Over the past couple days, I've been slowly getting a trickle of news in from friends that our favorite retail staples are actually located somewhere in the Pittsburgh area. iHop, Ikea, Target... they're all around here. Now, I live in Oakland, and as we've discovered, they're all in a little town I'd only heard of in passing called Robinson.

The only time I'd spent any time out there previously was the one time I went on a field trip to Ikea with some old roommates, and I was absolutely thunderstruck by how organized everything was – organized, but, isolated at the same time. It's almost as if a monolithic corporation airlifted a couple freight buildings into the woods and let the townspeople figure out that they were there. They're like friggin' Mayan temples, with, as it seems, an equal amount of spiritual reverence.

In all of my days, I've never witnessed something so strange.

When I first moved to Pittsburgh two years ago, my parents and I briefly passed through Robinson in order to get to i-276, and we were all flabbergasted at the amount of traffic that was crammed into this place. Almost every parking spot in every lot was filled. Now, this is normal where I'm from, but, not in the same respect. In Philly, it's unmarked parking lots and private parking spaces that are filled – not mall parking lots. This was our first impression of the Pittsburgh area. It must be a pretty populous city, considering how many people were out at the mall.

Nope. Not at all. Once we cruised into the metro limits, there wasn't a person to be found. Pittsburgh, on a weekend, had degenerated into a lifeless mass of steel and PPG.

In Philly, we only have two nearby 'ground zeroes' for malls – both Exton and King of Prussia are gigantic mall settings, but they're all a good 45 minutes to an hour away from city limits. What does it say about Pittsburgh that its mall area isn't only within a 20 minute drive, but it's even on the way to the airport?

C'mon, Pittsburgh. Let's get this city a little more dense. Then you'll know why Philly has so many awesome family-owned shops!