Ouch! City's Population Down 10.7 Percent in Last Decade

The county (less the city) gained 113 people. Better get working on that ECC City campus.

The mayor should be on the news tonight at 11 live pledging that things will change. I know people hate the term "silver bullets" but we are getting pretty close to needing one. The mayor cannot and should not let the City fall below 250,000. If the City can offer incentive packages to HSBC, why don't they offer something to medium size corporations openly searching for a new home. Even if a company doesn't pay taxes for 15 years, all the workers will. Something has to change in the next five years or else Buffalo will drift off into obscurity. I think beating the 2009 projections by almost 10,000 means we are getting pretty close to panick time.

How few people have to be left in Buffalo before citizens are finally interested in a metropolitan government?

You have to look at the leadership of the City of Buffalo over the past decade. It hasn't been good at all and really isn't still, just look at all the crime. I love all the development making condo's and lofts but we have to bring in people in order to live in them. In order to do that, there has to be job creation. Unfortunately there hasn't been much in the way of job creation, there are too many palms to grease and back door deals that you have to deal with to do business in this area. If City Hall gets cleaned up and makes it easier to do business in this area then we might begin to see the number of people leaving decrease and maybe even increase.

Sorta makes ya wonder who's gonna move into all those high end lofts that are popping up...then again, they wouldnt have been built had there not been a market.

Its a frayed old saying, but its always darkest before dawn. I havent lived in Buffalo long, but I can readily see the shift from people (esp young folk) moving out of the city/burb band and choosing instead to stay and rehab the older, cheaper places in the city. This type of movement is usually the bedrock of revitalization to long-downtrodden neighborhoods, hopefully the economy and jobs market here remains stable enough to promote and nurture interest in the city proper.

The only way the population will change, is with affordable offices and and industry in transportation accessible areas. I think access to the 190 is a great asset for industry, and there are great places to build office buildings.

However, in the process of making office buildings, there needs to be retail and shops supporting the worker.

As for residential, we need to continue re-vamping old neighborhoods. Things are happening west of Main, but what about East? It seems like development has turned a deaf ear to the East Side. I think Broadway/Fillmore can be a catalyst for growth. There is open space nearby for parks and recreation. There is much potential due to the open land.

I am very eager to see the charts showing the changes on a census tract by tract basis. I'm guessing that downtown and close-in neighborhoods like the Elmwood Village, Upper West Side, probably North Park, and maybe even the Grant-Amherst area of Black Rock will show a net increase in population.

It will also be interesting to see the demographic changes in the inner suburbs. Certainly Tonawanda showed a net loss while Amherst showed a gain, but I wonder what the wider economic and racial demographics will show about the neighborhoods ringing the city.

My guess is that the city core is beginning to restabilize and disinvestment is spreading from the fringes of the city into the inner-ring suburbs, while people continue to sprawl outwards.

Well it's at 261,000 and I was personally hoping for 270,000. I also think it's useless to bring up Detroit's population loss as some sort of "well at least were...." rationalization for not taking the situation seriously enough. In several ways , however, the first decade of the new century has been the most positive decade for Buffalo since the first half of the 20th century. There have been far more buildings built and rehabbed in the last 10 years than in the last 50 years of the 20th century. Another positive to look at is the percentage of projects announced versus the percentage of projects that are actually completed. In the 90's that ratio was about 20 percent and the process of actually getting something done seemed to take forever. Although I'm approximating here, I'd say it's at least 70% of announced projects that have been completed over the last decade. A neighborhood like the Upper West Side from Richmond to Linwood had become very frayed during the 90's with disinvestmen dilapatated housing. Because I grew up in this neighborhood, I pay close attention to it and I was really bothered by the constant presence of at least 5 "For Sale" signs on each side of each block during the 90's. Because of the synergy of the GardenWalk and Massiello's tax reassessment, this neighborhood really turned around after 2000 and that synergy has spread to other parts of the West Side. In the 90's, Delaware Ave was pockmarked with derelict buildings that justb sat there and were tolerated by many residents and a big turnoff to visitors. A numer of these properties from Virginia and North such as the University Club are now apartments or Victor Hugo's, now the Mansion or 591 Delaware now redeveloped from a burned out shell to a eautiful restoration. Property values and homeownership also increased in many parts of North and South Buffalo during this first decade of the 21st century. The first new economic driver for the city and county in decades appeared in the form of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. I know that cynicism often prevails in Buffalo but now we have measurable positives for the city and not just wishful thinking and anecdotes. By far, however, the most noticeable change that has effected the quality of life in Buffalo is the rise and participation of civic interest groups in the life of the city. We all know that our politicians don't lead and are often responsible for the inertia that plagues all of Upstate. But instead of passively accepting the situation as has been done in the past, thousands of Buffalonians have taken the situation into their own hands with demonstrable results.

