fix buffalo today, archive

The public safety problem confronting Buffalo Public School students and neighborhood residents surrounding recently renovated Buffalo Public Schools is extraordinary. In public health terms it would be called an epidemic. Very little attention is paid to the role of abandoned, boarded, derelict and vacant houses. From an effective and smart urban policy perspective the complete lack of a coordinated and systematic plan to remedy the situation is tantamount to buying a new car and ignoring the engine warning lights. Think about it. ONE BILLION DOLLARS is now being spent on renovating Buffalo Public Schools. Yet the two block area surrounding at least four of the newly renovated buildings is forgotten. It's as though students are supposed to be beamed-up and into class and home again. Have we forgotten the lessons that more desolate urban landscapes than even our own have taught. Perhaps we are just not listening...as we might pretend and think these lessons are so far away. Here's a wrenching lesson from Detroit.

I'm developing a story about the larger urban policy implications regarding the "rabbit hole" of urban planning our elected and anointed officials have fallen down and specifically how their actions and policies relate to our new schools and the urban blight that surrounds them. I've called it "The School House Project." Yet, faced with the data it might be more appropriate to deploy a military metaphor and think of the area surrounding these schools as part of a complex urban "mine-field." So instead of a new car and engine warning lights, think of a million dollar Hum-vee with out the armor to properly understand the disconnect between the rhetoric from downtown and the reality in the 'hood.

The data is not complete yet what I have collected suggests that the problem is larger, more complex and the imminent danger experienced by our youngest minds is a whole lot greater and grimmer than I was initially prepared to accept and understand. I've collected data from three Buffalo Public Schools (just about four) that have been recently renovated and re-opened under Phase I of the Joint Schools Construction Project. Two of these schools are on the East side and two on the West side.

Harvey Garrett, the West side community activist, first pointed out the problem of abandoned, boarded, derelict and vacant houses surrounding our city schools when we walked around his West side neighborhood last September. Here, I had an opportunity to learn first hand about the collaborative work he is doing with neighborhood groups and law enforcement organizations.

The story here in Masten is significantly worse than the West-side. Three decades of "white-flight" racial segregation and strategic private dis-investment have resulted in deeper patterns of pathological criminal and social activity than have occurred on the West side. There are deep scars in this community. This part of Masten (Main/Jefferson – Ferry/Utica) is my primary focus as the decision has been made to re-locate the Buffalo Academy for the Visual & Performing Arts to this neighborhood. Doors are scheduled to open in January 2008. What will students experience as they walk to school?

This is not a plea to quickly spruce-up and clean the streets. That sort of planning typically takes place within the context of a Super-Bowl coming to town. Here we are talking about everyday life and smart city-planning.

What are we learning from the recently renovated and re-opened schools in other parts of the city? Are we simply going to accept a "photo-shopped" city-planning job of locating a 28 million dollar project in a blighted neighborhood and then walk away from the surrounding neighborhood as we have done in four other city neighborhoods. The evidence so far suggests that we will...just walk away.

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Artspace Archive • Annals of Neglect • BAVPA • Where is Perrysburg? • Broken Promises...
Writing the City • Woodlawn Row Houses • Tour dé Neglect - 2006 • faq