Seeds of Pittsburgh's Change Rooted in Steel's Decline

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In 1963, international economist Dr. Marina Whitman predicted the declining steel industry would force the reinvention of Pittsburgh.

History shows business and government leaders paid little attention to warnings from the then-University of Pittsburgh professor and other contributors to the Economic Study of the Pittsburgh Region published by the Pittsburgh Regional Planning Association. They shelved the study, which suggested that overspecialization in heavy manufacturing would someday spell disaster for an industrial labor force concentrated in large firms and living in small towns dependent upon one or two employers.

For more than 20 years afterward, the region …