Buffalo: A History of Growth, Decline and Leftovers

so the picture says we're going down the drain?

If ever this site needed to caption in order to... Who is the artist that created that ingeniously contrived and visually gorgeous pie chart???

I think you left out 4 lane expressway development - usually through minority neighborhoods - and the subsequent movement of those minority populations into new neighborhoods that then caused white flight by the old neighborhood residents and redlining for the new neighborhood residents. I believe that was the way it played out in the Fruit Belt, Cold Springs, Masten Park and Hamlin Park.

I think you left out 4 lane expressway development - usually through minority neighborhoods - and the subsequent movement of those minority populations into new neighborhoods that then caused white flight by the old neighborhood residents and redlining for the new neighborhood residents. I believe that was the way it played out in the Fruit Belt, Cold Springs, Masten Park and Hamlin Park.

Buffalo is 60% vacant land and growing with continued demolitions (even though some buildings are getting saved.

The city needs to invest money in relocating buildings.

The most intact area of Buffalo is between Niagara and Main, though one could add Hamlin, Humboldt and Masten which are east of Main. These areas can be preserved by moving buildings from the eastside to the westside achieving infill.

The eastside than then be converted to park, farm, warehouse/industry or shut down and returned to forest.

Douglas - a provocative and thoughtful post. Thanks.

To your question regarding the quarrying of stuff from the Brecker Building at 630 High Street. Your question is spot on. Unfortunately the answer is no. The prismatic panes in the Brecker's transom windows are exquisite. The railing systems adorning the sweeping staircases, sublime. The Brecker's south facing fenestration - off the hook, gorgeous.

Why is the answer still, no - after years of Buffalo ReUse raising the bar and increasing awareness about the reuse of these architectural treasures.

Are there answers? Anyone?

The best reuse of building parts is to leave them intact and rehabilitate the building. Dismantlement and reuse is a poor second.

And, by the way, Buffalo ReUse is no longer doing deconstruction and not, to my knowledge, doing any salvage either. All founding employees and the entire team of skilled green demo'ers left Buffalo ReUse by May 2011. That team, the people who performed the Extreme Makeover demolition in 2009, is now working at ReUse Action, which is the only green demolition contractor in WNY.

Probably the worst example of data presentation ever. There is a reason why this is probably the last time you'll see something like this and what is has never caught on:

It's called a divided bar graph. One of the main rules when producing graphs and charts and maps is not how cool it looks or what its telling the reader, it's cognition and comprehension and this fails miserably. Anything that can't be understood almost instanteously is useless. Looks cool, sure, but cognitively it's trash. Epic fail.

A divided bar graph with time in decades on the x-axis and population on the y-axis with the bars properly divided and labeled can tell the same story, even the infrastructure info.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/5-markets-beating-the-housing-bust.html

Buffalo and Elmira

However abstract this diagram may be, it emphasizes a history of socio-economic mistakes that were made on a range of national, state, and municipal levels. As a result, cities like Buffalo (Cleveland, Detroit, Toledo, Rochester, etc.) are living within a structural terrain no longer fit for its own surroundings.

Little evidence points to potential re-growth, leaving in question the welfare of structural and infrastructural remains. While preservation and conservation efforts present an idealized solution for the city's existing fabric, these efforts are unfit for a city that has failed to recognize the declining of its own population and economy. Those who left Buffalo now reside either in fully autonomous townships or in states which encourage business growth through tax incentives, as a redevelopment of existing structures for re-inhabitance will likely never occur. As a result, Buffalo has devolved into a shrinking city, waiting for a reawakening that may never come.

Waiting for state and federal legislation to right Buffalo's ship is not only naive, but also fails to find a solution within the city's existing conditions. Because these cities exist within a larger paradigm of financial transition, one in which shrinking municipal economies are rarely included, Buffalo's greatest potential therefore rests within a re-use and recycling of its own resources (e.g. structural deconstruction, secondary usage of existing housing, or temporary use of unused property parcels).