Required Viewing

STEEL, seriously, do *not* let the trolls get you down. I know that I speak for many of us when I say your expert's perspective is much appreciated; for me, it is truly one of the top draws of BRO. (And of course, we all know that the city from which you write is completely irrelevant to the quality of your ideas and the strength of your arguments.)

Highlighting this link to Duany's lecture is another wonderful contribution to your long record of good work. Keep it up!

I think the driving force behind sprawl is the retreat from community. Modern suburbs provide an escape from reality and a kind of ignorant bliss from the complexities of the world. Those that choose this lifestyle prefer isolation, especially from those of different incomes and cultures.
They seek the safe conformist route with little interest in expanding their horizons beyond their own white bread world.

My cousin in East Amherst once called me to come out and help him move a refrigerator from his garage down to his basement. I was struck by the fact that he couldn't ask a neighbor to help. Here in Black Rock I have neighbors and friends all around me that would not hesitate to lend a hand.
Very different worlds.

Thank you very much Steel, I truly enjoyed listening to this lecture this morning, and I agree, it should be mandatory for our children in school, our City Planners and all the rest to see with their own eyes what the discussion is all about.
This lecture can show the way for Buffalo out of its blight!
Again-many thanks!

Blackrocklifer, I can relate. I think that's why we need both city and suburb. Some folks like the opportunity to decide what environment they prefer to live in. If a community is collective like yours, it's easy for many to choose.
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Steele, thanks for posting this. Once the required activities of a Saturday are complete (shopping, banking, laundry and cleaning) I plan to watch all nine if they are available.
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There are so many ways we can create better communities within the city and still have the suburbs for those who decide against an urban lifestyle. Vive le difference!

well put steel, thank you for your insight...and for that great video. please keep doing what your doing.

I have not yet watched the Lectures, but I'm already on board with your ideology. I currently "exist" in the suburbs, due to the fact that my wife has concerns about safety and the school system in Buffalo, but I grew up in North Buffalo, and would rather "live" in the city.

As I see it our City, County and State really need to rethink policies that simply fund housing development and rehabilitation that is geared toward the low income bracket.(See our discussions about Re-habs on Whitney Place)

Only through drawing middle income young people and families back into the city can we truly see neighborhoods and schools improve.

Right on.

I can't take 'either' side in the 'battle' between city vs suburbs. What I'd like to see is something that is neither, but yet in between both.

I beleive that a region should give some kind of incentive for business (factories, offices, etc) to be located in a central, downtown location (Buffalo in our case, with some in Niagara Falls or Lockport.) Residentail and commercial will follow. HOWEVER, for those who do not want to live in the city, I'm all for "suburban villages". Less dense than a city, but yet not just miles and miles of subdivision and subdivisions. These villages have to have a 'village center', and then you can run some kind of rapid transit (commuter rail, efficient bus lines, etc) from that village center to the Business hubs (Buffalo, Lockport, NF).

The closest things we could have to that in this area would be Central Avenue in the Village of Lancaster. Center Street in Lewiston. Parts of Tonawanda could easily get back to this. But what I am opposed to is the unchecked suburban developments like we see in the outskirs of Lancaster and most of what Amherst has become.

Sorry for the double post, I didn't get to finish my above post.

We moved to Lewiston for that reason. It isn't 'the city', but yet it is a dense village. There is shopping (not all chain shopping), restaurants, etc all in a central location. BUT, we can't even take a metro bus into Niagara Falls directly, let alone Buffalo.

This afternoon, we are going to the Galleria Mall (for the first time in a few months), just for something to do, and maybe see a movie. IF there was a location like that in the City of Buffalo or Niagara falls, we would go there EVERY TIME rather than driving to Cheektowaga (or Amherst or Orchard Park for that matter.) But there isn't.

