Buffalo Rising Online

I totally agree, these sorts of articles happen very often as other readers have mentioned in the NY Times and other national papers or journals. I see it as productive and influential to tell the other side of the story. Otherwise it would be a kin everyone watching Fox news and assuming everything they say is unbiased news.

There are always two sides of the story and for those of us who care about this city it is our responsibility to be heard. I think a major part of our self defeating mentality and its side-effect of out-migration comes from too few voices saying why we should stay. Maybe if someone actually published and wrote those letters 25 years ago we wouldn't have lost so many citizens to begin with. Sure some would have left for opportunities but many might have stayed and started their businesses here instead of "greener" pastures.

I have given my opinion on this story on several blogs. I won't repeat everything here except to say that I thought it was a very poorly written and argued story. Buffalo does have huge problems to over come but even looking just at the portion highlighted here I find gross assumptions with nothing to back them up. For instance he says

"...Yet though such policies would improve things, they would not restore the boomtown of the early twentieth century; the economic trends working against such a prospect are simply too great..."

How does he know that reformed govenrment policies would would not restore a boom town economy to Buffalo? On what basis is he saying that. Legitimate scholarship would have included something to back up a far reaching statement like that. The fact that the original story was illustrated using a 30 year old winter picture of downtown says a lot about the author's bias going in. Just because your employer is Harvard University does not assure that everything the guy writes is a truth carved in stone. This is a bash job cloaked in scholarship.

I am going to read the entire article and then come back with a shit fit...stay tuned...

I disagree with this take from QE:

Though the article does its best to dismiss our city entirely,...

I did not interpret the article that way. Sounds like an overly defensive interpretation.

About the "Can Buffalo ever come back?" question in the atricle's headline, if that question means will Buffalo ever again have anything close to the prominance it had as the 15th largest U.S. city (which it was in 1950), then I agree with the sub-headine that a good answer is: "probably not".

The article is on point in at least one area that most of us already know: Massive silver bullet public subsidized projects have never really helped the Queen City as it fights to come back. I like the idea of thinking small when it comes to progress...build a foundation for economic renaissance brick by brick. Thinking big is a fool's errand at this point.

that dude was just making a political statement and the only reason he makes such a dire prediction that buffalo will never regain any resemblence of prosperity is that it would counter his thesis that "tax and spend" liberals have destroyed the city (so badly there is no hope for a future). The drama is only for effect.

I think he makes some good points and buffalo is overtaxed but the situation is not so hopeless...

I don't think Buffalo should try to recreate it's past of being a 'Boomtown'.

BAE, I don't think there's any danger of that. But it raises a question - what is a reasonable objective definition of "success"?

How about this: eventually rightsizing ourselves such that the City of Buffalo does not lose population in a Census count as it has in 1960, 70, 80, 90, 00. Certainly that won't happen in 2010. From all signs we'll have a loss vs 2000 that will be rank us among the fastest emptying cities in the U.S. Will 2010-2020 maybe be the first decade since 1940-1950 that we gain? Anybody's guess.

Or maybe that's not a good thing to look at?

the only reason he makes such a dire prediction that buffalo will never regain any resemblence of prosperity is that...

nyc - The article does not say Buffalo will never regain any resembalnce of prosperity.

To the contrary, at the end it explicity mentions the possibility of increased vibrancy and even "greatness".

Dismissing the article doesn't help. It would be more appropriate to invite Prof. Glaeser to a debate or just an interview. Call me old fashioned but I tend to value the thoughts of Harvard Profs more than what I find in blog posts.

Someone's trying to justify taking the Buffalo Bills away. By the way, I live in NYC, and it ain't that glorious, either.

Seems like history is repeating itself again. Just like in the 80s I guess it's au courant to bash Buffalo again. I suppose it's safer and easier to bash Buffalo than the power elite that's been running this country for the past ten years and overseeing the dismantling of our manufacturing infrastructure and constiutional rights. And it didn't begin with the Chimp, either!

