5. A Regional Framework for Planning and Action
Planning at the City Scale
Queen City in the 21st Century: Buffalo's Comprehensive Plan incorporates by reference the work of The Queen City Hub: A Regional Action Plan for Downtown Buffalo and other strategic planning initiatives. A few key initiatives are:
The Joint Schools Construction Board
The City and State are investing one billion dollars over the next decade for a comprehensive overhaul of City school buildings. This effort and the work by the Board of Education to improve the quality and efficiency of school programs both promise to significantly improve the quality of the education system in Buffalo for all its citizens.
Olmsted Parks and Parkway System Restoration and Management Plan
The Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy has taken on an ambitious twenty-year park and parkway restoration and management program beginning with the creation of a master plan fashioned after New York City’s Central Park Conservancy restoration and management program. The effort is predicated on collaboration with the City of Buffalo and Erie County and depends on the Conservancy’s capital campaign to raise much of the money needed to implement the plan.
The Waterfront Corridor Initiative and the Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan
The Waterfront Corridor Initiative is not a planning exercise. Rather, it is a plan review and implementation campaign designed to resurrect the good ideas and hard work of twenty years of planning on Buffalo’s waterfront and translate them into action – now. The Initiative is underway and an analysis of Buffalo’s waterfront planning legacy is near completion. Next steps involve the myriad waterfront stakeholders, public agencies, and general public, who will review and prioritize viable projects for Buffalo’s waterfront. When that’s done, priority projects will be turned over to those agencies – public and private – that have the ability to get those things done. An Implementation Council made up of the leadership of those agencies will meet regularly to solve problems, hold each other accountable, and turn plans into reality.
The initiative is supported by a grant to the City of Buffalo from the Federal Highway Administration with a primary goal of identifying key transportation infrastructure initiatives that will support economic and community development, transportation safety and efficiency, and waterfront access. The Waterfront Corridor Initiative (WCI) will be concluded in 2004. All of the WCI work will be subject to the principles of the Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan (LWRP) to be concluded by the City of Buffalo in 2003. That plan outlines the key principles and constraints on waterfront development that will assure environmentally sound development.
