Lessons from Pittsburgh and Buffalo

Pittsburgh or Buffalo? Pondering the possibility of a future with much less steel (notwithstanding the settlement at US Steel and its apparent survival in the short term), Hamilton leaders would do well to study the successes and failures from each of those nearby rustbelt cities. Both places lost massive steel industries more than a generation ago and responded in radically different ways.

Having spent time in both communities recently, I wanted to share some reflections of the lessons Hamilton can learn from that adversity.

First, the bad: Buffalo, New York is about an hour’s drive from Hamilton, just across the Peace Bridge from Fort Erie. Starting in the 1950s, Buffalo’s population spiralled into decline from a high of over 500,000 to just half that today.

The big steel mills that powered its economy have closed, and the biggest employers are now the Stateof New York, the Federal government, the University at Buffalo and a non-profit health care provider.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Buffalo, despite its history of self-harm. I grew up watching Buffalo TV stations and cheering its sports teams.

Even today, Buffalo is beautiful in its blight. Its amazing park system was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, who also designed New York’s Central Park. It features several buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright, the impressive Albright-Knox Art Gallery and a lively cultural scene.

The downward spiral began when the St. Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959 and bypassed Buffalo as a shipping hub. The big steel mills began to leave, taking their multiplier businesses with them.

Instead of responding proactively to these challenges, Buffalo’s politicians fought amongst themselves, pitting centre against region. Suburban governments poached businesses from the old city while building low-density suburbs that locked out the less affluent.

A new campus for the University at Buffalo was built in a distant suburb. Then the Buffalo Bills moved out to Orchard Park, 25 km south of the city.

Buffalo built an LRT/subway system, but did just about everything wrong. Parochial politics stopped the line from extending to the university or other suburban locations, and the city maintained an investment-hostile tax and regulatory system.

Buffalo also built a waterfront expressway that cut the city off from the beauty of Lake Erie while traumatizing the neighbourhoods it cut through.

A few recent highlights suggest that there is hope even for Buffalo – a downtown ballpark and arena, a vibrant theatre district and some hip urban neighbourhoods – but Buffalo is still best understood as a living example of what not to do.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is a more hopeful story. Another steel city that peaked in the 1950s, Pittsburgh began a long decline from a high of 675,000 people as the steel industry collapsed in the 1970s.

Today, Pittsburgh has transformed itself into a centre for medical research, and its top employers are the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the West Penn Allegheny Health System.

Under the sometimes-controversial leadership of former mayor Tom Murphy, Pittsburgh drove $4.5 billion into downtown reinvestment, including a waterfront stadium, a new convention centre and almost a thousand acres of brownfield redevelopment.

Circumnavigating the same city/regional government split that plagued Buffalo, Murphy managed to establish a commuter levy on suburban residents who worked downtown but paid no taxes to support city services.

But non-profit medical services and research and higher education don’t contribute much to the municipal tax base, and Pittsburgh has also worked hard to diversify its economic base into information technology and finance. A former Nabisco factory now houses a Google office.

It hasn’t hurt that benefactors with names like Mellon and Heinz have invested heavily in downtown renewal.

So what are the lessons for Hamilton? First, we need to be proactive about the risks and opportunities of a post-steel economy. Now is the time to talk seriously about a post-industrial Hamilton focused less on big business and more on an entrepreneurial culture.

We know from experience that young entrepreneurs have choices about where to locate, and more than anything else they prize quality of life. Therefore, good public schools for their kids, safe walkable streets and a vibrant arts and culture scene matter a lot if we want to attract the best and the brightest.

Plus, initiatives like McMaster Innovation Park and the Innovation Factory have the potential to incubate the next major employment growth centre.

We also need a strong focus on downtown revitalization. A strong, healthy centre of safe, attractive, lively urban neighbourhoods will carry the city’s economy and produce the jobs we need to replace the industrial jobs we are losing.

That calls for a dedicated urban redevelopment agency to foster the recovery of under-utilized downtown and waterfront properties, including industrial brownfields, for use as high-quality urban investment.

Most important, we need to be brutally honest with ourselves about the choices we face. Failure to do so could well lead to a spiral of decline, disinvestment and uncoordinated flailing that continues to plague Buffalo, when our potential is so much closer to Pittsburgh’s.

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