Like I said below tho, there's no central plan for the region. There's community groups and activists and then theres politicians looking to further their career. I guess you see that everywhere eh?

I suspect that you're 100% about the relocation of Braddock residents to the surrounding communities. They may have moved to be closer to employment, different schools, increase services. Not sure I get the Mon Valley argument given the location of Braddock, but again my knowledge and experience in Pittsburgh is very limited. When I look even just the relocation to Mt. Lebanon or Upper St. Clair or McKeesport or Monroeville, there are lots of locations/neighbourhood that are extremely close.

The Mon Valley expressway(google it) had more to do with people leaving than any de-industrialization. Some point soon(my braddock historian is on vaca lol) I should make a map showing how the population moved. They didn't move far- most moved within 15 mile's I'd say(no data behind this, just knowing people and basing it on high school graduation lists I worked with on the campaign)

How do you attract employers to set up shop? Beyond the token advertising campaigns that @banditelli describes from Levi's? This is so far out of my league. Safety, security, house availability. How do you avoid creating a mining town or ghost town when the main employer leaves?

Thanks for the data correction. The timeframe is incredibly short for the change in demographics of a suburban centre so close to a major hub. I think that we see frontier towns and mining encampments that have a much shorter decline when a railroad moved or a employer shut down ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_town ).

I unfortunately do not have the passion, the experience or the knowledge of the local issues. When I lived in Pittsburgh which was almost 15 years ago, I lived on the border of Shadyside and Squirrel Hill. Not the least bit representative of the challenges happening in Braddock. The impact of UPMC's decision to withdraw will be one of people's lives, which is disappoint and speaks to how health and healthcare in the US needs to be re-imagined.

Health, safety and opportunity are crucial. I hope that there are economic development strategies that can be engaged to attract new businesses and residents and sustain the taxation base.

The impact? Old people don't get necessarily services and die sooner. Young poor people are taught that you can't mobilize against capitalism. The town further is divided between the youth and the elders and more people continue to fall into apathy. People keep buying codein instead of food except now there's no detox facilities. Over 10,000 emergency room visits haven't happened since the closure. Ten thousand. What happens when people don't goto the hospital? They die. That's what the impact is. More people will die but it will never be blamed on UPMC. It will be blamed on that person's “risky behavior.”

In a way, Braddock reminds me of the conversations I’ve been reading about African development, i.e., how do we move to sustainable economic advantage and not aid and corruption?

I suspect that you’re correct about the regionality of the moves, i.e., people relocating in places surrounding Braddock because of better opportunities, nicer/safer homes, and better services that are only a neighbourhood away.

It is up to us to support and build our local environments. Moving somewhere else isn't going to fix it, every place, locality, jurisdiction, and regulatory environment has its own issues.

It feels like shared ownership models — where I can “help” and get something back in a more direct form, a la co-operatives — is part of the mix.