Still better than Cleveland,(dropped by 17%) and Detroit (dropped by 25%).

Folks - you can rail all you want about government, leadership, Fortune 500 companies, etc. But this is a trend that is happening all over the Great Lakes region. This is in no way unique to our city.

Also, the picture of the moving van is deceiving. Most ciities in the Northeast and Great Lakes have lots of people moving OUT. But places like Boston and NYC have people moving IN (mostly new immigrants) that make up for all the people that are moving OUT.

If we had 'Leadership' that actually knew how to lure company's here instead of scare them away, we may actually be INCREASING Our population instead of what is happening.

I think the most notable one is Chicago dropping by almost 7%. Has anyone done any research to find out

... what's driving people out of the Great Lakes region? We can spew the usual host of reasons but I'd like to see some hardcore data. Heck even a simple survey would suffice so I no longer have to tell myself it's gotta be the weather.

With no private sector jobs and an extremely aged population, there's little hope for any kind of turn-around for population increases in Buffalo and its surrounding suburbs. Young people who are well-educated and entrepreneurial don't see the area as a viable place. When an urban area steadily loses 50% of its population in forty years, it indicates that the long-established industries and supporting businesses drastically changed and nothing came in to replace them.

The local governments have been clueless and ignorant for decades during the declines. If anyone wants to succeed in the Buffalo area become a geriatric physician or lawyer specializing in ElderCare.

How much new infrastructure has Erie County added to support that almost 3% loss of population?

Who is going to pay for that increased infrastructure burden?

What kind of folks are leading to the decline of population? Is it from all demographics? College grad age? Old folks passing on? Those in poverty? I'd be curious to see if/how the demographics of the city are changing.

People have mentioned Chicago and New York City's population losses. Those cities continued gentrification has priced poor/lower middle class people out and they are moving down south where it is cheaper to live.

The population loss would not be such a big deal if we would plan for it and adjust accordingly; one example: downsize government and restrict further sprawl. Get back to the core.

Troubling numbers! There seem to be other cities around the world depopulating at the same time as Buffalo, but are there any earlier examples of a city depopulating over time in a peaceful way that we can use as a model to understand what is happening? It does seem like there is nothing stopping the drop even below that nice round 250,000 number, which at this rate we will hit in only about 3 years.
I agree with Hoss above, we need to survey the residents, do demographic modeling etc. to try to understand the reasons behind the drop and then do something drastic to fix the major problems. Otherwise, I think the city will just fade away.

We have no data (yet) on the causes. Population numbers are complicated.

Remember, when people leave the city, they usually go to the suburbs. Not to another metropolitan area. This movement to the suburbs is still happening nationwide.

From articles I've read, the few northern cities that are growing are doing so because of immigration, much of it Hispanic. It would be interesting to see these numbers for Buffalo.

And while the numbers don't look good for the city, it is somewhat beside the point to only look at the city. The county is losing population, but at a much smaller rate. So what does that suggest?

Forbes can be a frustrating internet experience but here is a link to a 2008 migration map that is quite illuminating.

More than 10 million Americans moved from one county to another during 2008. The map below visualizes those moves. Click on any county to see comings and goings: black lines indicate net inward movement, red lines net outward movement.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/04/migration-moving-wealthy-interactive-counties-map.html?preload=36029

We talk about bringing in a large company form out of the area into the urban core? This is probably not realistic when the opportunity for less costly parking is available in the near suburban office parks.

