Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto was at hand to describe how academia, industry and city government have come together to experiment with some truly innovative projects. One such project is the Carnegie Mellon University/Uber partnership on developing self-driving cars, which are being added to the network of sensors in the city’s “smart spines” program that transmit information to balance traffic and move it through areas more quickly.  And it’s projects like these that make Pittsburgh a “model of what it means to be a 21st-century city,” said Peduto.