NYS as a whole sucks. Politicians at all levels do not care about anyone but themselves. If you believe otherwise then either you are related to one and enjoy their benefits or live under a rock. The only way Buffalo could regain greatness and get out of the slums of National jokes and ridicule would be to continue to add high caliber jobs. We don't need 10,000 unskilled worker-manufacturing-anyone-can-do-it jobs. China will win those (until the same politicians wake up and fix that problem too). We need IT, Management, Medical Sciences, Engineering Jobs. So GOTO SCHOOL. Make your kids goto school. And not only ECC, but more than that. I'd rather see a city of 40,000 intelligent, contributing Americans than 400,000 McDonald's workers. Some of the highest regarded cities in America are in the same fashion: Research Triangle in NC, McClean VA, Norfolk VA. So you upgrade the city? Upgrade your education first.

he sounded pretty dire, i'd have to read again. i think he makes good points but too makes many generalizations. and debate is always good, i wasn't dismissing him.

Is this the article that appeard in the Sun? The one that mentions Buffalo's control board , but forgot that NYC had a control board and will have untill 2033.. The one that forget to mention that the state assumed sevicing that debt after 9/11? The article that forgot to mention that while a financial plan was being developed for NYC , the Buffalo economy was still vibrant. The article that talks about Buffalo's population loss, but fails to mention that in the early 70's NYC lost almost a million people, and was considered, by many, to be in irreversible decline. One would think, the fact that City was able to recover as well as it did, would somehow lead to a more optimistic conclusion for Buffalo.

tonyarmani - NYS doesn't suck and is there such a city as Research Triangle? Also, Norfolk lives off of the U.S. military. Virginia gets more military money per capita than any other state in the country.

He neglected to mention that much of the so called billions and billions of federal spending in Buffalo was dedicate to clearing neighborhoods and then concentrating poverty into housing projects in other neighborhoods.

He neglected to say that these housing projects have been failures in every city that they were constructed and are responsible for dragging down adjacent neighborhoods with them.

He neglected to say that much of that federal spending was dedicated to tearing up Buffalo's neighborhoods and parks with highways. He neglected to say that the the feds spent untold trillions to make sunbelt development possible at the expense of places like Buffalo and other rustbelt cities.

He neglected to say that cold weather has never stopped a city from growing.

But then he uses these very things as proof that Buffalo can never come back. He uses these projects as examples of why ANY more spending on Buffalo is useless. It is just not good scholarship no matter what his resume says

This kind of story is an apologist piece for our throw away society. We throw away our cities the same way we throw away a McDonald's wrapper.

Jefferson:

Overpowering Unions Life Draining Taxes Bad Politicians Living Next Door to Niagara Falls and watching the state charge us at higher rates than the middle of the desert Losing 40%+ to Federal, State, County, City, Town taxes.

People aren't stupid, there's a reason the state has lost so many citizens.

I get so tired of these discussions. If its not our own african american community tossing empty barbs of racism to get their agenda thru then its downstate. Well Buffalo isnt racist and Buffalo has the only NFL and NHL team in NYS (NYC has theirs in NJ).

Oh and lets not pretend that there is no money being sucked out of albany for downstate in fact downstate isnt just sucking the money they are writing the laws. In fact more things would be happening in Buffalo if its local institutions werent all appointed to and run by Albany.

Things are happen but not fast enough. We have lost entire industries and entire generations. I love Buffalonians and Buffalo but you cant build a life on love alone.....which is why some people have to leave.

I have no doubt that economic forces will eventually return to Buffalo. A nuclear bomb on NYC or an oil boycott and Buffalo would have the cheapest hydro electric power in the nation. In a country where 75% of the country is experiencing drought...we have plenty. Its only a matter of time before Toronto discovers Buffalo. We have transportation, trade, telecommunications, basic industries and plenty of food and good healthcare. We have good natural assets that unused and ignored.

Cleveland and Pittsburgh may be bigger but they are islands....isolated for hundreds of miles. Buffalo is not and that means alot going forward!

The question becomes...can Buffalo find its niche and add value in places other than banking and healthcare.

I get so tired of these discussions. If its not our own african american community tossing empty barbs of racism to get their agenda thru then its downstate. Well Buffalo isnt racist and Buffalo has the only NFL and NHL team in NYS (NYC has theirs in NJ).

Oh and lets not pretend that there is no money being sucked out of albany for downstate in fact downstate isnt just sucking the money they are writing the laws. In fact more things would be happening in Buffalo if its local institutions werent all appointed to and run by Albany.

Things are happen but not fast enough. We have lost entire industries and entire generations. I love Buffalonians and Buffalo but you cant build a life on love alone.....which is why some people have to leave.

