a view from recently demolished 669 Genesee Street
As we begin to develop plans for the future preservation of the Woodlawn Row Houses many people have expressed concern about the "perceived declining" of the surrounding neighborhood. (I'm addressing this as I present an 8 part series of Neighborhood Assets.)
Orphaned in Buffalo
annals of neglect
artspace
14209 Re-Location
bavpa
jn adam/trathen/franzcyk
neighborhood assets
vacant houses/broken promises
urbex
writing the city...
www.flickr.com
|
© 2008 fix buffalo today | I'm running the K2 template. |
This site is best viewed using Firefox.
There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask
of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.
- Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) from The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961.
The views expressed here are mine and shouldn't be confused with the mission and statements made by others.
The rowhouses you write about are fascinating. And what's even more interesting is that I've never seen them.
I've lived in the City of Buffalo since 1991 but my knowledge of the East Side is nil. Even by the time I'd moved here thirteen years ago, the East Side had deteriorated to the point that I've never had any reason to go over there.
There aren't any stores or garages that I must patronize. I don't have any friends there, being new to town. And since the last time I was approached on Genesee St. to buy a hot laptop by a guy knocking on my passenger window, I don't just drive around over "there" for something to do.
It's interesting that Hank Bromley would be the one who's trying to turn you on to Jane Jacobs. Good ol' Jane (my heroine, by the way) can be interepreted and misinterpreted depending on one's agenda. Mr. Bromley would not, I expect, pick up on her insistence that economic activity is the precursor to a neighborhood's eventual success.
Until New York State allows its citizens to try and make a profitable living without asking permission, the East Side (and Buffalo) will just continue to expire -- short blocks, old buildings, and mixes uses aside.