Make Properties Productive!

In case you missed it yesterday's Buffalo News carried a crucial editorial - Make Properties Productive - calling attention to the ground breaking work of the National Vacant Properties Campaign and the efforts coordinated locally by LISC - Buffalo calling attention to the extraordinary problems facing the City and region - abandonment and vacancy.

I covered the unveiling of the report Blue Print Buffalo, here in November 2006 - Getting Smarter about Decline.

I had the unique opportunity to attend the public release of Blue Print Buffalo - Regional Strategies and Local Tools for Reclaiming Vacant Properties Thursday afternoon at the Larkin Building. The report contains a critical assessment of existing intstitutional and public policy initiatives on the one hand and examines strategies used in other weak market cities that experience the abandonment and vacancy that is becoming increasingly more common place in post-industrial cities like our own.

I've archived copies of both reports, the Policy Brief and the Action Plan in the November post. Like it or not, Buffalo NY is a shrinking city. We are losing more jobs and people than we are gaining. On the street in the neighborhoods this means one thing - higher rates of abandonment and vacancy. This is the defining characteristic of life here in Buffalo...like it or not.

If you want to stay current with these issues, sign-up for the free e-newsletter from the National Vacant Properties Campaign, right here.

More about Shrinking Cities... from last month.

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