Pittsburgh has been known as the Steel City and the City of Champions, but what about the smartest city?
According to David Cross, content editor for Movoto real estate, Pittsburgh is indeed the smartest city in the United States.
“I can say that, you know, I was a little shocked that Pittsburgh ranked that high," Cross said. "At the same time I was really happy, because I’m a Midwestern boy at heart."
He came to this conclusion while making Movoto’s latest “Big Deal List,” in which the company ranks the top 100 most populous cities.
“We create a series of criteria that we think correlates to whatever we’re talking about, so in this case we picked seven pieces of criteria that we thought a city should have, or would have, to be very intelligent,” Cross said.
To claim the title of the smartest, the cities were judged on the number of universities, libraries, media outlets and museums per capita.
According to Cross, universities are beneficial not only for the students, but also for the general public that gains from community projects.
With the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon, Duquesne and Point Park, Pittsburgh ranked number one in that category.
The study also focused on quality of public schools and how many people in the city have a bachelor’s degree or higher. Irvine, California took the title in both of these categories.
Once all of the cities were ranked on each individual criterion, the results were averaged together, and Movoto named Pittsburgh top of the class.
The idea to create a smartest city list came to Cross after testing his knowledge in a bar in Berkley.
“I went to a bar trivia night and was completely trounced," he said. "I absolutely got hardly any points at all, and I got to thinking about, you know, what other areas are smart."
Orlando, Florida ranked second, and Washington D.C. took third place.
