"Sustainable communities are economic game-changers" in the Buffalo News

and probably a lot of other newspapers, too. However, it's great to see the Secretary of HUD, Shaun Donovan, out there advocating for these ideas, as he did last week on Need to Know. You can read the entire article at the Buffalo News website. If you don't have time to get there, here's a section worth reading:

Unfortunately, smart planning is the exception rather than the rule. With the average American now spending more than 50 cents of every dollar on housing and transportation, there has never been a greater disconnect between where people live and where they work. The problem was exacerbated by the “drive to qualify” frenzy of the housing bubble years, when families were forced to move farther away from job centers to find a home they could afford.

This mind-set has contributed to an epidemic of sprawling residential areas with few jobs, long commutes and little economic engine to support housing prices. In the recession, these more remote areas have often been hit the hardest.

Hopefully, people will read this article. It's unfortunate that it's tucked away in the Viewpoints page. I have to admit, that's the first section that I read each week, because it contains the Sunday editorial page. I don't always agree with the Buffalo News, though I do respect them. I like to read the editorial page first because the paper's articles tend to reflect the voice of the editorial board, which often has its own agenda that I don't necessarily agree with.

Relevant Radio Conversations: an update

Back in August I wrote about Buffalo's public radio stations, WBFO's format change, and some conversations each station had about infrastructure and urban sprawl. I'm sure you can find it below.

Well, a couple weeks back, WBFO and WNED jointly announced that they are looking for ways to collaborate. Each station simultaneously issued the same statement. This is really exciting for many reasons. I think if both stations combined their reporting resources, they could cover a lot more stories. Additionally, I'd like to hear some of the NPR/PRI music programs here in Buffalo, especially the World Cafe and Echoes. A different morning program, like The Takeaway, would be great too. Essentially, I would be happy if they stopped duplicating programming.

The Innovation Trail is one thing that is already being done well collaboratively across Upstate. It's interesting stories about inventiveness and entrepreneurship that are oftentimes turned into radio segments.

The Capitol Pressroom's state political coverage is worth listening to this time of year, too. It's really nice hearing about Albany for an hour instead of hearing about it in fractured soundbites or in short news articles when space needs to be filled.

Blueprint America on PBS

The Blueprint America series on PBS is an excellent cross-broadcast partnership about America's infrastructure. It's latest feature, from the program Need to Know, is a conversation with HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan that makes me feel somewhat better about the future.

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

Local Success Stories: Robert Moses Parkway

Niagara County's Robert Moses Parkway was constructed in the 1960s by the New York Power Authority. It follows the Niagara River from the North Grand Island Bridges to Lewiston, where it veers inland and continues to Lake Ontario. It was initially constructed to connect the area's numerous state parks. Though scenic at places, the road has always funneled more commuters to work than tourists to state parks, and is being gradually removed. It is named for the oft-maligned former chair of the Power Authority, and numerous other state authorities.

In the late 1980s, the section of the highway that ran through Niagara Reservation State Park (at 55 miles per hour) was removed, and its traffic rerouted through downtown Niagara Falls, NY. A visitors center, extensive gardens, and many trees were were put in its place. Remnants of the parkway are still visible and used for park vehicles, as seen in the above photo. The state is working to remove these remnants, between John Daly Boulevard and Prospect Street, in the near future, and replace them with a road similar to the Riverway planned by noted landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, Niagara Reservation's original designers.

In addition, in 2003, half of the parkway between Downtown Niagara Falls and Devil's Hole State Park was closed to traffic and turned into a recreational trail. The Niagara Heritage Partnership is advocating for the full removal of the parkway between Downtown Niagara Falls and the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge. The Niagara Gazette recently announced that funding has been lined up for a scoping process that includes the Partnership's removal option.

Relevant Radio Conversations

Buffalo has two NPR-affiliate public radio stations, WNED AM 970 and 88.7 WBFO. Two relevant conversations on their respective websites say a lot about the quality of the information they provide.

WNED, which I listen to more often, sponsors an event called Buffalo City Forum, which discusses important issues in Buffalo. A great conversation took place this past winter when Jeff Olson discussed the potential positive effects of making Buffalo a more bike-friendly city. He references a funny conversation he had in which someone told him that you can't bike in the winter because of snow. He then asked why people don't get around in the winter on cross-country skis, and the person responded by saying that there isn't enough snow for that.

WBFO's Roundtable, on the other hand, recently had an upsetting conversation with Buffalo News columnist Bruce Andriatch on "urban sprawl," which ended up being about urban problems reaching Buffalo's first ring suburbs. They literally did not talk about urban sprawl at all. With a declining population, we need to significantly curb the construction of new houses in the area, and we need to honestly discuss problems and solutions, even if they may offend people.

WBFO apparently isn't interested in talking about controversial issues, which is really ironic, because they recently changed their format from a jazz station to a "news" station. They now play many of the same programs which you can hear on WNED. It seems like they would have at least tried to work out an agreement with WNED to play different programs at different times.

Based on that Roundtable discussion, WBFO will probably be changing its format as soon as WNED finishes eating its lunch.

An awful housing market? Not in Buffalo

Well, maybe it's not that great, but after decades of extremely low housing prices, relative to the rest of the country, the Christian Science Monitor reports today that in the second quarter of 2010, Buffalo ranked #1 in terms of home-price appreciation. In fact, home prices in the area have been on the upswing since 2007. Read the article for the rest of the story.

Prettier in a Picture

Unfortunately, many of the Buffalo area's best views come from noisy, scary places along an expressway. I'm hoping to make this a regular feature here, where I contrast a view with the place that view comes from.

This inaugural view comes from the top of the South Grand Island bridge, looking south-southwest over the south end of Grand Island and the industrial area of the Town of Tonawanda. Yes, the purpose of a bridge is for vehicles to cross it. However, I crossed it in a traffic jam yesterday and noticed how much more pleasant it was when the cars were slowly moving. Maybe slowing down the bridge would make drivers appreciate the view more, as well. Is that extra speed really worth it?

Welcome

I've lived most of my life near Buffalo, NY. In contrast to our state's namesake city, most people in metro Buffalo drive everywhere. Part of the problem is the way in which our metro area has been constructed since World War II. A lot of people still live in traditional urban neighborhoods, in the City of Buffalo and in places like Niagara Falls, the Tonawandas, Kenmore, and Lockport. Over the decades, however, more and more people have moved to newly constructed places where the only option for getting from point A to point B has been with use of a car.

Unfortunately, these newly constructed places are often unneeded. Though metro Buffalo sustained modest growth throughout the 1960s and 1970s while the population of the city was shrinking, the 1980 census made it evident that the metro area population was beginning to shrink as well. By the year 2020, Erie and Niagara counties, which make up the Buffalo-Niagara Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) are projected to lose more than 63,000 additional people.

It's time to think beyond the car. The total cost of car ownership is significant depending on where you live. Car ownership is expensive for our municipal, county, and state governments as well, who are forced to spend a great deal of money from our shrinking tax base on the maintenance of our aging and underused infrastructure. We have to think about the future and the effects that cars have on the atmosphere, and that roads and impervious surfaces have on the water quality, as was made evident last week.

The goal of this blog is to discuss solutions to the auto dependency that plagues Erie and Niagara counties. We need to look at curbing suburban growth, modifying our suburbs to make them friendlier to other forms of transportation, and repairing our traditional neighborhoods, among many other things. Stay tuned.