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City on the Edge: Buffalo, New York, 1900 - present | 
 enlarge | Author: Mark Goldman
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Category: Book
List Price: $19.98
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Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 277013
Media: Paperback
Pages: 413
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 1.1
ISBN: 1591024579
Dewey Decimal Number: 974.797
EAN: 9781591024576
ASIN: 1591024579
Publication Date: March 20, 2007
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Product Description
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the city of Buffalo, New York, looked toward a future of great promise. During this era, the city was the host of a prestigious world s fair, The Pan American Exposition, and an industrial behemoth, the Lackawanna Steel Company, had just opened its doors. Buffalonians at this time had every reason to believe that these massive and impressive signs of progress augured well for the balance of the century. One hundred years later, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Buffalo is on the verge of bankruptcy, and a new generation of citizens looks back wistfully, wondering what happened and where, now, they are headed. In a sweeping narrative that speaks to the serious student of urban studies as well as the general reader, Mark Goldman tells the story of twentieth-century Buffalo, New York. Goldman covers all of the major developments: The rise and decline of the city s downtown and ethnic neighborhoods
The impact of racial change and suburbanization
The role and function of the arts in the life of the community
Urban politics, urban design, and city planning While describing the changes that so drastically altered the form, function, and character of the city, Goldman, through detailed descriptions of special people and special places, gives a sense of intimacy and immediacy to these otherwise impersonal historical forces. City on the Edge unflinchingly documents and describes how Buffalo has been battered by the tides of history. But it also describes the unique characteristics that have encouraged an innovative cultural climate, including Buffalo s dynamic survival instinct that continues to lead to a surprisingly and inspiringly high quality of community life. Finally, it offers a road map, which if followed could point the way to a new and exciting future for this long-troubled city.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A city facing many challenges March 4, 2008
Steven A. Peterson (Hershey, PA (Born in Kewanee, IL))
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
Mark Goldman's "City on the Edge" is a history of the past and a look at the possible future of Buffalo, New York. As such, this is a book of real interest to me. I spent four years in Buffalo, studying for my Ph. D. at the (then) State University of New York at Buffalo. For the next twenty plus years, I taught at a university in Western New York and often visited friends in Buffalo or just went there for mini vacations. I start off by saying that I thought that Buffalo had many attractions--but obviously faced many challenges. I loved wandering around Delaware Park, driving along the Niagara River, going to the Anchor Bar for chicken wings and jazz. . . . Goldman is also a resident of Buffalo and also a real booster for the city.
This book takes a look at how Buffalo has come to be where it is now. The history really starts at the Pan-American Exposition in 1901. At that time, the future looked good for Buffalo. Manufacturing and shipping were mainstays of the economy; the Exposition promised a great deal of visibility. But, as with later events, the promise had counterpoint in misfortune, such as President McKinley's assassination, the economic failure of the Exposition, and so on.
The book spends time on the growth and glory days of Buffalo. But the current realities are set in motion later on, in the 1960s, 1970s, and thereafter. Key problems facing Buffalo were a set of ethnic political leaders who played by "old politics," the politics of favoritism, of patronage. I don't know how true this is, but a friend of mine once worked for the city at a club for kids. As part of her purview, she was responsible for a swimming pool. The local political "boss" made sure that sons and daughters of party favorites got jobs as lifeguards, some of whom could not swim. True? I don't know, but it represents the mindset of the old style politics current in Buffalo then.
Challenges faced Buffalo, such as the decline of the steel industry (the old Lackawanna steel facility was awesome to drive past! It seemed to stretch forever, but it just about dies out in the few years that I was in graduate school. . . .), the decline of the auto industry and its local subsidiaries, and the challenges created by racially segregated schools.
Buffalo's leaders were not a sterling lot (to put it mildly). This book is pretty hard on a mediocre lot of mayors and other local politicians, who dithered and tried to stay in power by the politics of favoritism. Federal funds were used to try to prevent the downtown from deteriorating, but tons of money were lost as projects often did not come close to achieving their goals.
The book ends by looking toward the future; there is hope in that glimpse--but the book itself provides precious little reason for that hope. There are some questions that I have about the book. The author at one point speaks positively of one mayor, but goes negative later. Sometimes he seems to change his mind about the value of some of the actors in a space of twenty pages. Nonetheless, this is an interesting book on the challenges facing a lot of older urban areas. Why do some succeed in addressing those challenges? And others fail? This book is worth considering as adding to that dialogue.
 People, places and events alike are surveyed. July 8, 2007
Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
At first glance CITY ON THE EDGE would seem to be a title New York collections alone could appreciate - but look again: it's a story of urban dysfunction which holds strong social and urban planning messages for any American city. Chapters survey the history of Buffalo, New York: from its initial promising heyday to its decline, its many social issues, and the role of the arts in community life. Of particular note - and recommended for college-level holdings strong in urban planning - are discussions of how urban politics and city planning affected the development and outcome of Buffalo. People, places and events alike are surveyed.