Also, We would spend a LOT more time in Buffalo or Niagara Falls if there was public transit to get there. If there was some kind of light rail from Niagara Falls to Downtown Buffalo, we would probably used it at least every other weekend. We could take the few mile drive to catch the train in or near the Falls, and pay a few dollars each to take it to the city. As it is now, because the only way we can get to the city is to drive, we maybe visit downtown 2-3 times a year. (we paid a bit more, but in the summer, we took the Go train from Niagara Falls, ON to Toronto a few times, that let us off right at Union station, while we visited Buffalo only once.)

One thing that urks me is that Many of the Suburban shopping plazas and avenues such as Niagara Falls Blvd. in Amherst have more traffic and congestion than anywhere in the City of Buffalo. No reason why we can't have even half of those same businesss located DOWNTOWN.

I agree with you STEEL. However, we should not be apologetic about criticizing suburban places like Clarence.

Suburbia was a response to the unpleasantness of the early industrial city. Since it's earliest iterations, the solution was to be country living for all. Of course it's not country living and as Duany says, it's a cartoon of country living in a cartoon of a house. The suburbs have not delivered on their promise and that is one of the many reasons that they lend themselves so well to insult. Suburbs have none of the advantages of city living or country living and have all the disadvantages of both. These things were not obvious in the beginning when suburbs first began to appear, but now it is little more than a deception.

It is OK to say it how it is.

In the Buffalo News today there is an article about how Main Street medians are getting in the way of automobiles. The article makes me laugh and get angry at the same time. The automobile is the fundamental organizing element to this issue of how we build. The mind set will not most likely change in our lifetime. The car has given us superhuman power to be where we want, when we want, we are not likely to give it up. For every urbanist we create we probably build ten sub-urbanist. I think it is hopeless, but hope to be proved wrong.

I think it's going to get worse, everyone want's brand new 'stuff' and get there in their own car (suv) and park as close to the door because a few parking spaces towards the back of the lot is to far. Yes the outer suburbs, like north Amherst, Lancaster, etc. are nice to live they have lots of land, but when more and more people move there you lose that land, and it all starts to look the same. If you think it's bad in B-lo you should see Las Vegas (where I now live because of job) away from the strip, in the "normal" part of las vegas, sprawl goes for miles and miles, just so many plaza's and big-box store's, you have to have a car here. Some day I'm hoping to move back East. Enjoyed the post.

thanks to the aforementioned horrors of the pre-war industrial city, places like buffalo had to defend - and still do - against incessant diagnoses of their flaws and inadequacies. housing shortages! (yes, before wwii.) not enough parking! congestion! too much crime! too many ugly old buildings! people who don't speak english! noise! crime! waaah, i got a parking ticket!

lots of suburbanites are now in the uncomfortable position of having thrown gazillions of stones from their glass houses, which is probably why they get so insulted by your posts. they got used to the privilege of dishing out criticism, not receiving it.

the inadequacies of the post-war suburb are now as readily evident as the inadequacies of the pre-war industrial city. if it is fair game to dissect the faults of one, it is fair game to dissect the faults of the other. so don't pull your punches, steel.

In one sense, Buffalo has been fortunate to be a poor city. The issues that scott penton mentions above might have occurred in Buffalo had the population not decreased. Buffalo never became over-malled with gated communities. Visit some of the communities in Florida and where would one begin to correct the problems there?

Here in California, the state faces annual budget deficits of $20 billion dollars for at least three years and you can bet that social services will be slashed instead of road maintenance budgets. There are few choices here and California has a crisis that, at least for now, has no real answers.

I watched Mr. Duany's nine segments this morning and it's sad that, perhaps, 90% of what he says is pointing out the obvious. (He does it very well, though.) As I watched the segments, I thought of the disaster-in-the-making that is Skyway Side. The developers are building a fake environment on Buffalo's waterfront. The people in the Marine Towers -- just because they are renters -- have been crucified on this site because they have raised concerns about a giant parking ramp. I'm not against BassPro or a renewed waterfront but it's depressing how Buffalo and Buffalonians are making another mistake looking for the silver bullet. A number of us on this site have asked what's wrong with simply putting in a street grid that allows a waterfront neighborhood to grow step-by-step without the umbrella of an outdoor mall atmosphere?