I have no doubt that economic forces will eventually return to Buffalo. A nuclear bomb on NYC or an oil boycott and Buffalo would have the cheapest hydro electric power in the nation. In a country where 75% of the country is experiencing drought...we have plenty. Its only a matter of time before Toronto discovers Buffalo. We have transportation, trade, telecommunications, basic industries and plenty of food and good healthcare. We have good natural assets that unused and ignored.

Cleveland and Pittsburgh may be bigger but they are islands....isolated for hundreds of miles. Buffalo is not and that means alot going forward!

The question becomes...can Buffalo find its niche and add value in places other than banking and healthcare.

BuffaloBloviator comments on the above New York Sun / City Journal editorial:

The City Journal story certainly supports conventional wisdom. But does the old popular doomsday theory explain the three billion dollars in new downtown development by our biggest developers? Does it really explain the current urban migration? Does it really explain the new wave of optimism and community participation that we are witnessing? Does it really explain how so many average individuals such as myself are optimistic enough to be willing to invest their life’s savings into our downtown? Or, are these just the examples that prove their rule? Perhaps not.

I ask my BuffaloRising.com friends to join me in a brief exercise of devil’s advocacy. We all know how to do that. For the purposes of our exercise, lets set aside our actual beliefs and for the moment accept a different assumption. What if Buffalo is still on the cutting edge and we just don’t recognize it yet? Consider that during the industrial revolution it was widely believed that our region was heading down hill because we were loosing our agricultural base and the values that were part and parcel with that agrarian economy. Many people were alarmed by the flight to the city because they did not recognize this as progress at the time.

Assume that once again Buffalo is on the cusp of a new definition of prosperity -a brand new prosperity that once again requires brand new metrics. The new metrics measure quality of life. The new metrics take account of values that cherish water, air, time, and very importantly merciful vehicular traffic rankings. (I heard this week we ranked #2 for best commute.)

Think about it. We were among those few who invented big American cities. Cities like Atlanta and Los Angeles have finally caught up, but they came to the game too late. The game in this century is overall quality of life. Not density and congestion. I’m sorry but in my book you have no quality of life when you are stuck in a three-hour traffic jam every day and you can feel your lungs because of the poor air quality.

How does the average guy benefit by living and working in a density-and-congestion city? His take home pay doesn’t go any further than in Buffalo. He doesn’t sock away more money. He doesn’t get to spend more time working. He doesn’t get to spend more time playing. He doesn’t get to spend more time with his family. The only advantage to the old model of urban success is that governments can collect more money to feed their own organism. Remember, taxes never go down no matter how many new taxpayers there are. I’m doing fine in Buffalo and if I moved to an old 1800’s definition of success density-congestion city, I would not be living better.

Sure we hated to go through the painful right-sizing process we endured. Remember, our ancestors endured pain when Buffalo led the industrial revolution too. We hate splitting our families up and seeing our kids move out of town, but keep in mind that Buffalo was founded by individuals who left their families behind in Europe. They made the ultimate sacrifice for Buffalo and so have we.

Our predecessors struggled so that we could enjoy a better life. Thanks to preservation through neglect in Buffalo, their gifts have survived. We shed our old industry and replaced it with new industry. Moody’s has ranked us #1 in industrial diversity. We led and currently lead the revolution in adapting. The painful dues have been paid. Now Buffalo is on our watch. Perhaps we should use what we have and not pine over our lack of density and congestion. The God given resources that made us great in the first place are making us great this time around too.

Isn’t it easy to imagine that the density-congestion cities may soon be pining over what Buffalo has to offer? (Just wait and see what happens when they start running out of water!) Our next problem may be keeping people out!

Could it be that Buffalo, once again, is literally defining to the nation what metro economic success is?

By Howard Goldman, BuffaloBloviator.wnymedia.net

This articles has the distinct ring of someone who doesn't intimately know Buffalo's history or its particular achievements. The condescending generalizations about Buffalo's "brawn" vs. typically "skilled" cities is typical. This is ignorance about the actually complex skills of much manufacturing and the overrated keyboard tapping of so-called skilled cities. Whatever the merits of soem of his suggestions, and there are a few, it is still a callous thing to do to write off a city's future (which he essentially does).

