In my major City Journal feature on Buffalo last year, I mentioned the city's work on its so-called "Buffalo Green Code" as one of the positive developments to watch. Last week the city gave final approval to this complete rewrite of the city's planning and zoning code, and a new land use map for the city. I review the highlights over at City Journal: As an older city, Buffalo is already built [in an urban form] in many areas. But past zoning choices have had lingering negative consequences. “Sixty years ago planners sought to replace the … [Read more...]
Mayor Byron Brown on Buffalo’s “Green Code”, Architecture, Economy, and More
I was privileged to get to record a podcast with Mayor Byron Brown while researching my article on Buffalo for City Journal this spring. Coming after a very tough 2007 Ed Glaeser article in City Journal on the city, it was very gracious of the mayor to agree to talk with me. I want to personally thank and honor him for that. If you do nothing else, listen to the section of the interview about the Buffalo Green Code. This is one of the most important developments ongoing in major American cities right now. Buffalo is completely re-writing … [Read more...]
Are You a Consumer or a Producer?
Cities like New York offer a nearly unlimited range of pastimes, diversions, and consumption activities. If you want to have a good meal, see a top notch arts performance, shop, etc., this is the place for you. You can get more quantity of quality in the world's biggest cities than you can anywhere else. The question I often ask though, is whether most of the people living there and partaking of what the city has to offer in fact are part of helping to create those things apart from spending money on them. While anyone with a job or who does … [Read more...]
Buffalo, You Are Not Alone
It hurts. When a bigtime Harvard economist writes off your city as a loss, and says America should turn its back on you, it hurts. But Ed Glaeser's dart tossing is but the smallest taste of what it's like to live in place like Buffalo. To choose to live in the Rust Belt is to commit to enduring a continuous stream of bad press and mockery. I write mostly about the Midwest, but whether we think Midwest or Rust Belt or something else altogether, the story is the same. From Detroit to Cleveland, Buffalo to Birmingham, there are cities across … [Read more...]
This Is Sprawl
Sprawl is a word familiar to most people, but few can tell you exactly what it means. Even experts don't always agree on a precise definition. The term itself is somewhat ambiguous, and often divisive. This is especially true when the word is preceded by the modifiers suburban or urban, which is commonly the case. Then the term is really loaded. Political discussion of the topic regularly provokes the already contentious relationships between cities and suburbs. This needlessly causes communities that should be cooperating to take sides … [Read more...]