Compare that to Buffalo's increasing downtown residential segment that will result in a pleasant pedestrian environment. Converting the Lafayette Hotel, AM&As, and other structures will do more than a large-scale fiasco like Skyway Side can ever hope to achieve.

Cities have been sprawling since London exceeded the limits of the "Square Mile" and grew out past Ludgate towards Westminster and points beyond in the 1600s. It's nothing new and it wasn't invented in America in the 1950s. The leapfrogging suburban sprawl accelerated by roads and highways is indeed wasteful and tragic. But in an age where lifestyle is more important than sustainability and good taste, what does anyone expect? And yet it is this misalignment between the social and cultural expectations that fuel sprawl and the true costs and consequences that many are finally waking up to. In Buffalo, this realization comes slowly for many of the same reasons that STEEL finds a city in decline sprawling so awful: cheap land. The one curb on excessive lifestyle behaviors ( besides disease and death )is affordability. Because Buffalo hasn't grown, there is little economic pressure on those who choose that suburban sprawl lifestyle. They can always find a lovely house in a safe, sterile setting for less than $500,000. People in other cities pay twice that and when thay add it all up, they decide that the city life isn't so bad. No one in Amherst or Clarence is doing that. For them, it's 1955 forever: an endless progression of subdivisions, moving vans, and strip centers. Nothing stands in the path of two car garages and the breakfast nooks overlooking what was once a pristine wetland.

Well, before one can take on sprawl, one must understand the reasons why sprawl was embraced by people and our zoning laws.
1) Everyone knows that the US highways came from Hitler's Autobahns.
1a) so Eisenhower had 3 issues at work for highways, break the railroad unions that could shut down the entire economy much like French unions can do today allowing highways to compete with rail, use highways to spur the private sector economy and at the same time feed the car and truck industry.
2) Hundreds of thousand of returning VETs needed housing and pre-WWII the majority of the country were urban renters. Homeownership for returning vets and stimulation the economy thru housing recovery was key.
3) Remember...we were coming out of a depression and wartime industries needed non-military customers. There was great fear that we would return to depression in the peacetime conversion.
4) A French Architect LeCorbusier (and others) wanted to replace the dense, dark grey urban streets with skyscrapers separated by large green spaces with fresh air. Frank Lloyd Wright came up with his USonian ranches which were the prototype that eventually came to replace the cape cods. People wanted lots of space for families and children and they wanted home ownership. (a way of owning an apartment didnt exist in the 50s and 60s)
5) Lastly, industry was looked on as polluting and dirty which most was and people wanted their living spaces as far away from it as possible. (This was long before the EPA). Today, industries are so clean most could integrate easily into our communities just as they originally did.
6) and one other point...one need only look at the City of Buffalo and its communist public schools and its various political machines and inside business leaches. Corruption and incompetence at every scale. People also long for the old new england style town hall meetings that can still be found in suburbs where voters and members of the community can still be heard and affect change at a grass roots level. Something impossible for families fighting dictates from teachers unions and school boards run by teachers on leaves of absense rubber stamping what the union wants at taxpayer expense.

If there was a way to break up the public school system with school choice and school vouchers so parents had the control of quality via public, charter, private or parochial...that would be one step.

If there was a way to decentralize the city so that voters had more control than political machines, unions or inside business types that buy off politicians with large campaign donations...that would be another step.

But the embrace to new urbanism really comes from a large segment of the population that works downtown in some professional capacity and another segment that is no longer raising children...and these people who once fled the city are returning to the conveniences the city can offer.

The problem with sprawl is the older suburbs are being abandoned for newer suburbs...but its a different type of city-suburban divide.

