New Buffalo plan to demo 5,000 houses

Yesterday, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown announced a plan to demolish 5,000 Buffalo houses, an effort he expects will take 5 years, and cost $100 Million. The financial plan calls for a mix of state, federal, city, and even private money. Read more here at Buffalo Rising Online.

Ironically, this Buffalo Rising article is immediately followed by another titled "Investments in our neighborhood housing stock," which looks into, and praises, several recent efforts to rehabilitate Buffalo houses.

How walkable is your neighborhood?

Got this lead today from the chair of the Conkey/Clifford Revitalization District committee - the new website/Google mashup Walkscore.com will tell you how walkable your neighborhood is.

All you need to provide is an address, and walkscore uses a geographic database of quality-of-life amenities within walking distance such as grocery stores, schools, theaters, and coffee shops (essential to quality of life, in my book!), and a proprietary algorithm (which they admit is still not perfect: it measures as the crow flies, although you'll be using your feet) to give you a single-number score of how walkable vs. auto-centric your world likely is. Scores range from 0 to 100 - above 70 is considered good, above 90 is considered Pedestrian Paradise. I tried several locations in and around Our Fair City, and could not find any location (except downtown) which got a 90 or better (see below).

The website also includes some links to the importance of walking and walkable communities. It was developed by the Sightline Institute, an advocacy organization in the Pacific northwest.

Some local examples:
Conkey/Clifford area-----------Score: 55-60
Neighborhood Of The Arts-----Score: 75
Dewey/Driving Park------------Score: 71
Linden Oaks Office Park--------Score: 32
German House on Gregory----Score: 88
Goodman and Monroe----------Score: 88
Main and Clinton downtown---Score: 97!

How does your neighborhood fare--?

The urban prairie expands

While running through the CCRD project area Saturday, I was disturbed to notice two (apparently) brand-new demolitions on the south side of Nielson Street, just outside (but on the edge of) our project area. One of the houses on the way to the landfill had caught my eye as a particularly fine structure, with a (increasingly rare) concrete-tile roof. See the picture here.

This now leaves the south side of Nielson Street with just *two* remaining houses (those at the ends).

Most of the rest of the block (map below) bounded by Neilson, Woodford, Conkey, and Harris, is within our focus area. On the north side of Woodford Street there are just 5 houses remaining, and two of those are City owned/posted.

This leaves an entire block in/around the CCRD project area that is now majority-vacant -- ouch.

My thanks to colleagues in Buffalo for the terminology "Urban Prairie."