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paul’s journal

Where is Buffalo's Inner City?

· · 🌡️ 19°F

This is my 4th journal in 24 hours. Sorry but I am trying to make up for last week. My journal gave me a guilt trip. It is so nice sitting by the fire on a cold day and just playing with my internet.

First of all I really wanted to touch on why "inner city" is used like a swear word. I heard someone refer to inner city youth yesterday but I don't think they meant from the inner city, they just meant poor with a not so good education system.

What about the east coast cities makes the inner city such a bad place? Okay, I know the answer to that but can you even refer to inner city in a newer city like phoenix? Is the inner city a bad place in older cities like Paris? Have people just adopted the term inner city to refer to anything ghetto? Where is the inner city of Buffalo? The map below is all the city of Buffalo. I am even missing some fringe areas.

image

I thought the red part was the city before. It is the area from Niagara st to the 33 on an east to west plane, and from downtown to Kenmore on a North to south plane. When I asked @terry to point out Buffalo on the map he also said, the area in the ring. In fact I never even realized it continued past their until we really looked at it at a party at @lilho 's house last year when someone who was from south buffalo commented that my view of the city was missing all of south buffalo and most of the east side. I guess I should have known as my Dad grew up in Love Joy but I always though Love Joy was more like Kenmore, not in culture but in the fact I thought it was an independently governed area.

It seems like if Buffalo is really that whole map, then if you were to pick out the inner city you would pick out the part in the ring. But that area doesn't really live up to the term 'inner city'. In fact, most of the wealthiest parts of the city are right in the center of that.

So at some point was saying you are from the inner city a good thing to day. Or maybe what I think of as the inner city was the country back then. Where is the inner city of buffalo?

Imagine if everything changed and all the middle class fled the suburbs and moved into the entire city. Do you think the term inner city could ever be something positive to say about a place, or does it have to much baggage. Will anyone move on up to Buffalo's inner city of the future.
473 words · edited Aug 16, 2012

💬 7 comments

  1. zobar ·

    'Inner city' will never be more than a euphemism for 'where black people smoke crack and shoot each other,' even though in Buffalo that area actually borders the suburbs and runs most of the length of the city. I think even the term 'East Side' is so loaded around here, that when the rich white people eventually do move back they'll make up something hokey to call it like 'The Cobblestone District.'

    Your circle also missed Riverside, Black Rock, North Buffalo, University, and Kensington. UB has a map of Buffalo split up into neighborhoods that's really good reference. :::link::: Unlike most, they actually acknowledge that the East Side is made up of smaller, diverse neighborhoods.

    - Z

  2. chico ·

    @zobar 's link to the UB Buffalo city map is really good... I remember using that map to learn names of neighborhoods before moving to B-lo last year.

  3. tinypliny ·

    Heh, I was looking up the term "inner city", and wondering what it was in the context of Buffalo. Trust google to find one of your ponderings on the subject. When I think of inner city, I think of the meshwork of streets right inside downtown. Buffalo's "inner city", according to me is definitely growing more affluent by the year.

    Look at the price of flats in buildings such as Avant. They match prices of houses in California! I would very much like to live in a high rise flat with window-walls such as Avant - even if for a few months, because I just love cityscapes. But this is impossible in Buffalo, because the rents are so atrociously high. Of course, I can't even dream of getting into a mortgage for one of them.

    In Delhi, "Inner city" is probably one of the most fashionable places in the city, but then Delhi is so vast that there are many many "inner cities". What would you say is "inner city" in NYC?

  4. paul ·

    The cost here is nothing compared to the same space in any more affluent city. Imagine the cost of an Avant style loft in NYC or SF.

  5. paul ·

    As a side note it is interesting that I used to talk much more about stuff other than what I ate for lunch or who parked in my driveway. It seems like now my life is consumed by programming which is not very interesting to talk about.

  6. tinypliny ·

    Yes, but imagine how terrible's roswell's web/intranet structure was back when you use to talk about inner cities.

  7. paul ·

    Got a comment today about this: "Found your blog when looking for a map explicitly outlining the city limits of Buffalo and I feel I should let you know: you aren't even close. That outlined area is nothing but downtown Buffalo, one of the smaller neighborhoods of the city. I've lived in South Buffalo for 16 years and know city limits go as far south as Dorrance Ave. bordering Lackawanna, as far east as Harlem Rd. bordering Cheektowaga and West Seneca, as far north as the Scajaquada Expressway bordering Kenmore, and is bordered on the west by Lake Erie and the Niagara River. You missed the whole neighborhoods of South Buffalo, Kaisertown, Love Joy, East Buffalo, North Buffalo and various other subdivisions (Cazenovia, Allentown, Black Rock, University Heights). Inner City Buffalo is not within that red circle at all, in fact, that circled area is probably the nicest neighborhood in the city. East Buffalo would be inner city, anything within a few mile radius of the intersection of Walden and Bailey. And as any Buffalonian must know, East Buffalo is not a nice place at all."

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