The only way to counter it (in my opinion) is to tax mileage of infrastructure such that new power lines, new sewars, new water mains, new roads...result in a higher tax than pre-existing infrastructure that would receive a credit on their yearly taxes. We can trace age of infrastructure easily. Its all recorded and we can tax it by age.

The other way we can counter it is through mass transit which connects our growth centers like Niagara Falls, UB Amherst and the Airport. We will never resolve the city-suburb sprawl issues...but we can create a model whereby we allow choices for both...but in healthier ways than we currently do.

Some people prefer Buffalo's relatively dense urban living, others prefer having a little more space in Amherst or Cheektowaga, some prefer even more in an outer burb or a rural area.

Is there really any more to it than that? Personal reference. Just like some people don't mind a medium sized metro area like Buffalo while others prefer a top 5 big city like Chicago or Philly. Personal preference.

It is simply about money. The highway, oil, housing, banking, automobile, rubber... industries all saw there was $$ to be made by supporting sprawl. Lobbyists for those industries saw to it that sprawl infrastructure was funded by government. This government welfare made the cost reasonable for the immediate user while putting off much of the expense for future generations (like now!).

It's okay to prefer to live in the suburbs but people who live there should pay all the costs of living there. We have Grand Island residents who don't even want to pay their discounted price to use the bridges. These people live on an ISLAND, if they don't want to pay for the bridges to live there they can buy BOATS. There are people who live in East Aurora and drive on the 400, 90, and 290 to get to work. Sure, gasoline taxes pay for part of the costs but contrary to popular myth but hardly all of it.

I believe that if sprawl was not susidized there would be far less of it.

I find it comical that someone is so arrogant to chastise people living in the suburbs of Buffalo from Chicago. How about you shut your trap in telling what people in WNY should do David until you live in WNY?

This post is almost as pathetic and self serving as your post on gift ideas pushing your book.

Urban sprawl is a challenge. No doubt about that. But so are the challenges in living in the city. People like you want others to move back into the city but blatantly disregard the reasons why they left. Blatantly disregard the self inflicted wounds on the city by the corrupt agencies, politicians and grass roots organizations that are supported year after year, election and election by the complacent voters and residents of the City of Buffalo.

You can not choose your family but you can choose your friends and neighbors. Maybe people in Buffalo should look in the mirror for once and ask themselves why they are such crappy neighbors.

Of course people will counter with the amazing performance recently with the EHMO show. I counter that with where the hell were people before the cameras? Are the people going to still come now that the cameras are gone? I will also add that a large portion of the time and money for that "Shinning moment in the spotlight for Buffalo" came from people who live in the burbs and that you so ofter piss on.

the real issue is over achieving sustainability through density, its just masquerading as a "city v. suburbs" conflict.

each new subdivision and each new strip mall require investments in infrastructure: utilities, roads, schools, police stations, post offices all need to be built, staffed and regularly maintained.

these are not inexpensive investments. particularly when you consider in our region they are redundant duplications of already built-up neighborhoods. and because new suburbs are not nearly as dense as the old neighborhoods, they require larger investments than the older ones did. they also cost more in materials, land and staffing. basically, they are just inherently less efficient. every taxpayer and utility customer bares these costs.

additionally, new suburbs - at least the ones not built in a "new urbanist" style - generally have few sidewalks, streetlights, or mainstreet style commercial districts. inevitably, this makes them inherently unwalkable. and because of the low density, it costs more to ship to the far reaching corners of the exurbs - all of which makes this kind of development unsustainable with high fuel costs (think "fuel surcharge").

its important to recognize that some suburbs or parts of suburbs and small villages are dense, walkable and sustainable. some could easily add some features like a transit stop or changing zoning to allow for a walkable commercial district to make them sustainable as well. all is far from lost.

