The City of Buffalo owns roughly 8,000 vacant lots. Over 3,000 acres of land, these vacant parcels are largely the result of historic discriminatory land policies, which encouraged white flight and left thousands of empty homes vulnerable to demolition. When the dust settled, the City found itself with thousands of vacant lots, many of which it has not sufficiently maintained ever since. Examples from Buffalo and around the nation prove, however, that vacant urban land can be repurposed for …
Buffalo’s Outer Harbor is a stunning natural area in a remarkable location. This report details the natural, historic, and recreational assets of the Outer Harbor and its connections to nearby parks and trails.
Although climate change requires an international response and will require national policies and actions, local geographies have to be involved because it that is where the harms are felt. But how can local and regional areas respond to the climate crisis? This article offers a story of the emergence of a climate justice movement in Buffalo and Western New York as an example of how one community is addressing climate change and its unequal impacts.
2008 marks the year that PUSH Buffalo founded the Green Development Zone in Buffalo’s West Side. Encompassing 25 square blocks, the Green Development Zone (GDZ) is an area that PUSH is making more environmentally and economically sustainable. PUSH stands for People United for Sustainable Housing, and it is a non-profit corporation that uses a unique combination of community organizing, policy advocacy, and neighborhood redevelopment.
For the first time since 1954, the City of Buffalo New York is undertaking a comprehensive review and complete overhaul of its zoning code, the result of which has been popularly dubbed “the Green Code.” The City, particularly Mayor Brown and the leadership and staff at the Office of Strategic Planning are to be commended for undertaking this important task. While there are many positive aspects of this effort, some changes are needed in order to ensure that the final …
During the first half of the twentieth century, burgeoning grain transshipment trade and heavy manufacturing spurred the bustling economy of Buffalo, the eastern-most port on the shores of Lake Erie and the second-largest city in the State of New York. With the jobs that these industries provided came residents to occupy them. In the 1900 census, Buffalo ranked as the eighth-largest city in the United States, with a population of over 350,000. By 1950, Buffalo could claim over …
Given the emerging focus on improving food environments and food systems through planning, this article investigates racial disparities in neighborhood food environments. An empirical case of Erie County, New York tests the hypothesis that people belonging to different racial groups have access to different neighborhood food destinations. Using multiple methods—Gini coefficients and Poisson regression—we show that contrary to studies elsewhere in the country there are no …
For many years the city of Buffalo has had far more housing units than households. Buffalo has experienced a precipitous population decline over the past fifty years. From 580,000 in 1950, Buffalo residents declined to 462,000 by 1970. In 2006, the population had dropped to 276,059. This flight from the city, a product of both suburbanization and the decline of the Rust Belt, has resulted in numerous vacant properties. With a weak housing market and continued …
Planning and managing growth are fundamental responsibilities of any local government. It should be recognized that sprawling development can actually be more costly in the long run, not only to a particular municipality but also to those around it that may be affected by its decisions. Inter-municipal collaboration could curb costs and prevent actions that are detrimental to neighboring communities. These are complex issues, and sprawl is just one of several components …
The absence of a region-wide vision for conservation, development, and public investment has become an increasingly central concern of the Region’s leaders. For the past two to three decades—the last regional plan was completed in 1974—local and regional actions have occurred without the benefit of reference to a larger policy or planning framework. Important decisions regarding the location and pace of development, investments in economic development, the …
People throughout the world place a strong value on the landscape, natural environment, and compact settlement pattern of Upstate New York. The Adirondack and Catskill mountains, the Finger Lakes, the Lake Ontario shoreline, Lake Champlain, and the Thousand Islands attract hundreds of thousands of visitors annually. At the scale of the entire landscape, farms and forests define the edges of Upstate’s cities, villages, and hamlets and form a distinctive matrix of land …