If there was an incentive for a company from out of the area to move into the region the tax structure of NYS is such that our region is not as appealing as compared to NC or Florida.

Verizon was going to get an incentive of apx. $3.1 MM per job? Why wouldn't the State incentivize 100 small businesses with a $31,000 tax break, imagine the impact.

It will be interesting to see how NYS compares to other states in the divide between % of population below poverty level and highest 1% of income.

Somebody mentioned about the lofts and its great people are moving into them there seems to be alot of double houses empty on alot of streets in Buffalo. People dont want to buy these houses anymore because there too much to take care of and the garages are falling apart and invest in thus the demand for the lofts and apartments? I live in N Buffalo and there are a few houses sitting vacant just falling apart on my street yet around the corner new lofts will be build off Main st.

Every 2 hours and 45 minutes, the City of Buffalo loses one resident. How's that 45 years of one-party rule working out?

It shouldn't come as a surprise that Buffalo lost more population. First of all, I have been following the census results pretty closely and most cities in this country experienced losses greater than expected or gains less than expected. Perennial gainer, Dallas, barely grew in the last ten years. The Great Recession not only kept people from migrating....it kept people from having babies. In addition close to two million Latinos left and moved back to Mexico and Central America.

Secondly, look at the big picture. Its not just the city of Buffalo and Metro Buffalo that lost population but all of the counties in Western NY lost as well. That didn't happen in Metro Rochester or Metro Syracuse or Metro Albany. How come? I think its critical to find out what are the common threads running through Western NY that led to population losses in all those counties. Then, assuming there is commonality, address those issues together as a region and then work together again as a region to make the entire region attractive to new industry and to growth. There are a number of regional models out there......Minneapolis/St Paul, Toronto.....to name two.

Thirdly, this talk of poaching companies from Rochester or Syracuse is like stealing food from others on a sinking ship. Its just rude. In a prior post, I suggested that the best way to grow is to grow the companies that exist already in your metro area. Find out which companies are expanding and help them meet their needs so that their future growth is assured and that they will remain in Metro Buffalo. Biotech and tech companies clearly tend to be growth engines but they are hardly the only ones. I've mentioned Starbucks before.....it started out as a two person coffee shop in a farmers market-like place in Seattle and now is a major source of employment in the city. Universities and medical centers also can be a great growth industries.

Fourthly, keep doing what you are doing. I've posted before I was really impressed with the rehabbing activity in downtown Buffalo. If you make Downtown a vibrant, active and economically successfully place to work, play and live, companies will be attracted to the city. It will encourage companies that are homegrown to stay and prosper. People will want to live in the city. And if they want to live in the city, they will want to live in the suburbs as well. Its true what they say....a rising tide raises all boats.

Finally, keep in mind that population growth isn't all its cracked up to be. I've lived in a fast growing city and ones that were slower growing and I will take the slower growing cities any day of the week. However, every city needs to grow some....that should be a goal.

And keep in mind the things that Buffalo does have.....a great park system, beautiful tree line streets, great historic architecture, the lake and you all. Those are major assets not to be ignored or denigrated.

I know I'll take heat for this comment, because I know nobody wants to hear this. But I think cold, dreary winters in Buffalo (or the perception of bad weather) should be considered as a factor in Buffalo's population loss. As I was reading this news this morning, at exactly one week before April, it was 15 degrees in Buffalo. Alongside the shocking headline on the Buffalo News website about population decline, you can't help but notice another one that says, "Over night storm expected to bring 2 to 5 inches of snow." Another one, "Snowy commute just the beginning as Winter lingers." I know a lot of us really love Winter weather and all the snow that comes along with it. Some of us might even love the gray skies that hang over the shores of Lake Erie for most of the Winter. But many people do not, many many people. There are plenty of other cities that celebrate all four seasons and get Winter weather, but just not to the extreme and extent of Western New York. Baltimore, for example, could almost be called "New Buffalo" for all the Buffalonians who left the Queen City for Charm City. The two cities have a lot of similarities such as a largely industrial past, a Golden Age in their histories, a large working class/blue collar population, etc. But Maryland's weather has much broader appeal to the masses, in my opinion, than Western New York's. The City of Baltimore may have lost population in the last census figures as Buffalo did, but nowhere close to Buffalo's loss, and all of Baltimore's suburbs expanded. Since Buffalo can do nothing to change the weather itself, I believe something needs to be done to help people deal with it. Buffalo needs to own it, make it seem more appealing through marketing or something. I don't know exactly how to turn this negative into a positive, but I do think it should be addressed. It is ever increasingly easy to be mobile in our society due to better technology, and people seem to be less loyal to their hometowns with each passing generation. So I think outward migration is not going to end any time soon, if ever, unless we make the area more attractive. Buffalo Rising is a good start!

