Buffalo is destined for revival due to global climate change but not without assistance at the federal level. That is the theory University at Buffalo’s Architecture and Urban Planning professor Robert Shibley and others opine in a lengthy Toronto Star story. They believe drought in the south and west could spur population growth in the economically challenged but water-rich Great Lakes region. Murray Whyte authored the column carried in the Toronto paper’s Environment section on July 22.
Could Climate Change Herald Mass Migration? (unedited version here)
At first glance, the crises of the rust belt and the Southwest would seem unrelated. They are, in fact, inexorably linked. Each has what the other does not. In Phoenix, tremendous affluence; in Cleveland, and in Detroit, Toledo, Youngstown, Buffalo, Rochester, Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie, abundant, near-endless water – in the Great Lakes alone, as much as 25 percent of the world's supply.
"Sticking a straw in the Great Lakes is not a solution to Phoenix's water problems," says Robert Shibley, director of the Urban Design Project at the State University of New York at Buffalo. "Maybe it's time to really think about what constitutes need and stop spending money to build carrying capacity in places that don't have it by nature, and start investing in places that do."
Shibley has long been a champion of Buffalo's dormant potential – a potential reduced by half or more through the latter part of the 20th century, as the population fell below 300,000 from a historic high of more than 700,000.
He suggests that in the Great Lakes basin, where less than half a per cent of the world's population sits within easy reach of a quarter of the planet's fresh water, the opportunity for harmony exists. In a perfect world governed by reason, Shibley says, the only robust economic centre in the region would serve as its heart. And that would be Toronto.
"You're going to have 150 million people living in at least seven of the major regions that don't have water, don't have carrying capacity, can't feed themselves," Shibley says. "It's an ecological disaster waiting to happen. So there's a good reason to think that people should come back to the Northeast, where we have the carrying capacity, and have the water."
The long-term solution, of course, is to relocate people where they can comfortably exist. In a free society, of course, forced migration isn't really an option.
But as the sustainability crisis worsens, "usually economic forces will do it for you," says Robert McLeman, a professor of geography at the University of Ottawa. "When cities have to build new infrastructure and to jack up taxes to cope, when the cost of running a household becomes prohibitive, people will move."
It won't happen without help. In Buffalo, Shibley speaks of a federal urban sustainabilty plan that funnels federal money to the Great Lakes region to help draw population back. It's been more than 30 years since the U.S. had a comprehensive national urban plan. Looming ecological crises in burgeoning urban centers more than justify a revival. "Cities don't grow by topsy, it's not a thing of nature – it's a function of public policy," he says.
But a significant piece is missing, McLeman warns. "These cities will have milder climates, be easier to live in, and cheaper," he says, "but ultimately, they'll have to have the jobs to go with them."
But those problems, endemic rust-belt-wide, are just the most visible. High crime rates, languishing schools and spiralling urban poverty plague Cleveland, too. Phoenix, for all its money, can't make it rain any more than Cleveland, with all its water, can print the money it needs.
But the coming crisis, Shibley warns, could well become something no chequebook could manage.
"We're so focused on the cost of keeping large populations in the Southwest," he says, "that we haven't considered anywhere near enough the cost of leaving them out there long term. All of this is going to come home to roost, and as a society, we're going to have to figure out lower-impact ways of delivering quality of life. We can do that right here, right now."
Photo credit: CitySky Photography by Nate Farnsworth.