Pittsburgh is the 15th-Best City in America for Millennials, According to Millennials
Half a million college students can’t be wrong.
Illustration by Cecilia Sánchez
The ’Burgh’s recent tech boom has been a welcome answer for the city’s post-steel economic blues. But the influx of techies raises new question: Where can all these transplants live?
According to the 25 Best Cities and Neighborhoods for Millennials survey, the answer is Shadyside.
To arrive at these conclusions, Niche — a number-crunching advice website that evolved from College Prowler, founded in 2002 by Carnegie Mellon University students — looked at census data on diversity, the percentage of residents aged 25- to 34-years-old, crime rates and figures on median income and rent in cities. The rankings also took into account quality of life surveys from more than 500,000 college students.
Pittsburgh ranked No. 15 overall, beating out big cities such as Los Angeles, Atlanta and New Orleans.
Niche used similar figures to choose the best neighborhood for millennials within the city. But anyone who’s ventured to Walnut Street on a weekend wouldn’t need fancy math to see that the area attracts graduate students and young professionals.
While Pittsburgh’s lower-than-average crime rates didn’t hurt, our low cost of living probably played a big role in getting us a spot in Niche’s rankings: At $672, Pittsburgh’s median rent is almost $100 less than Indianapolis, the next-cheapest city on the list — and both Rust Belt towns are far more affordable than the $1,000-plus rent of front runners New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
Are you a Millennial who wants to move to Pittsburgh? Niche is hiring.
#Sports: Penguins Nation is larger than we thought
The sports nuts over the The Bleacher Report culled Facebook Like data to come up with this map of NHL fandom across North America. Turns out Penguins Nation extends to a large part of the Eastern seaboard.
It’s a great day for hockey in West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and large swaths of Canada!
#Art: Lawrenceville couple puts residence up for sale — but first asks a local artist to paint a mural on a blank wall
Kim Patterson and her partner, Dena Hofkosh, knew they were going to renovate their red-brick duplex when they bought it. But they faced a problem new floors couldn’t assuage.
“It had this big, blank wall,” Patterson says. “It just seemed like we needed a mural.”
Patterson asked around about local artists and found Jeremy Raymer, the genius behind the tribute to organic eating inside Marty’s Market.
The exterior wall of the 42nd Street property that faces Butler Street, Lawrenceville’s busy main drag, is now anything but blank. Raymer made the finishing touches to his mural Sunday; the piece is there to remind passersby about some of Lawrenceville’s history.
On the wall of Patterson’s property, the outline of the Doughboy Square War Memorial frames Stephen Foster, the 19th-century composer known as the “father of American music” and son of Lawrenceville’s founder.
Raymer says he painted the mural in white and then coated it in a polyurethane finish, giving it a glossier look than the surrounding brick.
He says he took inspiration from the work of Alexandre Farto, a Portuguese street artist also known as Vhils, even if their styles are different — Vhils often carves murals directly into walls.
“It will catch your eye but not necessarily grab your attention and be really loud,” Raymer says of the Foster mural. “Everything blended in. It’s kind of a subtle piece.”
Now that she is trying to sell the house, Patterson hopes its next owner will keep the new addition: “We took a big risk, hoping that whoever buys the house will like it,” she says.