Sure its a trend that has been going on in the Northeast/Great Lakes area for decades..I'm not suprised even though I think I would notice 3000 fewer people here a year. (Shorter line at Wegmans, easier time getting tix for shows etc) I reiterate some of the above comments..where are they coming from? Urban poor frusturated with the lack of opportunity? Snowbird retirees making the final plunge below the Mason-Dixon line? College kids?

I have trouble believing that it is seriously about the jobs..sure you don't have your pick of the litter here as one would in NYc, Seattle, Dallas w/e. All you really have to do is google the top companies of WNY (M&T, First Niagara, MOOG, hsbc, geico, Kaleida, Catholic Health, UB, etc) and you'll find 1000 job posting plus online.

If I were a machinist I would no trouble finding a job in WNY, or a banker, or a lab tech, or a Nurse, or even if I worked in accademia. I really don't get it.

Is this a matter of not having work or not having the image or reputation needed to attract outsiders for certain types of work? Are the ones leaving Buffalo NOT qualified to obtain many of the jobs available? Or are they not interested in Buffalo/Niagara because it is not the place to be? Reputation matters in choosing employment just as much as choosing where to live.

YOu wanna fix the population loss..fix the image and reputation of Buffalo and wny.

and, another positive spin: Buffalo, due to being a "dwindling market", will continue to fly below the radar of national, corporate retailers that only manage to drain local communities of revenues and homogenize cities (a semi-recent realization for many); Buffalo can maintain and build authenticity, support locally-started and run companies, etc. The tortoise may, in fact, win out in the end.....

Great article in the nytimes regarding the black population decline in the north. New York State is leading the (driven by new york city of course).

Another contributing factor to the overall picture that has more to do with a nation-wide trend than a city or region specific challenge.

Lot's of good posts, ideas and concepts listed here. It's almost difficult to disagree with anyone. But the major component I think has to be addressed more than the weather and city vs suburb issue is "leadership". Until we truly have those in power with the power, ideas and drive to lure business into this area, it will not happen or happen too slowly. As a non-native to Buffalo, I agree with a poster who had indicated that more has been done in the last 10 years than the last 50. That's a good sign. In seeing pictures posted here of areas like the Genessee gateway area, the building on Chippewa (soho) and other improvements in the city, you can see progress in the "before and after" photos. I think the weather has a little to do with people "booking" out, but we are not the only cold climate city. And mostly any area on the map has something. Every time we have a snow storm, all you hear is "at least it's not an earthquake, or flood, or tornado." And that speaks tons of truth. I don't know the answer to Buffalo's plague but I do know I love living here and when I have guests in from out of town and they walk Main street, they enjoy the feel and look of our city. They comment on "what a cool little city we have" and then finish with "too bad those beautiful buildings lining Main don't have anything in them". I don't think we will ever be a Mega City like NYC or Chicago, but I'd definitely take that "cool little city with people" over the dying city we're toted as. Like a poster said above, create a vibrant urban city and people will definitely "look" here.

LOL How some comments try to turn around negative news. Like trying to put lipstick on a pig. WNY had the greatest population loss in the entire state.

But any way that was a stupid comment on my part. I guess I don't understand your point on that math. What are you trying to say? If you remove all of Buffalo's population the county would have dropped by 300,000 people. That is a meaningless stat as well.

