The Manhattan Institute's Steven Malanga has a piece in the Saturday Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition on the re-development tribulations of the rust belt city of Buffalo, New York.
[On a personal note, I believe that the dying Great Lakes port cities, including Buffalo, are great candidates for a modern version of the medieval-era Hanseatic free trade league.]
Malanga examines the root causes of Buffalo's decline and explains why wave after wave of stimulus spending and other top down approaches to revitalization have failed.
Key passage,
"Back in 2004, the Buffalo News estimated that the city had garnered more federal redevelopment aid per capita than any other city in the country, a total of more than half a billion dollars since the 1970s. Yet, the paper noted, the city had virtually nothing to show for the money."
Also instructive was the city's experience with light rail, after banning cars the city has returned to...allowing cars. Malanga writes,
"Opened in 1985 and anchored by a transit mall that banned cars, the rail line fell well below ridership projections—and downtown businesses suffered mightily from the lack of traffic. As Buffalo landlord Stephen P. Fitzmaurice wrote in 2009: 'Walk down Main Street on the transit mall; aside from a few necessities like drug and cell phone stores, blight dominates.' Last month the city received a $15 million federal grant to restore traffic to Main Street."
But in the end, it was good-old-fashioned high taxes and wasteful spending that brought Buffalo to its knees.
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