101 Illuminating Ideas for the City of Light: How We Can Rebuild Buffalo

You wont get the suburban middle class back into the Buffalo Public Schools as they exist. Break them apart into individual charter schools and implement school choice and school vouchers.

Rebuild historic structures...use history and culture to give Buffalo a recognizable and marketable positive branding.

Segregate the Bed Tax from the General Budget and devote the full amount to tourism and job creation and marketing.

The most successful was the teaming of UB Research with the private sector in a Center for Excellence. Why not build on success? Such as:
-use ECMC as a center for Excellence in Psychological & Socioligical health and research.
-use the Niagara Power Authority & UB for a TESLA Center for Excellence in Power Generation, Distribution & Management (including renewables).
-Banking & Finance & Insurance (possibility)
-Communication (Data and voice) (possibility)
-Transportation, Distribution, Warehousing, Import/Export, Customs, Supply Chain Mgmt, Inventory Mgmt (possibility)
-The chemical industry in niagara falls, brass in tonawanda, metals in south buffalo...could make a great center of excellence in Material Sciences.

These arent new ideas...but they need more momentum

Such a great idea! Kudos to Michele Tucker and everyone else involved in this!

Its a shame that one of the most breathtaking and beautiful places in our city - the foot of Ferry street has not been transformed or utilizied in any way. Anyone who has been down there knows what I am talking about. Your sort of underneath (to the right of) the Peace Bridge - the water from the river rushes past - there are stunning views od the Canadian skyline. That area should be made into a destination for something.
I also think Lower West Side - which is so close to the river - is such an untapped diamond in the rough. Niagara street and the water front has so much potential between downtown and Buffalo State College. Kick out the drug dealers and crimminals and help the area rebuild and you will have one of the most diverse, culturally fascinating, beautiful areas in our city.

i don't mean to be blunt, but let's drop the idea that we just don't have enough ideas. heck, 10 minutes reading bro's comment stream on any given day will expose you to any number of the 1.5 million ideas that each one of us is generously blessed with. we all have tons of great ideas and most of them are for what the mythical "they," you know, some other guy should do. the "they" that exists to fix everything for us.

perfect example: fredrico above. do you really think that it has never occurred to anyone ever in the history of buffalo that drug dealers & criminals are bad neighbors? how are you, fredrico, proposing to "kick them out?" planning on joining the police force or d.a.'s office? making a citizen's arrest? tearing up the constitution and forming a lynch mob?

we don't need ideas, we need IMPLEMENTERS.

Light up the skyway, paint a couple grain elevators and light them up also, and get something built on the Webster block. Bam three super easy suggestions that would make a world of difference. Ps a bridge from Main St. To the outer harbor and car traffic back on Main.

Every problem I see around Buffalo leads to the same core issue: lack of effective leadership. Getting progressive, intelligent folks in City Hall should be the #1 order of business. Otherwise, I fear we are just dancing around the elephant in the middle of the living room.

I agree with grad too-talk is cheap. Do.

A metropolitan form of government to force entities in Buffalo and Erie County into streamlining services and acting as one region instead of so many competing factions.

For example, why does a place like Kenmore have its own police department? It's a village. Wouldn't it be better to have one police department for all of Erie County to share information, act as a team, and provider better protection to the public?

I was never of fan of Rudolph Giuliani when I lived in New York. However, I later came to respect one of his early and most controversial decisions: merging the transit police with the NYPD. Crime decreased in the subways because it combined existing resources for deployment in high-crime areas.

I just don't understand the benefit of police sitting on Military Road lying in wait for drivers going a few miles over the speed limit.

I think just about anyone could come up with at least 100 ideas to "rebuild" Buffalo.

First, what the heck does it mean? Does it mean to make the city more attractive? then plant more flowers. Or safer? Then put all the crack heads in jail. (Now that's pretty easy to do!). Or physically rebuild Buffalo -- repair all the roads, and restore all the buildings.

Or does it mean rebuild our schools for the 21st century. I bet no one ever thought of that one before!

Second, does any of this have a focus? Is it to create a tourism industry? Or to create jobs in the biomedical sector? Or must make the city a nicer place to live for those who are already here?

Third, where is the money going to come for all this? Raising taxes? Grants? Robbing from another part of the budget? Or is this all magically going to come from the "private sector."?

Fourth -- who is going to narrow all the ideas down to just 100? What's the criteria? Everyone person here could come up with dozens of ideas to "rebuilt Buffalo," so will it be the ones that are the easiest to do? The ones that create the most jobs? Have greatest immediate impact? Or longterm impact? Or affect the most number of people? Or are the most original and creative?

And ultimately, what's the point? To get things done, or just to get people thinking?

Sorry, but this seems a waste of time for everyone. Better to come up with your own idea and just do it.

