<P> By the 1950s, poor farming techniques and the loss of jobs to mechanization in the mining industry had left much of central and southern Appalachia poverty - stricken . The lack of jobs also led to widespread difficulties with outmigration . Beginning in the 1930s, federal agencies such as the Tennessee Valley Authority began investing in the Appalachian region . Sociologists such as James Brown and Cratis Williams and authors such as Harry Caudill and Michael Harrington brought attention to the region's plight in the 1960s, prompting Congress to create the Appalachian Regional Commission in 1965 . The commission's efforts helped to stem the tide of outmigration and diversify the region's economies . Although there have been drastic improvements in the region's economic conditions since the commission's founding, the ARC still listed 82 counties as "distressed" in 2010, with nearly half of them (40) in Kentucky . </P> <P> There are growing IT sectors in many parts of the region . Titan, the fastest supercomputer in the United States and third fastest in the world as of 2016, is currently housed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory near Knoxville, Tennessee . </P> <P> Within Appalachia, there are several areas of urban concentration, the largest being the Pittsburgh metropolitan area in Pennsylvania . In Alabama, the Greater Birmingham metropolitan area is the largest urban concentration followed by the Huntsville metropolitan area . In Tennessee, the Knoxville metropolitan area and the Chattanooga metropolitan area are the urban clusters . Other notable areas include Asheville and the Greenville metropolitan area in the Carolinas, and in West Virginia, the Charleston metropolitan area . </P> <P> An estimated 90% of Appalachia's earliest European settlers originated from the Anglo - Scottish border country--namely the English counties of Cumberland, Westmorland, Northumberland, County Durham, Lancashire and Yorkshire, and the Lowland Scottish counties of Ayrshire, Dumfriesshire, Roxburghshire, Berwickshire and Wigtownshire . Most of these were from families who had been resettled in the Ulster Plantation in northern Ireland in the 17th century, but some came directly from the Anglo - Scottish border region . In America, these people are often grouped under the single name "Scotch - Irish" or "Scots - Irish". While various 20th century writers tried to associate Appalachia with Scottish highlanders, Highland Scots were a relatively insignificant percentage of the region's early European immigrants . </P>

What are the major cities in the appalachian region
find me the text answering this question