Buffalo - Where Progress May Be Marked More By Demolition Than Construction

"Mayor Byron W. Brown recently unveiled a $100 million five-year plan to rip down 5,000 houses, about half of all the vacant houses in the city, which ranks second only to St. Louis in the percentage of vacant properties per capita nationwide.

Demolitions are nothing new in Buffalo - buildings on more than 2,000 vacant properties have been destroyed since 2000 - but Mayor Brown has determined that more must be done, because the city can no longer afford to prop up eyesores and death traps.

His office estimates that each abandoned house costs the city an average of $20,060 over five years in lost taxes, debris removal, inspections and policing. So far this year, 41 percent of all fires in Buffalo were in vacant buildings, and more than 90 percent of all arson cases involved abandoned houses."

"Buffalo is not alone in wrestling with how to save itself through selective destruction. Philadelphia's efforts led to a mini-renaissance in recent years; Detroit has had more mixed results. Youngstown, Ohio, is debating whether to bulldoze entire neighborhoods and turn them into parks. [Editor's note: see related link].

But in many ways, Buffalo faces higher hurdles than other cities. According to census figures released last month, nearly 30 percent of Buffalo's residents live in poverty, a rate surpassed only by Detroit among the nation's largest cities. As a result, large numbers of homes continue to be abandoned, and there is not enough money around to build new ones in their place."

"We see a direct correlation between Buffalo's poverty rate and physical blight," said Aaron Bartley, the director of PUSH Buffalo, a nonprofit group focused on vacant housing. Nearly 80 percent of the city's neighborhoods, he said, have at least some vacant homes. "Abandoned housing reinforces crime," he added.

"Buffalo can't be a Philly right now," said Joe Schilling, the associate director of the Green Regions Initiative in the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech University. The city, he said, "is a lot more isolated."

"Half of Buffalo looks like New Orleans after the storm," said Mark Goldman, author of "City on the Edge," a history of Buffalo. "The city needs to turn the whole area into a great forest. We can't afford to keep the infrastructure."