Wanted: a farm, forest, or family plan for 1,500 acres of Buffalo

From a compelling article by Bruce Fisher:

"In Buffalo, City Hall says it has a plan for vacant land, and that its plan doesn’t include turning vacant lots into farms. City Hall actively opposed land-banking legislation, and got Governor Paterson to veto a land-bank bill just last year.

But just a three-hour drive west in Cleveland, there’s a new and quite different plan—a plan that explicitly endorses land-banking, and that envisions a smaller, greener Cleveland that stops the insanity of trying to rescue every parcel for traditional city uses.

Cleveland’s plan was put together by folks who have the courage to state at the outset that they see their city shrinking by another 50,000 people in the next six years—which is a refreshing nod to the reality that is facing every single Great Lakes city, including Buffalo.

Cleveland’s city leaders, both in and out of government, explicitly embrace land-banking, urban agriculture, and reclassification of land on which an appallingly high number of derelict firetraps currently sit.

The contrast between the two approaches is about as stark as it gets. Cleveland is on a course for the future. Buffalo is in denial—not only because Buffalo City Hall has been wedded to the same failed development policies through three mayoral administrations, but also because regional land-use planning threatens the personal economic interests of politically connected bankers, real-estate developers, and the town-level officials they control."

Read Bruce's entire article here.

At our national meeting in San Diego last month, Terry Schwarz of Cleveland Urban Design Center showed us how a shrinking city can turn vacant land into an asset for sustainability by developing productive landscapes, green infrastructure and protecting and restoring the urban ecosystem.  View Terry's presentation here.

  

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