Universities and hospitals crowd Oakland, where you are now, one of the most dense concentrations of educational and medical institutions in the United States. Two major research universities — the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University — anchor the district, along with UPMC, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, now the region's largest employer. Oakland was a streetcar suburb in the late nineteenth century, and Andrew Carnegie's decision to build his library, museum, and institute here in the 1890s established the character of the neighborhood.
Carnegie's original 1895 building on Forbes Avenue contained a library, a music hall, a natural history museum, and an art museum under one roof — a monument to self-improvement built by a man who had left school at age thirteen. The neighborhood grew up around his institutions: more universities, more hospitals, more cultural organizations. Today Oakland is home to more than 50,000 students and nearly 100,000 workers.
The density of human capital here — researchers, physicians, engineers, artists — makes it one of the most knowledge-intensive square miles in America. Pittsburgh's reinvention as a technology and medical hub after the steel collapse was built on Oakland's foundation.