Pittsburgh ranked as one of America's safest cities, new study finds
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - New data from VisitPITTSBURGH suggests that Pittsburgh ranks among the top safest cities in the United States.
The research identifies Pittsburgh as the No. 1 safest city with regard to property crime and is the third-safest city against violent crime.
The report, conducted by 2Synergize, compared Pittsburgh data from a three-mile radius around the David L. Lawrence Convention Center throughout 2022 and compared the Steel City against several others across the country, per a news release from VisitPITTSBURGH.
"The safety of downtown is vital to our mission to not only attract leisure visitors but to provide our business and sports events attendees with a safe and memorable experience while traveling to and from the David L. Lawrence Convention Center," said Jerad Bachar, President & CEO of VisitPITTSBURGH. "This data shows that while Pittsburgh has more work to do, we're actually far surpassing the majority of cities in our competitive set on the safety circle surrounding city convention centers."
Pittsburgh outranked cities tested on similar criteria, such as Columbus, Indianapolis and Baltimore, as well as nonsimilar markets like Portland, Reno, Salt Lake City and Tampa Bay.
"Our business and sports events teams are always monitoring our competitive set to see how Pittsburgh fares and ways we can improve, but we're also monitoring the health and vitality of downtown from a visitor perspective by diving deep into hotel room reviews and occupancy," Bachar added.
Information collected from nearly 13,000 Downtown hotel reviews from January through August 2023 analyzed specific keywords related to safety. Of those reviews, less than 1% (0.8%) noted safety as a negative topic or concern while visiting, per the release.
"We applaud the great work happening all across the city to ensure our guests have a positive and memorable experience that will drive them to return to Pittsburgh time and time again," said Tom Martini, General Manager at The Westin Pittsburgh. "While there is always more work to be done, this new data from VisitPITTSBURGH helps set the tone for where Pittsburgh is positioned in the minds of our visitors."
To read the full safety report, click here.