A few days ago, Bowie and I took a road trip around the Golden Horseshoe to visit our neighbours in Buffalo, New York.

Our mission: succumbing to mass consumerism in the “land of the free and home of the brave.” Because of my planning nerdiness, I also had a secret agenda to understand what’s going on in the planning world in Buffalo.

Bowie, being an experienced bargain shopper, wanted to directly head to Walden Galleria after checking in at the hotel. Walden Galleria is a regional mall near Buffalo International Airport and is about 25 minutes from Downtown.

Us at Pottery Barn Kids. Geez, kids who own these toys are darn fortunate.

At first glance, I was surprised to see such a wide selection of stores— they have almost everything that you would find at the Eaton Centre. Having not shopped much at American non-outlet retail stores, I became quite impressed that even malls in the suburbs had such a wide spectrum of stores. To my dismay, though, I realized upon doing further research that Walden Galleria is the epicentre of shopping in Western New York.

It’s a shame that the region’s busiest mall is way in the outskirts of the city. I guess we can say the same thing for many mid-sized cities in southern Ontario like Kitchener-Waterloo and London.

Here’s me at Johnny Rockets, you will find the same at Vaughan Mills. Service was awful.

The mall is quite a retreat. After some shopping, we ate, and returned to shop and then ate some more. The mall is undergoing an incredible expansion, and included in the expansion is this neat cheesecake restaurant aptly called the Cheesecake Factory. The décor is extravagant and resembles sort of a fusion between Disney and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I have not seen so much cheesecake in one place. This place was very exclusive— we had to way just under an hour for a table.

By the time we finished our cheesecake desserts, it was already 11 pm— this meant that we spent nine hours in a mall. While we contemplated visiting their 4-am-last-call bars in downtown on West Chippewa Street, we were too exhausted and called it a night and watched quality American television: syndicated Dawson’s Creek, and popular “little people” programs on TLC.

The next morning, we dragged ourselves up to head to a non-descript outlet mall near Niagara Falls called Fashion Outlets. This was after some directional troubles; but forgive us, we didn’t have coffee yet.

Me at Bob Evans, a homey American restaurant. They made us a specially ordered blueberry crepe. It was good.

I swear being a planner, driving around this portion of New York State is incredibly depressing. I seriously believe that there were no planners when these commercial strips were constructed. It reminded me of an aged Hespeler Road in Cambridge-incohesive buildings structures, large setbacks, no sidewalks, large commercial signs. Below is a stolen picture that best depicted what I saw.

There was not much to report at the outlet mall. It was bland and full of thrifty Canadians.

We then returned back to Buffalo in the afternoon to pursue my secret agenda. I knew I had planned more than the time permitted, but I tried to prioritize as much as I could.

For those don’t know, Buffalo is part of a region informally coined as the Rust Belt. This region of the American northeast first grew as a result of good transportation links with the Eric Canal, and later with great railroad connections. Buffalo was once a manufacturing powerhouse, and it thrived on the automobile industry back in the former half of the 20th century. Because of the impacts of globalization, many automobile manufacturers left, and its population fell considerably from its peak in 1950 at 580,000 to a current population of just under 280,000. While there are emerging economies in bioinformatics, given its well-represented post-secondary institutions such as SUNY, they have been unable to bounce back to its former glory.

Given its lack of economic progress after the war, Buffalo was blessed in the sense that it did not experience the severe effects of modernism that plagued so many North American cities like Toronto. Many of its heritage buildings remains in tact today, and my secret agenda was to visit each one of them.

Buffalo City Hall, a gorgeous Art Deco building at Niagara Square.

Old Post Office now occupied by Erie Community College.

Ellicott Square Building, one of the neo-renaissance structures built in the late 19th century.

After a bit of sightseeing, we took the Buffalo Metro to eat at Anchor Bar. Anchor Bar is believed to be “Home of the Original Buffalo Chicken Wing,” and we thought we’d be gullible and go there. The décor was a bit shabby, and reminds me of Coyote Ugly. The wings were quite disappointing; it was overcooked and lacked flavour.

Because we were so short of time, we had to quickly pack our dinner, and rush to get catch the production of Of Mice and Men at Studio Arena Theatre. The show was great, and the performers were very convincing.

Bowie waiting for the train to arrive at Theatre Station.

I really enjoyed having the opportunity to take the Buffalo Metro Rail. While it is called the Metro, it really isn’t by definition. It’s a metro only in the northern parts of the corridor, and an LRT in the southern downtown portions. The downtown portions are on a dedicated right of way along a pedestrian-only boulevard, but they have to obey signals at intersecting streets.

While Buffalo built the LRT and the pedestrian boulevard as a way to revitalize the struggling downtown, it is believed that it did the contrary. The pedestrian boulevard restricted access to automobiles, and essentially killed the only source of traffic it could’ve generated. As you can see from the pictures on Main Street, where the LRT corridor serves, it is void of any substantial retail or pedestrian traffic.

Okay, to sum up, as a tourist, I have to say that the trip was fair, at best. Again, perhaps we live in a diversity bubble in Toronto, but it seems to me that we were constantly reminded that we were tourists, and we were stared with such explicit scrutiny. I definitely did not feel like I belonged there.

I felt that it went beyond the fact that Bowie and I were these Asian minorities in a predominately Black and White society. It seemed as though the locals did not know what to do with these seemingly displaced tourists. We were told not to take photos, and while it was apparent that we were tourists, people a bit cold and did not share a feeling of hospitality.

However, as a planning adventure, I really enjoyed this trip. Planners often make field trips to see how cities accommodate for growth and what they’re doing right. But I felt that it was equally if not more satisfying to understand how we plan for decline. I suggest all planners to give Buffalo a chance.

After the show, we ran back to the car, and drove back to Toronto.

PS: Canadian citizenship cards are still accepted at the border; you just need another piece of photo ID.

Buffalo - [wikipedia.org]
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(That’s a grammatically correct word!) - [wikipedia.org]
Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority - [nfta.com]
Walden Galleria - [waldengalleria.com]
Fashion Outlets Niagara - [fashionoutletsniagara.com]
Studio Arena Theatre - [studioarena.org]
Buffalo Niagara Tourism - [buffalocvb.org]