G-20 shows off reinvented city

PITTSBURGH - Andy Warhol never hid his feelings about his hometown.

"He didn't like Pittsburgh one bit," said Thomas Sokolowski, director of the Andy Warhol Museum, which features seven floors of Marilyn Monroes, Brillo boxes, and other iconic works by the pop artist. "He always told people he came from nowhere."

Now Pittsburgh is about to get what its native son famously said everyone deserves: 15 minutes of fame. President Obama and leaders of the other Group of 20 nations arrive tomorrow for a two-day summit aimed at ending financial turmoil and promoting economic growth.

The heads of state previously gathered in Washington and then London to try to deal with the global economic meltdown. On Sunday, a front-page headline in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette asked the obvious question about the third G-20 summit: "Why Pittsburgh?"

Obama told the paper that Pittsburgh was a world-class city that had "transformed itself, after some very tough times, into a city that's competing in the world economy."

Local officials hope to show how their riverside city has reinvented itself since the last of its smoke-belching steel mills closed in the 1980s. No longer called "hell with the lid off," as an early critic dubbed it, Pittsburgh boasts a diversified economy and a livable environment.

"The rest of the world has an image of Pittsburgh as a smoky city, a dirty city, a dying Rust Belt city," said Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, 29. "But that's not true anymore."

Health care and biotechnology have replaced steel as the largest employers. Joblessness is at 7.7 percent, below both the state and national averages. The city center and many of Pittsburgh's 89 ethnic enclaves and neighborhoods are vibrant and busy.

In addition to universities, orchestras, and other amenities, Pittsburgh boasts three major pro sports teams: the Super Bowl-champion Steelers; the Penguins, who won hockey's Stanley Cup; and the Pirates, who as one long-suffering baseball fan put it, "have a nice ballpark."

Pittsburgh also is a pioneer in green technology, an Obama administration priority. The G-20 leaders will meet in a new energy-efficient convention center. They will dine at the century-old Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, which has designed a cutting-edge research facility requiring almost no outside energy or water.

But Pittsburgh's troubled past is never far away.

Abandoned buildings still line some streets, and the city is all but bankrupt, saddled with more than $1.5 billion in pension obligations and bond debts. The state has assigned an oversight board and other regulators to help prevent further fiscal disaster.

Moreover, it is one of the few U.S. cities that has lost population for four consecutive decades. It now has about 310,000 residents, less than half its former size. Unlike most major cities, the population is overwhelmingly white - and old.

For now, work crews are racing to fix fountains, hang banners, and prepare for the media spotlight that will follow 11 presidents, seven prime ministers, a chancellor, and a king during their visit.

Authorities will put 4,000 police on the street and 2,000 National Guard troops on standby in case antiglobalization demonstrations spiral out of control. Activists for an array of causes have poured into the city.

Whether the summit proves a success remains to be seen. The policy prescriptions of the G-20 meetings in November 2008 and April 2009 were quickly overshadowed as the economic crisis deepened.

AIDS activists marched yesterday through downtown Pittsburgh, demanding that the world's most powerful leaders stop using the global economic crisis as an excuse to cut promised funding for drugs and treatment.

"Medication for every nation!" more than 100 protesters shouted as they snaked around the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, where the Group of 20 will convene tomorrow. "Pills cost pennies. Greed costs lives!"

Led by ACT UP Philadelphia, Black Radical Congress of Pittsburgh, New York's AIDS Housing Network, and several other groups, protesters pressed President Obama to make good on a campaign

pledge to commit

$50 billion over five years to AIDS efforts.

Also yesterday, a federal judge ruled in favor of Pittsburgh police in a lawsuit by two groups, Three Rivers Climate Convergence and Seeds of Peace Collective, that alleged that officers had harassed them as they prepared to protest against the G-20.

- Inquirer wire services

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