I thought the article was horrible...the man does a great job of pointing out all the failures in Buffalo's history but doesn't mention any of the positive development...He makes no mention to the growth of UB and the UB medical campus downtown, nor the increase in high-end condominiums, or the growth in trade and commerce with Canada because of the falling US dollar. I especially enjoyed his comments on the weather of Buffalo being a deciding factor in the downfall, come on...our winters are not that bad and they have nothing to do with our demise...This is a typical article by an Ivy League economics professor...WRONG.

Bloviator, you da man!

And Steel, I needle you all the time but on this one you da other man!

Does it really explain the current urban migration?

Blovaitor - are you trying to make Sally's head explode? If she sees this, be prepared for a Census beating.

is there such a city as Research Triangle?

He meant Research Triangle Park (no not that kind of park, QE and Jay).

Wikipedia:”Research Triangle Park (RTP) is the largest research park in the world. It is located near Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill, in... North Carolina. ...As of 2007, there are over 130 R&D facilities existing in RTP with more than 39,000 employees working for a total of 157 organizations. … The park is home to one of the largest IBM operations in the world; the company has around 11,000 employees in RTP. The park hosts one of GlaxoSmithKline's largest R&D centres with approximately 5,000 employees.”

Buffalo could also do better than the author suggests if entrepreneurs here create new industries, and if the city works to make itself an attractive place to live and do business.

Chicago Observer – very good comment and that sentence sounds nice but a difficulty is those last three words “and do business”. Seems there’s a lot of anti-corporate and anti-free market sentiment around here that believes the only good businesses are local forever-small businesses, the only good taxes on the job creating class (a.k.a. “the rich”) are high taxes, there’s no such thing as a good suburb, cars and efficient roads for them are evil, the only good manufacturing or construction jobs are unionized, and so on.

Obviously not everybody around here feels those ways, but enough to keep leftward politicians comfortably in power and distributing generous hand outs back to us for... you name it - high public employee costs and binding arbitration, apprenticeship laws, the Taylor Law, highest cost workers comp, high corporate tax, high income tax, high property tax, high sales tax, and many other things. To their credit, NYC can thrive with all that and more because it’s NYC. Chicago too perhaps. Us, not so much. I do agree with you that we shouldn't bad mouth NYC, but the ever-increasing downstate dominance in the state govt would make it very hard to improve our upstate business environment even if our upstate politicians wanted to do so (which in most cases they don't anyway).

lets stop worring over our image. once we take care of our own shit it'll speak for itself.

bored with blaming everyone for everthing thats happened. bored with worrying about what everyone thinks of us. it is what it is. its october 29, 2007. lets just deal with what we got and make it better...no matter what a harvard prof says.

This guy's perspective reminds me of saving private ryan.

we should all offer to take him out to lunch downtown. it would be funny and help the local economy. show him who's the boss after a few drinks.

If you go to his website he also supports the Paece Bridge expansion into Black Rock. This man must be stopped! If Olmstead read this article he'd be...

I was on such a Buffalo high with all the great news thats been released recently and this just brought me down. I don't like the article on how he judges our future on our past but most people who read this article will go along with what he says and will have a negative immage of Buffalo perhaps forever. Somber news indeed. So I'm going to look at some of my pictures to cheer myself up...

Instead of attacking what the writer said, why not understand it and make change. The small victories do not indicate a change in business as usual in buffalo, selfish politicians, parochialism and anti-intellectualism. The larger picture needs to change, instead of writing emails to this gentleman, why not send them to the people who can actually have an effect on the region? Bitching is easy, action is not.

When it comes to chronciling the decline of the city during the last half of the 20th Century, I'd rather read Mark Goldman who's credibility is unquestioned. It's too bad the readers of City Journal don't know that. It's evident that Glaeser didn't come to town and talk to anyone; I suspect the leafy sanctuary of academia is too hard to part from. If he had, he would have discovered the "non-federal" imvestors who've either stayed on through hard times or have emigrated to town and have pumped life into the city by virtue of their own blood and sweat equity. He would have heard from them why Buffalo will continue to be a viable place to live despite not returning its "glory years" of a population of 500,000. It's not about returning to an earlier period but a new one that presents an alternative to the sprawling cities of the south and west whose growth now faces challenges due to the decrease of cheap fuel, water and capital. Buffalo's not a panacea for all of those things but it's looking better all of the time.

