Author: Anthony
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Unveiling the Stella Niagara Preserve Vision Plan
On Thursday January 21, at the Lewiston Senior Center, the Western New York Land Conservancy will unveil the Stella Niagara Preserve Vision Plan. To create the Preserve, the Land Conservancy purchased the property — the largest privately held undeveloped tract of land along the Niagara River — in June 2015 after a $3 million capital…
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This old housing stock…
Is Buffalo’s peculiar housing stock in part responsible for its own decline? If you hang out in community development circles (and, let’s face it, if you’re reading this you most likely do), then you’ve heard Buffalo has among the oldest housing stock in the nation. In fact, Buffalo actually has the oldest housing stock for…
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Fair Housing Month
“…where one lives determines how one lives, influencing quality of life factors such as education, employment, transportation options, public services, safety, recreational access, and a general sense of community.” – CHICAGO METROPOLITAN AGENCY FOR PLANNING FHEA In last Thursday’s post on redlining, I touched on one of the major practices that has historically kept…
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Triptych Tuesday: A Legacy of Inequitable Infrastructure
If the people centered-transportation movement can become a champion for racial and economic equity, it will play a direct an important counter-point to 20th century infrastructure decisions. A major feature in Slate last month, the past and present of auto-centric infrastructure pockmarks nearly all U.S. cities with the brunt of the externalized consequences being shouldered…
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A Legacy of Segregation and Discrimination: Redlining
…the housing sector is a prime example of the confluence of influences, often working together, to tilt the playing field away from communities of color. In Tuesday’s post, we alluded to the multiple institutions, agencies and individual actors that contributed to the development of racial and geographic segregation and discrimination in the Buffalo Niagara region.…
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Separate and Unequal in Buffalo Niagara
“The consequences of racial and ethnic segregation and discrimination directly impact individuals, neighborhoods and the region as a whole.” In the 120 years since the case of Plessy v. Ferguson — which established the doctrine of separate but equal — morality, experience and, eventually, the law have proven time and again that separate can never…
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Mapping Western New York’s Changing Population
Since 1990, Buffalo Niagara has seen a marked increase in diversity, but, at a macro level, the region remains more homogenous than New York or the U.S. as a whole. At a micro level, the diversification is not uniform across municipalities or throughout Buffalo Niagara’s communities. As noted in the regional FHEA, Buffalo Niagara…
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Defining an Equitable Community
Buffalo Niagara will be an equitable community when all people – regardless of how they look, who they know or who they love, what language they speak, what they believe, whatever their level of means or ability, when or where they were born, where they live, where they go to school or why or how…
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Expanding Opportunity in Buffalo Niagara
Yesterday’s post asked what the present holds for the residents who can’t wait for tomorrow. The question looms large in Buffalo. For all the promise in Buffalo’s revitalization, it is clear that we have much work to do to overcome the deep divisions within our region. Make Communities recently partnered with the University at…
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Scrapper vs. Sergeant
Sunday’s NYTimes features an article on the rise of metal scrapping in Detroit, and the measures that the city is taking to end — or at least limit — the practice. There are basically two kinds of scrapping: one that picks up various discarded metal objects (left on the side of the road, in…