One of the most profound urban design mistakes in Buffalo’s history has been our treatment of Scajaquada Creek. In Black Rock, the creek winds though industrial brownfeilds and functions as a sewage ditch — with all of the runoff pollutants from the Airport, Cheektowaga shopping malls, and sewer overflows. Beyond Delaware park the creek has been built over, functioning purely as a sewer below.
The New York State Department of Transportation has met public outrage for attempting to reconstruct the 3 mile stretch of highway that activists call unnecessary and a threat to public safety. They say that the highway suppresses property values and is a blight on the city’s flagship public space.
Imagine reclaiming the defunct industrial expanses that sit idle in Black Rock and repurposing the space into a vast park with a cleaned and re-landscaped Scajaquada Creek. Rather than the highway severing the city like a wall, we can reshape the entire section of the city into a seamless campus like environment that melds several disjointed neighborhoods into vibrant commercial districts and high quality public spaces.
Concise marvelously expressed idea. Take out what never should have been built.
Am I correct in understanding you propose Military become I-190? Because I am unfamiliar with your reasoning for this, why do you propose it?