Killing Culs-de-Sac and Growing Smarter for Seniors

"In 2000, about 20 percent of Erie County’s population was over 60 years of age. By 2015, over 25 percent of Erie County’s population will be over 60 years of age. There is a slow-boiling pot here that is about to boil the proverbial frog, as roughly 250,000 of our fellow citizens gradually find themselves increasingly in need of the kindness of strangers—strangers like nurses, emergency medical technicians, home healthcare aides, and the other folks whom our insurance and tax dollars will be paying to help us."

"This problem would be a lot easier to address were every empty-nester and retiree to re-migrate back downtown."

"Assemblyman Sam Hoyt has been urging his Assembly colleagues to push back. The larger of the two state legislature chambers favors an end to endless growth in the state’s budget for new roads, new sewers, and other new infrastructure that keeps getting spent on ever-spreading suburbs for a static population."

"Hoyt’s rationale is simple: With a shrinking population, it makes no sense to continue to invest scarce state funds in roads, bridges, and sewers that the state shouldn’t buy and can’t afford to maintain."

"Hoyt’s bill is an example of the so-called Smart Growth movement that has had growing bipartisan support in Albany, but that so far has been thwarted by the developers’ lobby, which would rather keep the sprawl machine going—even if vulnerable populations of elderly people are left ever further from basic services."