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btw - im looking to get a new urbanist group in the North Park section of Buffalo, if your interested please check out: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=165318518234&ref=ts

Americans need to understand that suburban sprawl is wrong. It is just wrong no matter which way you look at it. There is no reason for the developments we build, for the swamps we drain, for the roads we build. Our cities should grow organically, as we run out of space in one area we expand to a new place. Instead we have literally thrown away good and very usable houses in the city for newer and bigger houses in the suburbs. This is absolutely destructive and almost the damage that has already been caused is nearly irreversible. Just like Global Warming and climate change, we need to stop further damage now. We are not too far gone to make amends for past mistakes and begin to reinvest in our city infrastructure instead of building new in the expansive sprawl of the suburbs.

This is just the right thing to do. Our leaders should take notice and outlaw further development until we fill houses that are currently standing vacant.

STOP THE SUBURBAN SPRAWL NOW! IT IS KILLING OUR PLANET AND RUINING OUR CITIES FOR GENERATIONS TO COME!

I heard that Michael Moore is doing his next documentary on suburbia.

Whats with all these snobby city vs suburb stories? I personally feel that cities AND suburbs are killing this earth! People should live in the wild and in caves. Who is with me, im ready to start a movement?!

sprawl is only viable as long as we have inexpensive energy and as long as we put more subsidies into building roads and infrastructure instead of maintaining the roads and infrastructure we already have....

We are paying for miles of power, sewar, water, sidewalks, curbs, street lighting, fire and police to name a few of the services....

If there was a valuation based tax on age of infrastructure, whereby, the longer the infrastructure has been in existence the cheaper it is...and the newer the infrastructure is the more expensive it is...then the tax incentives for sprawl would be eroded and those people who want the exurban life would be paying properly for it.

There will always be those who prefer suburbs, exurbs and small towns over urban life. Its fine but we must find a way to make urban life less expensive and more convenient than the alternatives.

We could revise our municipal governments and county governments into some compromise where say Buffalo was broken up by council districts into separate municipalities...and the county legislature comprised of the mayors of each municipality...with a hired county or metro manager. Thus we get the best of both worlds..smaller town/community based government and the efficiencies of a central metro government.

Im just saying...why not let people have what they want...and find a way to give it to them.

Steel,

Thanks for supplying the tutorial so all of us could enjoy it. I watched all 9 episodes with great interest. I took a couple urban history classes in college. In the latter part of the 20th Century portion of the two semester classes, Buffalo was cited in detail as a forward thinking city that built on its efficient wheel spoke design and the "new" highway structures now known as the Kensington and the Niagara Thruway. I thought you might appreciate that this is the way experts looked at urban sprawl in the 1970's. It was an inevitability and this city and region embraced it. Turns out that it wasn't exactly a perceptive perspective.

Thanks for the post, STEEL.

Thanks for MRodgers, who respectfully watches the bigger picture (Vive le difference!) and Really?, who disrespectfully watches the bigger picture. Both of their responses made me think.

What is the solution for Buffalo? Rebuild properly dense and urbanistic housing for a city that doesn't need more housing?

Build more spacious housing (not necessarily "suburban") to utilize empty lots and accept our newfound smaller population (and plan for continued population loss)?

Rebuild existing old houses instead of focusing on newbuilds?

Doing the previous in conjunction with closing and landbanking entire streets?

No one likes what we have or how we do it (myself included). I know what I would like to see, but for everyone else, What Happens Now?

I tend to not read all the rants that people write on topics that go this long due to the repetitive one sided responses that keep popping up up, but doesn't it boil down to personal choice? For the Suburbanites - They want good schools, save neighborhoods, the feel of comfort and quietness without being to far from the actual city, neighbors who they know will maintain their property and have it not be a rental to anyone willing to pay. Urbanites - They like the proximity to everything that is needed, they like the environment and idea of living in the city and maybe there is comfort in seeing a constant array of people. As I was writing this I really became board with the topic. Seriously. If people want more people in the cities then make it worth it to be here. It comes down to a mentality issue in my opinion. I don't like huge crowds of people at a bar so I tend to stay away from those ones and find the mellow smaller ones. I will venture in once in a while for the experience but that's not my cup of tea. People in the Burbs might enjoy the quietness and less dense population of people in which they live. That wont change. To make the city more dense then attract those who like living in the city and not blaming it on those who choose not to live here and use it for its features when they need to.

