A view of two Ohio River bridges from Mount Washington in Pittsburgh, hometown of TheCityFix DC’s newest blogger. Photo by Brent and MariLynn.
Editor’s Note: Join us in a warm welcome for TheCityFix DC’s newest blogger, Alex Pazuchanics. If you would like to get in touch with him, write him at paz.alex [at] gmail.com.
As TheCityFix DC’s newest blogger, I feel it might be a good idea to introduce myself. A brief background as to why I got interested in this stuff. I grew up in one of the 129 suburban municipalities that surround the city of Pittsburgh in Allegheny County, so I didn’t have a whole lot of experience with the city. But my high school experience changed my life. I went to a high school in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, a stone’s throw from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon. In addition to my first experiences with public transportation (my school district provided me with a bus pass to get to and from school) I made a lot of friends who lived in the city. I became very jealous of city living: the ability to walk to stores and restaurants, access to parks and trails, easy connectivity to other neighborhoods. Like the prisoner released from Socrates’ cave, I had seen what was real. So when it came time to pick a college, I wound up at one of the most urban I could find, GWU.
As I transition to TheCityFix DC, I plan on writing on issues of public transit and intercity rail travel, things I’m passionate about. But I’m also going to try to find wider theories to explain the urban experience. In a way, I’m looking for some kind of “urban string theory,” a cosmic force that binds together metropolitan areas. I try to follow in that noble lineage of thinkers who asked, “I wonder what would happen if I connect this wire to that one?” How does literacy affect sustainable living? How do land use policies affect talent attraction? What do transit advocates and civil rights advocates have in common? These are the kinds of questions I hope to explore in my writing at TheCityFix.
I’m looking forward to covering issues, both in the Washington metro area and at the national level. TCF DC is a great group of folks and I’m excited to get involved in the conversation. Let’s get crackin’!
Alex joined TheCityFix DC as a contributing blogger in August 2009. He also writes for his own urban affairs blog: Politics and Place. Alex is an undergraduate at The George Washington University pursuing a degree in Metropolitan and Regional Management. Born in Ohio and raised in Pittsburgh, Penn., Alex approaches urban issues with a distinctly Rust Belt perspective. While his passion is public transportation, Alex is also very interested in the interplay of land use, talent attraction and retention, and social equity. When he is not riding or reading about transit, Alex is a competitive ballroom dancer.
