Rivers Heritage Trail West Penn Trail Western Maryland Rail Trail Westmoreland Heritage Trail Wheeling Heritage Trails Culture Pittsburgh and its surrounding area has a distinct regional identity and has historically been regarded as a transitional region within the Northeastern United States. The region's counties also fall within the borders of Appalachia as defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission. The City of Pittsburgh has been characterized as the "northern urban industrial anchor of Appalachia": which makes it an anomaly compared to much of Appalachia which has traditionally been characterized as southern, rural, and economically distressed. Joseph Scarpaci, professor emeritus of geography at Virginia Tech, has described Pittsburgh as having "one foot in the East...and the other in the Midwest". Barbara Johnstone, professor of rhetoric and linguistics at Carnegie Mellon University, ascribes this isolation and idiosyncratic cultural identity of the region to the difficulty of moving through the Allegheny Mountains and the Allegheny Plateau.The Pittsburgh area was sort of isolated. It was very hard to get back and forth across the mountains. There's always been a sense that Pittsburgh was kind of a place unto itself—not really southern, not really Midwestern, not really part of Pennsylvania. People just didn't move very much.In his 2009 book, The Paris of Appalachia, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writer Brian O'Neill meditates on this aspect of Pittsburgh's regional and cultural ambiguity. The title of the book is intentionally provocative:"The Paris of Appalachia" some have called Pittsburgh derisively, because it's still the largest city along this gorgeous mountain chain that needs a better press agent. I've long felt we should embrace that title, though few are with me. Several tried to talk me out of slapping it on the cover, but were we called "The Paris of the Rockies," we wouldn't run from it. Sometimes we're so afraid of what others think, we're afraid to say who we are. This city is not Midwestern. It's not East Coast. It's just Pittsburgh, and there's no place like it. That's both its blessing and its curse. Arts Visual arts Greater Pittsburgh is home to several museums, galleries, and organizations which promote appreciation for the visual arts. The largest art museum in the region is the Carnegie Museum of Art, founded in 1895 by industrialist Andrew Carnegie and located in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood. It is renowned for its collections of 19th and 20th century decorative art, Japanese prints, and old master prints. Contemporary