Maybe some people prefer to live away from crime. Not too many muggings in Cowlesville!

Maybe some people prefer to live away from crime. Not too many muggings in Cowlesville!

Crime, to a large extent much of the crime in Buffalo and Niagara Falls is SELF INFLICTED.

Niagara Falls, NY had a choice NOT to demolish nearly all of its downtown for urban renewal but it did it anyway, then they could have had the Boulevard Mall in Niagara Falls but they dithered, they could have had the Summit Mall in Niagara Falls but they dithered on that also. They demolished their city and never rebuilt it.

Buffalo is not quite as corrupt and incompetent as Niagara Falls but it comes darn close. Does anyone want to count the number of companies that Buffalo/Erie County lost because of incompetence besides say Barilla Pasta and Wacker Chemical, failure to cleanup brownfields, failure to stimulate new urban office parks, failure to apply minimum resources to homes for things like new roofs and gutters instead of demolition, failure to inspect and enforce property laws, and the list goes on. What is the statistic that Rochester was able to save and rehab 360 homes per year while Buffalo which receives more money was only able to accomplish 30.

Crime comes from a lack of opportunity. Very few criminals are bad people...some are very smart...some are very wounded...some are very compassionate...all were denied opportunities to focus and direct their energies productively. Not everyone needs the money and the intellect to be a doctor or a lawyer! The city fails its children. There is plenty of need for car mechanics, plumbers, wallpaper hangers, painters, construction workers, dental hygenists, medical secretaries, etc.

This is again where new urbanism succeeds where the suburbs often fail...those local neighborhood stores were the ones that often employed those children, mentored them, anchored them, focused them and started their careers. Without urban jobs those kids are lost!

No neighborhood can survive without jobs...and thats why the eastside died and the southpark area of south buffalo died.

Now...the big advantage that buffalo has for new urbanism is that we do have suburban sprawl but it is contained within city and county roads that were built to the pre-WWII standards radiating out from the city connecting to other cities, towns and villages....as do the railroads too!

For Buffalo and much of the Great Lakes region...we wont have as much demolition to do to be low energy and post-modern new urbanism as the southern cities but Buffalo does need to get its act together in separating out what parts of Buffalo can be saved and what parts cant, make the parts that can historic with pre-WWII zoning and architectural codes....and make the parts that cant new urbanist modern and contemporary with a mixture of styles.

Yes, crime does come from people who fall into drugs and alcohol and sex and other addictions as well as other moral failings...but we simply must put all of societies energy into focusing our children and providing them opportunities for employment. Perhaps it means making more things in the US, less imports and higher prices for products. Perhaps it means less immigration. Perhaps it means letting kids leave high school after 10th grade and finish at a community college so they have access to a degree in a trade. If your a victim of crime..chances are that kids crime started with truancy at school. Perhaps it means deputizing truant officers and hauling parents before a social worker and judge.

Buffalo has the bones...to build a future...and so do its suburbs...the question is getting builders in Buffalo to build those urban townhomes and rowhouses and urban office parks...and urban warehouses...etc. With Buffalos rising property values its really time to start sharing our focus with what kind of new construction we want...as our major historical properties get rehabbed.

I have asked this question before. Can anyone point to an example when one of our suburban neighbors has made any attempt to cooperate with or help the city in any way? We often hear criticism but I have yet to see any effort to work together. The present division is just too advantageous for the suburbs and selfishness prevents change.

I guess I had better watch all the videos before I can make a full comment, but this habit of New Urbanist priests enlightening the dim folk is grating. As an Elmwood Village resident and support for 22 years, what first strikes me is the apocalyptic tone of this rallying cry against sprawl.

