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Comment by joeblau | Hacker News Reader

I moved to Pittsburgh a year and a half ago after living in SF for 5 years and I can say that I really love it here. Food is great, people are extremely friendly, and the town is just a great town to be in. I met a Pittsburgh native and I told him that I've noticed that parts of the city are getting "SFed." A few neighborhoods which no one would be caught dead in 5-10 years ago are suddenly bustling with tech company tees from google, uber, duolingo, ibm, amazon, apple and others. Pittsburghers are very prod of their city, as they should be. I just hope it doesn't reach the level of discourse that we've seen in San Francisco.

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Every city in the country has the potential to "SF'ed" - zoning laws make it so. If there is one place we would actually benefit from deregulation (as a country) it would be in eliminating zoning regulation. The places that need it most are the places that attract tech-boomification [sic] (Oakland is another example). A solution would be to encourage even growth across a city through targeting neighborhoods with inclusive development from a fungible pot of funds from the new revenues. This, coupled with expedited approvals and (not-yet-create) anti-NIMBY laws could make shit awesome for every one.

Can you speak to Pittsburgh's zoning policies? SF makes it nearly impossible to add a significant number of new housing units because the zoning policies don't allow less dense housing to be replaced with larger, taller apartment buildings. Hopefully Pittsburgh isn't like that.

It is not. I am a fourth generation Pittsburgh native. The bigger problem is the NIMBYs in SF that vote for things like "zoning policies" to protect the value of their houses. This situation is a very uniquely San Francisco one. The vast majority of houses in Pittsburgh aren't million dollar homes (yet) so this NIMBY-ism just doesn't happen.

It goes without saying that ludicrous regulations like "historically protected" homes that you can't remodel without bribing the city and trees on your property that you don't own (the city owns) that exist in SF don't exist in Pittsburgh.

On another note, the nice thing about Pittsburgh is that you don't have such an oppressively high cost of living compared to SF. You don't have $10 toast here, and you can rent a 1 bdr apartment for the cost of renting a single parking spot for your car in SF. Every single cost from utilities to parking to insurance for your car is a significant fraction of the equivalent cost in SF.

I was about to comment "no way, Pittsburgh also has the $10 toast"... but then looking around to the place I used to go to, I realize it's more like $4-$5 (see http://www.coca-cafe.net/breakfast.php or https://www.facebook.com/B52PGH/menu/). Wow, I left Pittsburgh for NYC just two years ago and my frame of reference has already completely switched...

I pay 450 in rent (with roomates) take the incline and walk to my job downtown and certainly spend less than 10 dollars for lunch that isn't toast. You can live in Pittsburgh comfortably incredibly cheaply.

Pittsburgh also has a lot of underdeveloped waterfront real estate and still has room to develop in a lot of areas within an hour (or closer) drive of downtown. Over the last 20 years, a lot of areas that used to be mills (all along the waterfronts) have become entertainment areas (restaurants, movie theaters, shops, and bars) with mid-sized apartment buildings or town houses that are in close proximity to them. Over the last 5 years, it has become more popular to live in downtown proper too. There are a lot of areas that have gone from being not very populated to places people want to live with great school districts. The one thing I wish we would fix would be public transportation. Unless you are trying to get downtown, public transit is essentially useless, especially when trying to get to the other side of the city. There are very few bus routes that run late at night and the rail system essentially only services those who live in the South Hills.

Getting around by bus is both inconvenient and expensive, public transit needs more funding here.

How's the bike infrastructure? I get around pretty much everywhere in Manhattan and Brooklyn by bike; I only take public transit a few times per month.

Also, I imagine the winters there can be harsh.

As much as I love it here, we got our share of problems. Winter is rough and so is the biking situation, due to bridge related reasons. However the city is very good at dealing with the bad weather and the current powers that be have been doing a lot to make infrastructure more bike friendly.

What are the bridge-related issues? You appear to have a lot more bridges than Manhattan<->Brooklyn, which is nice.

Is it the lack of proper bike lanes on the bridges?

Yes. The incredible amount of bridges (most anywhere) makes it so a lot of roadways, be it the bridges themselves or just general weirdness begat from building roads in a river valley, are super not safe for bikers.

I have a biased view on this (I briefly biked competitively), so take it with a mild grain of salt, but it's pretty much fine if you can be an assertive cyclist. Some of the bridges you have to be very assertive about owning your lane -- particularly the highland park bridge, to get to areas north/northeast of the city. From downtown to the north side, there are several bike-friendly bridges: The Clemente, Warhol, and Rachel Carson bridges all have sidewalks. To the south side, the Smithfield bridge has a very large (and very popular) sidewalk, and the newly renovated Hot Metal bridge has a dedicated bike span.

It's solid and improving. We're a one car family (two working parents and a young child). We put maybe 2500 miles per year on our car, much of that on longer trips out of the city. Between walking, biking, and public transit, it's good. Having some kind of car available is still more useful than I wish it was, though.

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