Your statement suggests that ALL people who left the area did so from Buffalo which I will take any bet is not true. As I said It may very well be that the county decline is due to suburban people leaving the area. It may also be true that people leaving Buffalo is the only thing propping up suburban numbers

Why hasn't any one (politician, scholar) mentioned what they're doing to combat this? Correct me if I"m wrong, but is this on ANYONES radar? Blame Albany great...Albany's not gonna change, how are you gonna work around them?

A 10% population loss is sad but do you know whats worse..reading about cities in the same state doing BETTER (population wise) than we are. Whats goin on in Rochester and Syracuse? What are they doing that we're not? What do I read about politicnas in FRIGGEN UTICA going out and searching for immigrants from all over the world and resettling them in the Utica area to cancel out population losses there?

If Utica can do it why can't we? Wheres the housing settlement program? Immigration efforts with resettlement (You can own a home in wny living with your sig. other at $10 per hour per person). Mortgage incentives for YOUNG people to settle within the city limits (ultimately leading to babys) Tax breaks for snowbirds who maintain condo's or homes within the city limits while they're gone? Florida fights to have every person counted why shouldn't we?

There are other cities out there both large and small that have been dealt tougher cards then we and come out stronger and better than before. I 2nd the comments about leadership...Buffalo still hasn't had their Mayor Daly or Guiliani or Cory Booker.

I thought the losses would be even worse, so I'm not shocked. And given that Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cleveland (17%), Cincinnati, St. Louis and many other cities lost many people, we have to see that this is not a Buffalo phenomenon but part of a national trend. It will take decades of new demographic trends to reverse some of this population decline in the older Northern cities. One good mayor or project won't do it. Regionalization is a good strategy, but that could be a long time off, so while we wait it's helpful to remember there are more ways to measure a city that its census count. Buffalo has fewer residents than 10 years ago, but I think it's arguably a healthier city now than it was then.

I think this article really underscores the need for more housing and construction. Colvin Estates anyone?

Careful with the 'free' money silver bullets, it a big part of the reason people are so leery to come to NY. I know I'm not getting money for free, that's going to come off of my bottom line at some point. Also there are no shortages of massive incentives to move into the city. If your a first time home buy, and purchase in the city, you can get up to $20,000 matching your down payment, another low interest loan to cover closing costs, training on how ownership and other programs. If your a military vet and will return to NYS you can get a 4.5% 40 year mortgage to come back. If you buy in the city you can get a dollar for dollar grant for fixing a roof. If your a non-white or female there are even more programs that are just free money.

The thing is all that funding comes from somewhere, so to move up here, you know your going to be paying those same costs, and if your not moving up here your just shouldering the cost to the people who are. So there is allot of incentive to leave, and go to another place that will pay you to show up. Its the same problem the state has with the massive pension liabilities. O, and those programs come from a half dozen different offices, all with different bureaucracy writing rules and paying people from state money. Each one also has "empire building" to make sure any "leadership" is buried in rules and mandates.

Looking to open a business here, there are 5 different organizations with staffs that do about the same thing. Dumping money into stuff isn't always the answer.

Just a note on the weather, Buffalo has great weather. I have a house in Kansas and the winter its -20 wind chills and the summer its 103, it horrible, but you say Buffalo and they all think Blizzard of 77', which is odd coming from people who were born in the late 80/early 90s. I suppose that just calls for good marketing.

The Buffalo News has a map showing the population changes by census tract here:
http://www.buffalonews.com/incoming/article375891.ece/BINARY/0325PercentMap.pdf

And here's a map with the city streets overlaid on the 2000 census tracts (some minor differences with the map above, but you can figure out which tract goes where pretty easily):
http://www.ci.buffalo.ny.us/files/1_2_1/SPlanning/Census2000TractCOB.pdf

I was quite surprised to see which areas actually had population growth in the city. I certainly didn't expect Black Rock and Riverside to show population gains, or University Heights for that matter.

