People walk past the shops lining Market Square in Pittsburgh. A large effort by organizers of the city’s 250th anniversary celebration and others is under way to try and turn around the region’s perception among its own residents as a stodgy, smokey former steel town with a graying population.

PITTSBURGH — Note to Pittsburghers and others from the tri-state region: Take what you think you know about the Steel City, wad it up into a little black-and-gold ball and throw it away.


That’s what the organizers of Pittsburgh’s 250th birthday celebration are hoping that people from here — and around the country — will do this year. The city plans to mark the anniversary of its naming with a yearlong series of events in 2008 that don’t just commemorate the past but also celebrate the present in hopes of changing the way Pittsburghers, and others, perceive the city.


“I think there’s a wonderful opportunity for us, as well as the people who don’t live here, to recognize Pittsburgh for what it is,” said Jim Rohr, head of the Pittsburgh 250th Anniversary Commission and the Allegheny Conference on Community Development.


Rohr said tourists who visit the city realize it’s no longer a smoky steel town but a city with a thriving cultural district, world-class universities and an impressive vista. Pittsburghers, ironically, are most in need of convincing that their hometown has a lot more to offer, he said.


Some of the events began already, under the slogan, “Imagine what you can do here.