If anyone has any doubt as to whether Buffalo is front and center as to the merits of stimulus spending, please read Wallstreet Journal article dated January 14,2012, How Stimulus Spending Ruined Buffalo.This article was written with the intention of debunking any notion that Governor Cuomo's billion dollar package can do anything other than hurt Buffalo in any manner and will hurt more than help revitalization efforts.There were over 100 responses, the majority of which went out of there way to bash Buffalo without mercy. Many of these letters were written by past and present Buffalo and WNY residents. It is interesting that many have made this a political issue and also interesting that the Brooking Institution findings could have been used to prove that stimulus spending has and is working.

I agree with the idea vs. implement argument, as there are plenty of ideas that are much easier said than done. But you can't tell me that each of us can't come up with something that is relatively easy and inexpensive that could make this city better. What about just painting old buildings that are old and run down? Or more public art in random areas of the city. There are plenty of art students at the local colleges who would volunteer for this. Or how about better Christmas lights downtown? EV looks amazing in the winter, while downtown looks like no one cared at all to try and make the lights look good.

Buffalo doesn't have the money to do a lot of great projects, we can all agree on that. But it's close-minded to think that the only great ideas are the ones that cost a lot of money.

Here is one...instead of fighting food trucks, the city should encourage all trucks to park at one location with large common seating area and live music like canalside on weekends from 11-8 and/or Gallagher Pier. Doesn't really cost money, creates good will cooperation with operators and creates a synergetic destination.

I think the fact that people can't help but comment on this with either negative or postive comments speaks volumes about the passion the people of Buffalo have for their city. Instead of asking "why" is this book out, start asking "how" can I contribute?

Just remember that there are many entities out there that have a vested interest in keeping Buffalo in its' place. Just view any discussion group that discusses stimulus spending, and you will quickly discover that those oppossed, view any perceived positive developments in Buffalo with great skeptisism. It's also pretty unusual to find too many people who left Buffalo for greener pastures to admit that they made a terrible choice. It gets pretty tiresome reading about how Democratic mayors destroy a city and that somehow corruption is unique to WNY. It is also almost laughable to hear the old weather stories as the reason for Buffalo's alleged demise, when a day does not go by that another community is not torn apart by a weather related disaster. All I can say Buffalo is hang in there because your day is coming and it is coming fast and with fury.

To Travelrrr: I did buy a house on the East Side. In Kaisertown. Clinton St. has steadily decayed in the 8+ years I've been there. I'm not knocking the thought. We just don't have enough population to make a difference unless PaulBuffalo's thoughts come to fruition:

"A metropolitan form of government to force entities in Buffalo and Erie County into streamlining services and acting as one region instead of so many competing factions."

People in the suburbs should rethink their stance that the city of Buffalo is not their problem. Downtown's image is a reflection upon everyone in WNY.

A Neo-international/travel promotional panel on the peace bridge. The bridge is historic and we could improve it's importance. Give the temperature-time-exchange rate, hotel deals--flight info? what do they do in europe..

They could also consider doing a bridge just for truck traffic. then spending the rest of the money to enhance the neighborhood connection to the water. though who doesn't like a signature bridge.

I keep hearing small business drives the economy. I don't claim to be an economist or have any degree in urban revitalization. But I do know that 3 of the largest industries that are the hardest to get into is Fashion design, the recording industry and advertising. Schools are full of talented graduates that are waiting tables hoping to land a job in one of these fields. Buffalo should market our area to many of these future entrepreneurs as a place to start and build a business based on our low cost of living and ample space. These three types of businesses are growth companies and can attract young professionals, talent and money. Who said New York City has to be the only city with a street named Fashion Ave. and who said Motown has to happen in Detroit.
Bring on the young talented graduates. They will drive our city!

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Pampinform, I think you may have misunderstood. I MEANT Brooking Institution may have concluded, not that they did conclude, that stimulus spending helped bring about a rise in GDP. Now anyone oppossed to stimulus spending would abhore that type of linkage.

When did you say anything about that? I stated that the Brookings Institute said nothing about the stimulus in their report. I think it's a different argument whether or not the stimulus was effective or was a good idea. But to say they may have concluded that was the reason is a whole other thing. They may have concluded that unusual solar flare activity was behind this, but if so they didn't mention it.

Get rid of the corrupt, incompetent democratic party that has had monopoly control over Buffalo city government for almost 50 years. The democrats have ruined this once great and prosperous city with all their urban renewal, pandering to the unmotivated urban poor, and pandering to greedy labor unions who helped drive business and industry out of the city and the rest of the state. All the new, creative ideas in the world are not going to be effective until we do a long overdue, radical change of politics in City Hall.

I agree the Democrats are too far right. Some Democrats have even gone so far as to act like Republicans and allow wealthy interests to influence their decisions. Decades of the failed policies enabling the rich and squeezing he middle class has resulted in the mess we are in. It was the investor class that drove business and industry out of the city and eventually out of the country in there endless quest to accumulate more wealth. Their greed produced the great numbers of poor, in contrast the unions once produced great numbers of the middle class. We do need radical change here in Buffalo and across the nation. We need to take our country back from the 1% that have far too much influence over both major political parties and continue to subvert our political process for their selfish gain.