As I read this article and the comments I'm sitting in my car while doing laundry at elmwood and north. I'm sitting here looking at a ton of apartments that are available and really wonder if there is a need for the all the lofts being built I'd like to see more small business incubators since rents in our prominent districts are expensive but maybe they could do half lofts half business in these buildings. Also a lot of housing in the city is either too small or too expensive for young families maybe a few 3 bedroom units for a little under 1000 would keep people in the area that are looking to start a family but can't afford a house but still want to live in a nice part of the city

So, the economic value of owning a 2-flat, where your tenant pays most of your mortgage, is cancelled out by contemporary maintenance costs? That seems foolish to me. As for white flight, I'm old enough to remember it in full force. Let's see, what did white flight do for Buffalo or most any American city? Destroy a middle class tax-base? Destroy the school system, escalated by forced busing? Create a one-dimensional negative image of Buffalo that persists in the minds of many suburbanites today? Make greedy real estate agent's use of fear tactics a successful way to make a lot of money? Populate the inner ring suburbs with idiots who boasted about escaping the impending black takeover of Buffalo? And though most of the people of my parent's generation that jumped on the white-flight express are gone now, Buffalo's population loss in the last half of the 20th century occurred in large part because of those "who voted with their feet" as its defenders called it back in the day.

How much of this loss is due to older folks passing away? If that's a major factor, we may continue to see losses like this for some years to come. Because looking around, I don't think we exactly have a young population, nor a situation that is particularly youth friendly. It may be a while until we get to that point. Still, my outlook on Buffalo is positive. I see improvement all over the place. The freight train of decay is hard to slow down, but it's happening. Got to fight the long war.

The City of Buffalo is definitely not alone with the population decline. Lackawanna, City of Tonawanda, Town of Tonawanda, Cheektowaga, and West Seneca are continuing to decline as well. It is the outer ring communities like Wheatfield, Clarence, Grand Island, and East Amherst that continue to grow at the expense of the older established communities. Buffalo suffered a major loss but it could have been even worse. Look at Detroit, that city is shrinking more rapidly than previously known.

I should chime in here that population losses like this are not solely a Great Lakes or rustbelt phenomenon. I don't have the figures handy, but Atlanta lost something like 10% this decade.

Keep in mind here, that the CITY of Atlanta spreads across three counties (the MPA covers 12+ counties), so that is roughly equivalent to the first 2-3 ring burbs in Buffalo. Even Atlanta's first few burb rings had losses. The GROWTH happened in exoburbs (50+%) that have commute times approaching an hour from downtown... and... the *downtown core* (10+%) of only 4-5 ZIP codes.

There are probably a hundred different explanations for that sort of thing, but to me the most reasonable is the housing boom/bust. Developers kept building and overbuilding outward and outward during the boom. When the bubble popped, suddenly prices fell and it is now the lower incomes that have moved out to grab cheap homes at the expense of having higher fuel costs.

The wealthy are now moving back into the cities in an economic reverse of last century's "white flight". Property rates in the city are rising, which drives more of the lower classes further out.

As has been pointed out before, Buffalo is somewhat fortunate to has been bypassed by the housing boom. But nationwide trends like this can be an advantage, depending on what side of the narrow margin you are on. Detroit is hoping to attract immigrants and the poor to replace their lost population. Atlanta is "trading up" to attract the wealthy and the younger crowds by building more pedestrian and transit-friendly neighborhoods whose net income is greater than the larger population that is being displaced.

I can see (with proper planning and leadership) Buffalo making the best of this situation by focusing on making the city core an attractive growth zone (even if it is for a privileged few). Then building on that to stabilize the more hard-hit neighborhoods from sinking into slum status. A smaller population now can be an opportunity for the future (though, hopefully that doesn't sound too much like the 'right-sizing' crock that Detroit is resorting to.

Naturally, this is not "news" for anybody who's followed Buffalo's 50+ year cycle of decline and instead, it's entirely predictable. The only question which remains is: "When will the exodus cease or, how will we know when we've hit bottom and are on our way back up?"
That's not an easy question to answer and it will only be resolved when we can clearly differentiate the arguments for staying or moving here. People stay or move when they believe that it's in their best interest to do so in comparison to the choices offered by other municipalities and that they'll "vote with their feet."