I didn't realize that thousands of hardworking responsible citizens in the suburbs had unwittingly (or worse, knowingly) brought my lifestyle to the brink of Armageddon. Is sprawl really the "worst concept ever developed by mankind"? Worse than wedging low-income people into filthy cities without sanitation, which was the norm in most large cities until about 75 years ago? Worse than the lucrative tenement factories of the dense, vibrant New York City of 1900? Or in the city I love more than any other, Buffalo, worse than the systematic ghettoizing of Polish immigrants in Cholera-soaked housing downtown?

I love city life, but before indicting sprawl and its usual suspects, our city needs to clean out its political rot and burns away its own colossally stupid ways. Then it can start pointing fingers.

"Some will pout that this is just another snobby city versus suburb post. The kind of post they often claim BRO likes to favor, which pits so-called Elmwood urban "hipsters" against God fearing people who "choose" to live in the suburbs, clinging to their cars in fear that the city liberals will soon try to take them away."

Steele - I appreciate your article, thanks for sharing your thoughts and the video series. I am not against the New Urbanist agenda and I am not against the suburbs either. As others have stated here, there is room for both in this world. I also agree that suburban sprawl is causing irreversible damage to the planet. I think we agree on this. What I was saying in the previous article is we have a tendancy to use broad stereotypes that focus on the negative when we refer to the suburbs. We focus on the sprawl, not on the old villages and unique houses. We ignore the fact that our city is full of cookie cutter houses and cul de sac developments. When we talk about the suburbs we do so with the same standard liberal rhetoric every time.

I don't think we can have a reasonable conversation that includes the suburbs and the city as complementing aspects of our region. We seem to focus on all the bad of the suburbs, but won't let anyone get away with saying negative things about the city. I know I am speaking in very general and broad terms.

I hope that someday we can begin to look at the area as a region, instead of as a city and everything else. I hope that we can embrace people who live in the suburbs as one of us, and they can do the same for those who live in the city. Maybe someday we can address the systemic issues that plague our city without pointing fingers at the suburbs as the source. Maybe someday we can all just get along.

I think I'm done with Buffalo Rising. I know my opinions are not shared by the majority who post here and my thoughts are generally not welcome in this liberal love fest. If you find yourself on Winston Rd, stop by and say hi. I'll be sitting on the porch with an extra beer if you need one.

Take care now. It's been fun.

Not to play Devil's Advocate here, but I can speak to one factor concerning urban sprawl in Buffalo that I did not see addressed here. If you haven't figured it out yet, I am in the older segment of participants in this forum. I can remember when the city was at its peak in the 50's when there were almost 600,000 living within the city limits. Life was vibrant and the streets downtown were crowded. Public transportation was, on the main corridors, highly used even by people in the burbs who came into the city for shopping and medical services.

With the vibrancy came overcrowding. The city was filthy and the schools were awful. Yes, even then. The first batch of Boomers were taxing the housing availability. Most parents worked in areas of idsustrial labor. I assure you, they were not interested in the extensive cultural opportunitiesas much as the overtime to be made. Money flowed.

So, there was a powerful push out of the city, not singularly a pull at the hands of greedy developers alone.

I was one of 6 kids. I attended the former School 65 which was a physical disgrace. The desks were bolted to the floor, ink well holes remained from days long gone by, and the tops were so gouged that you couldn't write on them. Window were broken year round. Studen behavior, especially from the project kids who were 15 and still in the 6th grade, was appalling despite the excellent teachers. But it was the condition of the school that was the face of education to the parents.

Buffalo had reached capacity and failed to provide decent services. I imagine that this was repeated in most urban centers.

I thought I would interject this factor into the equation as it has not received much mention. The burbs beckoned to those who wanted something they perceived as better.

Living in Buffalo became increasingly untenable