By Douglas Gibbons:
March Graduation Project | University of British Columbia School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture | January 2012
Citing a diffusion of social, economic, and political resources within the Northeast United States, urban centres throughout America’s Rust Belt have failed to provide a foundation for future development. Post-war suburban sprawl, coupled with economic migration, have transformed areas such as Buffalo, New York into a series of municipal shells, while urban renewal initiatives are unable to lure citizens into an outdated financial model.
Epitomizing the city’s dire socio-economic terrain, Buffalo’s East Side residential neighbourhood is now dotted with vacant lots and an assortment of lifeless urban land. Here, existing housing stock and urban assets are increasingly endangered by a lack of investment, as well as a local government that is unable to maintain its urban welfare.
In an attempt to accelerate supposed economic revival, Buffalo’s municipality has initiated a comprehensive demolition plan, which by 2013 will destroy 5,000 abandoned houses. Despite its communal intentions, the city’s plan fails to consider the East Side’s existing conditions as an alternative foundation for civic stabilization. With an abundance of unused property parcels and state moneys devoted to the area, this neighbourhood is in need of a large-scale, grass roots transformation that promotes urban activity within a shrinking municipality.
A strategic realignment of structural remnants is therefore required to ensure civic welfare, as the bending, breaking and scraping of Buffalo’s past creates a landscape for farming and commercial activity. Representing a local transformation and regional precedent, such innovations offset the conventions of urban renewal, as the adaptation of existing site conditions can be adhered to a model of residential densification, agrarian activity, and public interaction. (Click on images to enlarge)
01 Perspective, Re-Use of Former Residential Basements for Public Venues
02 Perspective, Creation of Large-Scale Urban Farming
03 Section Perspective, Re-Use of Former Residential Basements with Establishment of Secondary Programmes
04 Perspective, Development of Localized Commercial Activity and Rural-Urban Landscapes
05 Perspective, Development of Commercial Strip Activity