Tour de Neglect poster Buffalo, New York fixbuffalo.blogspot.com |
Once again, yours truly needed to clean out the drop box folder. Today my housekeeping efforts yielded a small treasure written by Mark Byrnes for City Lab titled "Riding Through Poor Neighborhoods With New Urbanists." The article looks at the "Tour de Neglect," an event staged by the Congress of New Urbanism in June 2014 in Buffalo, New York. The purpose of the tour was to "inspire feelings of civic duty and moral outrage," yet at the same time may have also exposed an inherent weakness in the New Urbanist philosophy. About seventy-five people, including Mr. Byrnes, participated in the event held in Buffalo. The guided tour led riders through some of the city's most economically depressed areas and the predominantly African-American East Side, where census data has shown an alarming 89% drop in demographics since 1950.
Sacred Heart Church viewsofbuffalo.blogspot.com |
The East Side is not a zoo.
-These are neighborhoods where people live their lives every day. These residents are people just like you, with full lives and dreams of their own.
-Do not romanticize or demonize what you see
-Do not treat them as lab rats to be observed for research.
This sounds like something yours truly would write. Kudos to the author of this flier. A mystery woman quietly circulated among the participants, passing out the two-page manifesto to self-proclaimed New Urbanists before disappearing.
Tour participants buffalo.com |
After a half-week of CNU sessions that spoke to the aesthetic values of cities (it was, after all, a large gathering of mostly planners and architects) more often than the poverty and inequality they too often host, there was reason to worry the tour would quickly unravel into an uncomfortable two hours of professionals and students marveling over the potential and authenticity of their surroundings.
Fortunately, this did not happen.
Leading the two hour tour was activist and blogger David Torke, a resident of the East Side who has been documenting it decline for decades. Mr. Torke is currently involved with CNU NextGen, a a young professionals group who stage unsanctioned events for CNU attendees. In a nod to the group, CNU added NextGen events to the official agenda, overriding host committee approval. The Tour de Neglect was a rare opportunity for the participants to get an up close look at the other side of Main Street. David Torke states, "Otherwise the East Side-the elephant in the room here in Buffalo-would have been swept under the rug."
Atlas Johnson in front of St. Ann's Church David Torke, fixBuffalo citylab.com |
Uncle Sam's Army Supply David Torke, fixBuffalo thecurrentplus.com |
Yet, as Larkinville continues to evolve, it is taking on the appearance of the kind of warehouse districts found in Seattle or Pittsburgh, while failing to add new housing. Just as the neighborhood gained popularity, the census tract it is located on showed a demographic loss of ten percent between 2000 and 2010. The plethora of surface parking and proximity to the highway make the area more attractive to employers than residential developers.
More riders on the Tour de Neglect David Torke, fixBuffalo citylab.com |
On the way to the restored Hotel Lafayette in downtown Buffalo, Mr. Termini's crowning achievement, the tour group returned to the vision of Buffalo the host committee wanted everyone to see. It was here that Buffalo News art critic Colin Dabkowski took the opportunity to question CNU's priorities during the meeting. In an open letter to CNU, Mr. Dabkowski suggested that "the movement often appears regressive and unwilling to shout as loudly for equality as it does for walkability."
Heading toward the Central Terminal from Larkinville David Torke, fixBuffalo citylab.com |
While there was some talk about developing mixed-income neighborhoods...neither the New Urbanist manifestos not anything I heard during the conference proposed a convincing or coherent strategy for accomplishing that on a grand scale...we don't need to rebuild a traditional city, a traditional neighborhood or a traditional way of life. What we desperately need is to create a new one.
Agreed, too often the New Urbanist residential developments overlook the very real needs of a community in favor of (re)creating something that resembles the work of Disney imagineers.
Buffalo has expended a good deal of energy on recreating its past and has been let down by too many postwar bad planning decisions. Thus, it is quite understandable that the New Urbanist philosophy would be appealing. However for all of the profitability in developing neighborhoods with quaint architecture, walkability, and transit access, the end result has turned basic neighborhood amenities into selling points for luxury housing.
Rider group picture viewsofbuffalo.blogspot.com |
Mark Byrnes cites the Buffalo-Niagara Enterprise which claims. "there's over $5 billion worth of completed, underway or planned construction in and around downtown in the last decade." This is in stark contrast to the fact that region's labor force and shrunk nearly two percent while the growth rate was only 0.7 percent-half the national pace. An analysis of the city's racial and household income distribution data is another reminder of precisely how unequal this modest statistic looks. The flip side of this bleak reality is, for buildings, "...it's a more promising time than usual to be in Buffalo. But for the average person, not much is different.
The factors contributing to the East Side's decline are complex. The remedies, regardless of their source, will face numerous challenges. Very few, including those who presented at this year's Congress for the New Urbanism have an answer or the ability to affect any meaningful result. David Torke sums the situation best, "If the revival of distressed cities does not become the mission of the Congress for the New Urbanism...the movement will become irrelevant."
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