The concept of Buffalo being able to feed off the growth of NYC or Chicago or Toronto due to the centrality of our location has long been held by many but it has for the most part failed to deliver. Buffalo isn’t the only city that has failed at this-Cleveland and Pittsburgh bank on their location in relation to stronger, more global cities yet cannot get much from it.

In the book it has a similar story with similar cities in England. When companies want to come to London but can’t they don’t settle for Manchester or Liverpool or Birmingham. They go to Frankfurt or Paris or Shanghai. This isn’t a theory-the proof is in the tax base. The book continues to add that if England emphasized infrastructure improvements in places like Manchester as a 2nd best choice to starting up shop in London it would just entice the company to go to Frankfurt. Perhaps if that infrastructure money was spent in London, said hypothetical company would have been more enticed.

So what does that hold for Buffalo? If a company wants to go to Toronto and can’t-they’ll go to Montreal or New York or Chicago. Why would a company with the capital and allure go to a 2nd rate rust belt city? Heck, if they had to settle for rust belt they’d go to Cleveland or Pittsburgh because the Economist says they are two of the best 50 cities in the world to live in.

At the same time, cities are becoming more grouped together as mega-regions. Tor-Buf-Chester is cited in this book as the 4th biggest mega-region in North America (and also includes Ottawa and Montreal which is new to me). This is clearly a marketable asset for Buffalo if used right but another important asset in economic development in the 21st century is making sure you have the cultural toys to entice these companies-Pittsburgh and Cleveland do a better job with that but are basically prettier versions of Buffalo with the same ugly problems.

You could apply this theory to what HSBC has done to its’ Buffalo operations. HSBC has moved all their executives to NYC for the 1st time and has moved many operations to Chicago (another global city)-hinting that perhaps Buffalo could lose a significant amount of what remains of HSBC (besides, how can you court new bank executives when you’d be sticking them in Buffalo?).

But to create the cultural toys you have to spend tax money-and Buffalo is doing that. The Martin House, the Richardson Complex, Canal Side, Burchfield-Penney and so on. At the same time these assets add a tax burden, making it harder to entice businesses. An endless cycle of frustration for those who care.

For the 1st time in generations local leadership is showing signs that it wants to be with the times in accordance to how the local economy should be structured. Manufacturing is about 11% of the local economy now and leaders are not waiting for big industry to magically come back anymore but have done a decent job getting light manufacturing to come into and grow in the city (Buffalo Lakeside Commerce Park has been a success story).

A large investment in creating new energy (8 windmills in Lackawanna are a start), heavier investment in the medical campus, and encouraging large growth of local colleges-especially UB will be key. A downtown campus that flows in with a growing Medical Campus can create a contemporary and cutting edge intellectual center that can serve as the cradle for Buffalo’s future as a city of importance in the new knowledge based/white collar economy.

But then again, as it says in “The Endless City”:

The sad truth is that city after city is expending enormous energy chasing the tantalizing prize of biotech, when we know that only 10 or so metropolitan areas really have a shot at agglomeration economies that will make a discernible difference in the creation of jobs and fiscal vitality

Back end operations might expand here and there but expecting legitimate overflow from surrounding global cities is unrealistic-and we have years of proof.

Creating new energy, new science, and new intellectuals is the key to the core of our economy and spending money on our historical assets will help set us apart from new places that serve as our competition.

In the end it might all be worthless. Perhaps Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Buffalo are all just relics of the past. Perhaps Shanghai, Dubai and Delhi await similar fates 100 years from now as well.

But as of now it seems like these are the only legitimate chances we have of ever becoming a respected metropolitan region in the global scene. Creativity is what made Buffalo a successful place to begin with-creativity is what can take Buffalo out of its own slide to a place below mediocrity in the eyes of national and international business.