Buffalo, New York: Ingenious Environmental Sustainability

Buffalo, New York is fueling a new vision of environmental sustainability. Long known as an industrial city, Buffalo residents are looking to greener pastures to reinvent the city, its image and the way people live. A number of factors have contributed to Buffalo's decline in population over the years; now some young forward-thinking residents are turning the city into a clean, green, urban machine.

Some years ago, a group of squatters took over an abandoned mansion. They dubbed the mansion as "The Bird House," fixed it up and called it home. The original owner had passed away, apparently with no kin. All of them were young and broke, but eventually they tired of squatting. As opportunities knocked, one by one, the squatters started to buy into a neighborhood and an idea on Normal Avenue in The City of Good Neighbors.

The kids are living up to the city's slogan. With the reinvention of an otherwise almost abandoned neighborhood, they started to look at empty lots, contacted the city, and put up gardens. The existing neighbors welcomed the face-lift.

The Buffalo News reports:

[Carrie] Nader bought a vacant lot on her own for $500 where she started a vegetable garden and keeps a bee hive. She has also bought the house next to it for $1 through the city's homesteading program.

The very fact that Buffalo has a homesteading program is both progressive and a creative rescue to urban blight. Nader isn't' the only one who is working the old soil; others are popping up in the neighborhood and together they are working on what is basically a neighborhood cooperative.

Buffalo News continues:

Some [of the lots] have been transformed into urban farm plots, with the help of the Massachusetts Avenue Project, for community residents to garden and grow their own food.

One lot has been planted with clover, to help support the dwindling honeybee population. Another is a rain garden that soaks up water: The goal is to keep storm water from overwhelming the sewer system.

Diane Picard, the Massachusetts [Avenue] Project's executive director, believes the trend of reusing the city's abandoned land, houses and neighborhoods is just getting started.

"For a long time, nobody had a plan for what to do with all our vacant land," she said. "This is a way of citizens trying to take control of what they want their neighborhoods to be."

The Massachusetts Avenue Project is a non-profit neighborhood resource for the residents of Buffalo New York. Self-described as a place that "nurtures the growth of a diverse and equitable community food system to promote local, economic opportunities, access to affordable, nutritious food and social-change action," they are proving to be an instrumental resource in recovering abandoned land and revitalizing neighborhoods in Buffalo into not only urban farms, but urban farms with a focus on environmental sustainability.

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