Staring at the abyss-- about to take a giant leap forward April 5, 2007
Peter Lorenzi (Maryland, USA)
25 out of 25 found this review helpful
Ten years ago I attended an academic conference in Buffalo. The Buffalo Zoo hosted the main dinner of the conference, and the participants ate a nice meal accompanied by the relatively intense aroma of the denizens of the zoo. It was a little off-putting. The highlight of the evening, the after dinner speech, was a presentation of a plan to revitalize the zoo with a massive investment and relocation to the troubled waterfront area of Buffalo, away from its historic, almost pastoral setting in Delaware Park. The once flourishing seal exhibit had been filled in and now housed a prairie dog exhibit. To rectify problems like this, all they needed was $500 million, preferably from the state of New York. It never happened.
Such large-scale thinking - and the disasters that regularly accompanies same -- abounds in "City on the edge." Having read Diana Dillaway's (2006), more academic "Power failure," and, just recently, Goldman's 1990 prequel, "City on the lake," "City on the edge" provided a dark, rich third part of this sad trilogy. Some of "Edge" draws heavily from "Lake;" read both and you'll see a lot of overlap. And there is good reason: To understand Buffalo's perilous position today, Goldman takes us back over one hundred years to the pivotal events at the turn of the twentieth century in Buffalo - the assassination of President McKinley and the building of the Lackawanna (later Bethlehem) steel plant. From that death and those new industrial roots Buffalo prospered and led the industrial triumphs of the United States in the twentieth century, with steel and autos, war production and cereal, aircraft and chemicals. The city boomed during the war years and suffered much during the Depression.
In Buffalo, the creative culture prospered, especially music and art. The Albright-Knox Art Gallery is world-class. Lukas Foss helped put the Buffalo Philharmonic on the map - for a time. But all of the creativity was either too little, too late, or a distraction from the fundamental sea change engulfing the city after World War II. Buffalo struggled with, and largely succeeded, with managing integration, at least much better than other northern cities and public schools systems. The African-Americans from the South who came for good factory jobs in an industrial city have grown to half of Buffalo's current population. Later, an Hispanic community, namely Puerto Rican, took root. Today, recent immigrants from Africa find accommodations in Buffalo's low housing costs and tradition of cultural diversity and economic immigration.
The hearty, hard-working citizens are not deterred by harsh winters or record snowfalls. What Buffalo failed to do, it appears, was to master paradigm change, to embrace the shift from a domestic, smoke-belching industrial economy to a global knowledge economy, at least until too late. The story of indecision as to the location of the University of Buffalo, after its "acquisition" by the SUNY system in 1962 could be the apocryphal story that explains Buffalo's decline, but it is hard to ignore the constant, well-intentioned, vain, grossly expensive, and - in the end - dysfunctional attempts at urban renewal in the second half of the twentieth century in Buffalo. And perhaps fittingly, the hundred years come to a close with the primary focus now on sports and gambling, with the Buffalo Bills, the Sabres, and casino gambling run by the Senecas, as the source of pride and the focus of the economy. My, how times have changed and how the mighty have fallen!
This is an engrossing, educational detailed book. It should be required reading for first-year students at the University of Buffalo and Canisius. Much of the source material is in the Erie County Public Library and the archives of the local newspapers. Goldman love Buffalo and has worked hard to make it prosper. As he writes, the city does not need to be rebuilt; it needs to be healed. Massive, urban renewal, bricks-and-mortar projects are not the solution. Instead, basic, entrepreneurial, grass roots, business and community development is probably the solution.
In the last two chapters, there is a little confusion. After claiming that the African-American population makes up fifty percent of Buffalo's 297,000 people in 2005, Goldman soon after cites an African-American population of 100,000. And after citing the Anchor Bar as the only restaurant where the races mix, a few pages later Goldman praises the "rainbow" of customers at the Towne restaurant in Allentown. Minor quibbles both.
A final, mild lament: Although I am a native of western New York, generally familiar with the city, and Goldman includes a map of the city's council districts at the front of the book, "Edge" would certainly benefit from maps of the city, especially those that reveal the many changes and neighborhoods, familiar to long-time residents of Buffalo but difficult to picture without some maps. To his credit, Goldman offers vivid verbal descriptions, often of places long gone, and numerous Internet links to photos. For me, I'd like to have seen street and/or neighborhood maps (e.g., the Hooks, Black Rock, South Buffalo) of the city, better yet, at twenty-year intervals, to illustrate the physical changes at street level.
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