The complete Hubris of this ass is remarkable! I recently visited Buffalo and found it to be a much nicer place that I left it in the 1970s. For a trite Bostonian calling Buffalo, well, subpar, is, well, trite... But what do you expect from a citizen of such a racist, angry, trite city like Boston... Keep it if you ask me! Go away and never come back. Harvard can have you, if they even want you. Boston deserves you and your snobbish ouput! Buffalo is trying to get it's bearings and I give it a hell of a lot of credit. Boston is part of the economic, subprime, meltdown that we find our national economy in... We will bail Boston out before Buffalo but for crooked and criminal reasons... At least Buffalo is honest! Subprime Lending Dickhead!

The complete Hubris of this ass is remarkable! I recently visited Buffalo and found it to be a much nicer place that I left it in the 1970s. For a trite Bostonian calling Buffalo, well, subpar, is, well, trite... But what do you expect from a citizen of such a racist, angry, trite city like Boston... Keep it if you ask me! Go away and never come back. Harvard can have you, if they even want you. Boston deserves you and your snobbish ouput! Buffalo is trying to get it's bearings and I give it a hell of a lot of credit. Boston is part of the economic, subprime, meltdown that we find our national economy in... We will bail Boston out before Buffalo but for crooked and criminal reasons... At least Buffalo is honest! Subprime Lending Dickhead!

And I mean DICKHEAD in the strongest of terms! Snob too!

the county's population increase over time is impressive. Erie County population 1930: 762,408. Erie County population 2000: 950,265. That's more than a 25% increase in population.

Twenty freakin five percent over 70 years. Hamp - how’s that in any way impressive? Isn’t it the opposite of impressive? Even using your cherry-picked interval of 1930-2000, the average county in the U.S. grew by 128% over those same 70 years. 128% vs 25%. The average county grew by more than five times Erie County’s growth.

And in more recent times, say 1970-2000:

Erie County: -14.6% (1,113,491 shrinking to 950,265)

Avg. county in U.S.: +27.8% (203,302,031 growing to 281,421,906)

He is a Boston SNOB! Give him his due... They are always right, just ask them... Saw off New England and give it back to the Queen!

Hamp, the difference is that even the stat you cherry picked as the most positive possible sounding way to spin it, is not the least bit impressive. 25% over 70 years. Make a case if you want that population growth isn't important. But to insist Erie County has had impressive growth over that interval is, well, not impressive.

Some might not agree with my pessimism and crude remarks in the past, but it is done out of love and the need to defend the city which I grew up in.

Although, I appreciate the optimism on this site, there are many people that need to be shocked back to reality. The reality is, BUFFALO IS VERY FAR FROM MAKING ANY KIND OF REAL COME BACK. Many people in this town need to be more realistic concerning our situation and think more critically on how to reinvent the city.

The fact is that Buffalo gets trashed throughout the country on a daily basis. Our national image is horrid. Buffalo is 60% vacant. SO LETS NOT TOAST OUR GLASSES TO A TURN AROUND BECAUSE THERE ARE A FEW LOFT APARTMENTS BUILT DOWNTOWN.

Become proactive and elect the right people to lead.

Can anyone name a city that has honestly "shrunk to greatness"? Seriously, point to a place where the economy and way of life has been restored through deliberate shrinkage.

kahawa, Buffalo is an obvious anwser, right? Since 2000 it seems we've been shrinking people fast (lots of references on Fix Buffalo web site) and during this interval many smart people are saying again and again and in many ways that our greatness is on a strong upswing (lots of references on this site). Even getting angry sometimes when anybody says it's not.

Just follow that to it's logical conclusion: Shrinking and rising greatness, right?

Oh wait, just noticed you said honestly and seriously. Opps.

when every idea is negative its not helpful but childish. Im sorry but criticism is much larger then telling everyone buffalo stinks.I don't walk out the door thinking about how bad buffalo's image is, i wouldn't know how to.

People, stick up for yourselves....write back to Dr. Glaeser - I DID !

For a professor in economics from Havard, he should be embarassed. This article borders on slander.

too many generalizations here, not enough specific data to back it up.

Perhaps he should address the federal aid given to the illegal immigrants and welfare recipients in the NY's five borroughs sucks the little towns dry in upstate NY.

ALSO, what is the purpose of writing this article? What is his motivation? To kick the little guy when he is down?

Does this really provide for good afternoon reading? Do the people of NYC and Boston need to analyze the reasons why Buffalo has "shrunk" in size 50 years after the fact? Do they really care? Is it that important to them?

THIS IS KIND OF OLD NEWS - WHY REHASH?