By the time you reach the Ikea megastore on the city outskirts, it is already abundantly clear that Pittsburgh has reinvented itself. The erstwhile crucible of US heavy industry, whose crumbling steelworks once embodied the term "rustbelt", has somehow become an urban flagbearer for the "new economy".
The signs of radical change are everywhere. It is not just the Swedish furniture outlets and the other retail icons of middle-class prosperity. Alongside them in the Pittsburgh suburbs is a string of hi-tech firms drawn to the city over the past 10 years.
Within a decade, Pittsburgh has been transformed from an industrial wreck to one of the leading "clusters" of computer-oriented companies considered the engines of long-term US growth.
Pittsburgh is the fifth biggest producer of software in the country and markets itself as a "digital greenhouse", a centre for the emerging "system-on-a-chip" technology which is key to the miniaturisation of computer components.
Driving into the centre from the surrounding Allegheny hills, there is visible proof that this is a new city rising out of the rubble of an older, discarded version. The art-deco skyscrapers erected by Pittsburgh's industrial dynasties - Carnegie, Mellon, Frick, Heinz and Westinghouse - still stand but several are home to management consultancies and "dot.com" firms.
The furnaces which used to burn so brightly that planes travelling from New York to Chicago used them as a navigational aid, have gone cold and the city's air quality is cleaner than most other US cities of comparable size. It is one the city's selling points to the new breed of mountain-biking, hill-climbing internet entrepreneurs moving in.
The old steel plants that remain along the banks of the city's three rivers are shells, used for warehousing vans, or partitioned into cheap floor space for small start-up companies. Sony has taken over an old Volkswagen plant.
Less than 20 years ago, the city seemed consigned to the dustbin of industrial history. The recession of the early 80s destroyed the steel industry almost overnight. More than 80,000 steel jobs disappeared within 12 months in 1983.
"The recession hit Pittsburgh arguably harder than any city in America in terms of percentage of jobs lost. There was a real sense of crisis," Donald Smith, an economist at Carnegie Mellon university, said. "But the severity of the blow galvanised public opinion and public leadership."
Mr Smith, who is director of the university's centre for economic development, believes that part of the reason for the city's renaissance has been the well-aimed intervention of the Pennsylvania state government, which set up organisations to finance and advise entrepreneurs.
The other key to Pittsburgh's salvation lay in its industrial founders, who had endowed a string of universities. These were originally set up to soften Pittsburgh's hard edges, but have taken on the role of powerhouses, supplying skilled workers and new ideas.
Carnegie Mellon has become a leading software research centre, specialising in computer security. Meanwhile, the University of Pittsburgh medical centre has become a world leader in organ transplants.
Tim Parks, head of the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance, an association of local industries, said: "The intellectual capital of the universities and their research capacity gave Pittsburgh the basic tools for creating a 'knowledge economy'."
Unemployment, which was well into double digits for much of the 80s is now about 4.5% - just above the national average. Ranked according to output per worker, the city lies behind only Seattle, Atlanta and San Diego. "The productivity gains are what's keeping growth going," said Mr Smith. "And it's not nearly played out - there is still room for improvement."
Nevertheless, a slump in the hi-tech sector would hit hard.
"I don't think we've built a bullet-proof economy," Mr Smith conceded. "But it is a more stable economy and its a lot more recession-resistant than it was."
