Cradle of the Creative Class: Reinventing the Figure of the Scientist in Cold War Pittsburgh

Vitale, Patrick

doi:10.1080/24694452.2016.1199317

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…However following the post war period, the steel industry de-locked from the region due to firms' dependence on outdated equipment and foreign competition. The population drastically shrank in the latter 1900s and urban planners began efforts to revitalize the city into a major service economy (Lubove, 1969;Muller, 1989;Vitale, 2016). Through the Renaissance I and II urban renewal projects from the 1940s-1970s, the city leaders led a drastic transition from the dirty industries of iron and glass to more white collar, post-industrial service and information sectors (Trotter andDay, 2010, Duryea, 2014;Vitale, 2016).…”

Section: Pittsburgh: the Steel Citymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The population drastically shrank in the latter 1900s and urban planners began efforts to revitalize the city into a major service economy (Lubove, 1969;Muller, 1989;Vitale, 2016). Through the Renaissance I and II urban renewal projects from the 1940s-1970s, the city leaders led a drastic transition from the dirty industries of iron and glass to more white collar, post-industrial service and information sectors (Trotter andDay, 2010, Duryea, 2014;Vitale, 2016). By the twenty-first century, a different city emerged focused on key health and education providers.…”

Section: Pittsburgh: the Steel Citymentioning

confidence: 99%

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The rusted steel that binds: how craft producers form neolocal economies in Pittsburgh, PA

Baker

Prytherch

2022

Journal of Cultural Geography

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THE RUSTED STEEL THAT BINDS: HOW CRAFT PRODUCERS FORM NEOLOCAL ECONOMIES IN PITTSBURGH, PA by Kevin Baker As many postindustrial cities shift to service and information economies, former manufacturing legacies still persist. In a city like Pittsburgh, PA amidst the developing tech industries, small scale manufacturers and increasingly craft workers adapt traditions of steel production. Regarding a craft revival, cultural geographers have studied the ways local producers add place representations to their goods and interact to form community bonds. Meanwhile, economic geographers, studying clusters and their path dependencies, explain local craft production can derive as a specialized sector from a larger industrial formation. To better understand craft production as both cultural and economic process, this study questioned how craft can contribute to place making and simultaneously be embedded in a local economy. This project thus asked: how do craft producers collaborate to produce neolocal economies in former industrial Pittsburgh? In order to understand how Pittsburgh metal workers went beyond just a craft and strengthened a larger economic network rooted in place, I studied twenty businesses related to metalworking and craft in Pittsburgh by conducting semi-structured interviews, touring workshops, and administering mapping exercises. The research reveals craft businesses DedicationTo my good friend Ed West and everyone who taught me about Pittsburgh's iron.

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Section: Pittsburgh: the Steel Citymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Pittsburgh: the Steel Citymentioning

confidence: 99%

The rusted steel that binds: how craft producers form neolocal economies in Pittsburgh, PA

Baker

Prytherch

2022

Journal of Cultural Geography

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“…Each new laboratory is celebrated for creating the type of workplace that will allow researchers to open new frontiers of progress and profit making. There are many reasons for the consistency of this discourse: stories of high-tech workplaces sell, they help create the ethos that mankind is progressing, and they emerge out of an entrepreneurial impulse where regions and firms compete to produce a cutting-edge image (Vitale, 2016(Vitale, , 2017. However, for purposes of this paper, the most important thing these research labs create is a separation between scientists and engineers and the broader working class.…”

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confidence: 99%

Making science suburban: The suburbanization of industrial research and the invention of “research man”

Vitale

2017

Environ Plan A

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In the early 1900s, industrial firms embraced research as a key element of corporate strategy. In order to internalize scientific research, firms constructed laboratories many of which were located away from factories. The development of these laboratories was part of a larger shift in the socio-spatial division of labor – the separation of mental from physical work. These laboratories were sites for developing new technologies and production processes and for creating and reproducing a techno-scientific workforce that allied itself with management. Using the example of Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse, in this paper I argue that industrial firms built research laboratories in order to enlist a skilled techno-scientific workforce that was essential for further profit making. By exploring the longer history of the industrial research laboratory, I expose how the “knowledge economy” and “tech workers” did not originate in the suburbs of the 1950s or the tech-boom of the 1990s, but rather emerged in concert with industrialization, the emergence of corporations, the professionalization of science and engineering, and suburbanization at the turn of the 20th-century.

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Contested autonomy in “smart” and “inclusive” innovation: test-driving transportation technology and policy in Pittsburgh

Chandler

2022

Urban Geography

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Cradle of the Creative Class: Reinventing the Figure of the Scientist in Cold War Pittsburgh

Cited by 3 publications

References 56 publications

The rusted steel that binds: how craft producers form neolocal economies in Pittsburgh, PA

The rusted steel that binds: how craft producers form neolocal economies in Pittsburgh, PA

Making science suburban: The suburbanization of industrial research and the invention of “research man”

Contested autonomy in “smart” and “inclusive” innovation: test-driving transportation technology and policy in Pittsburgh

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