pittsburgh blog Null Space has a link to a recent piece by Inman Real Estate News that […]

GlobalErie reader and Just Thinking Out Loud writer Matthew Stewart agreed to head down to Pittsburgh yesterday to sit in on a town hall-style meeting on the state of U.S. manufacturing.
The host of the meeting was John Ratzenberger — the actor and host of the cable show “Made in America”.
Here’s what Stewart had to say […]