If your house is listed at the high end of the pricing range and it hasn't sold, never fear--it could sell soon. According to an article in today's Post-Gazette, appreciation last month in the region topped fifteen percent. Sales, however were down. Is there a mass rush to buy property in Pittsburgh? There's some of that, but I suspect because of a tightening by lenders means the median price may be up because the middle and upper range houses are selling faster than those on the lower end of the price range. This reminds me of a cartoon I saw on a placemat in an East German restaurant in San Francisco. A girl sat slouched on a rock under sunshine and surrounded by flowers thinking about how to mentally make sunshine and flowers a bad thing. Yes folks, fifteen percent appreciation can't be all or even half bad.

On an urelated matter copper theives are still at it and now targeting Mount Lebanon and some other suburbs Watch the news story

Buy a Copper-Free Sticker for your window

More apartments will soon be available downtown as the Century Building is converted to accomodate rental units ranging in price from $525 to $1150. The building has long been one of my favorite and is ideally situated for use as a residential building. It's a half block from the Benedum and a half block from the Seventh Street Bridge, and will be steps away from the new grocery planned for the space at Fort Duquesne Boulevard and Seventh.

The other great building I'd eally like to see rehabbed (shown) is at the corner of Liberty and Seventh. I believe the use is already residential, but it definitely has that "signature" building quality and could use a restoration. There's even a building designed with this structure in mind on Market Street in San Francisco.

Yesterday Pop City Media was host to a panel discussion dealing largely with the reality and future of Pittsburgh. While each panelist had interesting insight, nothing could make ears perk up like they did when Warhol director Tom Sokolowski stood up and said something to the effect of Bob O’Connor’s death having been the best thing to that's happened to Pittsburgh. Unfortunately Sokolowski didn’t have the microphone when he was making his comments, but I would love to have heard more of what he had to say and hope he’s invited to a future panel.

O’Connor’s name was first brought up by Michael Edwards, president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership. Edwards applauded the former mayor’s simple vision of a clean and safe city. He also echoed a notion I’ve had for some time, that there’s nothing wrong with native Pittsburghers leaving. It’s only with the experience of other cities that many come to realize what a great city Pittsburgh is. The problem for us is a lack of energy and talent flowing in to replace them.

Lenore Blum, a professor of computer science at CMU seemed to disagree with Edwards when she lamented that only five percent of graduates stay in Pittsburgh, a percentage much lower than say Stanford. I suspect there was not the disagreement there might have appeared to be as it seems Edwards and Blum were talking about two different groups of people. Edwards might have meant the children of Pittsburghers and Blum students born elsewhere.

All the panelists seemed to agree there’s a buzz of sorts in Pittsburgh now we haven’t felt before, at least not recently. We’re on the verge of being in a happening place. I have myself observed that ten years ago it was hard to find a student or young person who didn’t want to move from Pittsburgh. I remember reminding one acquaintance of the availability of affordable housing here maybe ten years ago, to which I heard “you have your house, I’ll have a life.”

We don’t live in that Pittsburgh anymore. Now I hear many students—familiar with San Francisco and New York-- and young people say they would like to stay in Pittsburgh if the opportunity presented itself. Google recently opened its office here and gave as a reason that its employees wanted to live here. We may not realize it, but we’ve won half the battle already. Yet we continue to aim marketing efforts at students, when perhaps we’d get further by trying to get across to companies that the educated workforce that’s often tough to entertain likes Pittsburgh. With CMU ranking at the top of computer science schools to some degree the new Pittsburgh is here, they want to stay, but are often forced to leave. If we could get the message out to corporate America that potential employees want to live in Pittsburgh, that could at least put us on the radar for location scouts.

This could be a worthwhile project for Carol Coletta, President and CEO of a group called CEOs for cities. The only one to travel for the presentation, Coletta advocated catering to the retiring boomers, who large in number, also like much of what young workers like—condo life and a lively downtown. More, Coletta noted Pittsburgh's head start in green building, but sadly a fact that's been lost and the image shed to other cities "because your mayor is not engaged."

Oh, Blum also noted that to her knowledge, the CMU campus has never been visited by a Mayor. Mr. Ravenstahl may take note that it might be a good start to ask them to stay.

Finally Dr. Eric Beckman, the Chief Science Officer for a company he founded called Cohera Medical talked about a Silicon Valley misnomer-that the tech companies exist there because of advances made at Stanford. Beckman says instead its because Stanford teaches scientists to be entrepreneurs, that the region provides ways to connect scientists with business people and because there’s financing for projects that may not be much more than an idea scribbled on a napkin.

Grant Oliphant moderated the event and started out with a monologue on how we as Pittsburgh see our self. He quoted Jospeh Jaworsky from his book Syncronicity “We do not describe the world we see, but we see the world we describe.” That may sound like power of positive thinking garble, but with that in mind let me end with a quote from Lewis Mumford: "Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition mind."

Oh, and thank you Eve Picker for arranging such an important discussion.

Bicyclists don't want to live on the hills. Young homebuyers are often without autos--foot and bike primarily and if necessary transit. They want to live where they can get around town easily on a bike. No matter what the price, homes on a hill are out of the question.

Tonight at a meeting of the Pittsburgh Climate Change Initiative I heard of an innovation I was not aware of... a pully system to get bikes up hills. "They have them in Europe," I was told.

This would completely open up new worlds for Pittsburgh's bicyclists and bring more affordable housing within their reach.

If you have a climate change suggestion, there are several meetings coming up. Visit the Pittsburgh Cliumate Change Initiative on the web