Tag Archives: global economy

Pittsburgh beyond the G20

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G-20 Summit/Credit: Flickr user Desiree N. Williams

G-20 Summit/Credit: Flickr user Desiree N. Williams

The G-20 summit brought the world’s largest economies together this week to look at the progress the world’s made on recovering from the economic downturn. As the summit in Pittsburgh wraps up, take a look at some sources from the Pittsburgh area that covered the event and the protests surrounding it, and get a perspective on how the region is coping in the new economy.

WDUQ’s news blog is covering the daily G-20 events, from the spouses of dignitaries touring the city, to protestors urging racial equality and a complete pullout of troops from Iraq.

The WDUQ blog wrote about the mood of the city on Thursday:

“A typical workday downtown is normally overflowing with with pedestrians and traffic during morning rush hour. Today, however, as a result of the road and business closures during the G20 Summit being held at the convention center, there’s an unusual, desolate mood to the city. Some groups of pedestrians walk through town, some workers and others curious passersby, dodging police barricades and tents.”

The Environment Report covered Pittsburgh’s image as a Rust Belt City and how the city has adapted to a decline in population.

The New York Times blog The Caucus looked at why Pittsburgh was chosen to host the summit. “The White House has repeatedly cited the city’s transformation from a Rust Belt shell to one whose economy rebounded on the base of the health, education and perhaps technology industries, ” Kate Phillips writes.

Indeed, a recent Pittsburgh Business Journal story noted that Google CEO Eric Schmidt sees tech developments in Pittsburgh as a model for helping other former manufacturing-based cities survive.

ProPublica’s ShovelWatch project analyzed Pennsylvania data and found that 32 institutions in Pennsylvania received government bailout funds, totaling 2% of the total $11.3 billion allocated to Pennsylvania so far in the recovery plan.

Will the combination of bank bailouts, the bustling tech sector, a young mayor and , international attention be a way out – or up — for hard-pressed Pittsburgh?

Mapping the global economy

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Times are hard in the U.S. But how do they compare to the downturn worldwide?

A World of Trouble is an interactive map showing unemployment and other hardship indexes by country and connecting them with real-life examples.

For instance, the entry for China talks about how many fewer migrant workers are seen in Beijing now that construction has slowed. The map is from Global Post, an online-only publication that distributes through partnerships with traditional media, including PRI’s The World and PBS’ WorldFocus.

Another way of visualizing economic change is through trade routes. PRI’s The World reported on the benefits and downsides of a new trade route that would drastically change how goods travel from the Pacific side to the Atlantic side of South America. Instead of using the Panama Canal, the port city of Manta in Ecuador would be an alternative.

Mint.com puts wealth distribution in perspective with a map showing the richest and poorest areas of the world. It’s interesting to look at where the differences are vast – between different countries in Africa, for example; and where they are relatively even, like between the U.S. and Russia.

In developing nations, gender also can influence political and economic instability, as
WNYC’s The Takeaway reported this week on New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s new book on women in the global economy.

“In our travels, it seemed to us that those countries that were more effective in fighting poverty and creating stability were those that actually educated and empowered women; and that those that didn’t, were those that were most prone to instability,” said Kristof.