The dream of the 90s is soon to no longer be alive in Pittsburgh. Or at least not at the Pittsburgh International Airport. This afternoon, the Allegheny County Airport Authority, which manages the airport, announced a $1.1 billion "Terminal Modernization Project". The major project will reconfigure the airport, which is currently split into separate "Landside Terminal" (check-in, security, baggage, and rental car facilities) and "Airside Terminal" (gates and most AirMall shops) buildings. Currently, post-security, you take an automated tram from one building to the other. The new plan eliminates the separate Landside Terminal building entirely. All facilities currently in the Landside Terminal building will be moved to a large, new addition to be directly built onto a reconfigured Airside Terminal. About that "dream of the 90s" reference? The current Pittsburgh International Airport opened in 1992, replacing "Greater Pittsburgh International Airport" (or "Greater Pitt" as it was sometimes locally referred to), located on the northeastern corner of the current airport property. It was built with a capacity of 100 gates, a size justified by its role as a hub airport for USAir (renamed US Airways in 1997). Several design decisions, beyond just the large gate count, were made because of...

The press, and likely your social media feeds, are abuzz over President Trump's decision today to leave the Paris Agreement, signed by 195 countries in December 2015. His decision will result in the United States joining only Syria and Nicaragua as countries that are not in agreement with this plan. Syria, mind you, is currently trapped in a civil war, and Nicaragua did not sign the agreement because it did not go far enough (the agreement is non-binding, meaning there are not penalties for failing to follow the agreement). In a completely unexpected turn of events, however, the city of Pittsburgh ended up benefiting from generally positive PR in the wake of this announcement. Although I haven't lived in the Pittsburgh area since graduating college in 2014, I still consider myself a proud Yinzer and am always interested in following the new economy of the Steel City as well as how it is portrayed on the national and world stages. Thus, I thought it was necessary to bring some attention to this interesting development. In President Trump's speech announcing the U.S. would be leaving the Paris Agreement, he stated "I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not...