From Brown Fields To Green Pastures
A friend passed along this link to the The Economist's website where we discovered an article that hints of a brighter future for our city. The article, titled Steeled for Recovery, is from the magazine's print edition, and sheds some light on the causes of the city's economic downfall as well as the signs of better days ahead. The first couple of paragraphs portray the city in an almost apocalyptic light. There are vivid images painted of our collapsed steel and grain industries along with the reasons for the drastic changes. If you were to stop reading at that point Buffalo might seam like a lost cause.
Then the article turns the corner, hi-lighting private developers' passions for investing in vacant building stock. Our growing biomedical technology hub was hinted to as being one of the saving graces for Buffalo, as was the controversial casino. Assemblyman Sam Hoyt was quoted giving major kudos to soon-to-be Governor Eliot Spitzer. Even our strained relationship with Albany was brought up and of course high taxes were given mention. Lastly, the weather was plugged, as it always is... though not even that could detract from the overall good message that the article relayed to its readers.
The Economist is a highly influential internationalist newspaper with a circulation of over 1M. 80% of the paper's audience is outside the UK.