What to do with Route 81; why malls can’t ever be green; and reports of Buffalo’s demise.

The latest census enumerations show that the city of Syracuse’s population has fallen to a new low of 139,000. This, as Phil points out, leaves Syracuse dangerously close to “small city” status in New York. As a suburbanite, I think of “Syracuse” as the entire metro area, however. No doubt the metro […]

Famous Architect Rem Koolhaas is disappointed with American cities:
“Don’t tell anyone… but the 20th-century city is over. It has nothing new to teach us anymore. Our job is simply to maintain it.”
I live in Old America — the Northeast, the Rust Belt — and in decades to come, the rest of America will also […]

CNY ecoBlog takes a quick look at today’s bombshell that Syracuse is somehow the city with the worst “carbon footprint” in New York. Is Syracuse’s sprawl and highway addiction really worse than Buffalo’s or Rochester’s? C’mon. Despite sprawl without growth being a significant problem in Central New York, I can’t get my […]

Striking while the iron’s still hot.

What happens if nothing happens to I-81?

Sometimes it’s the strangest things that set me back toward one of the usual themes on this blog. (Please bear with me, as this has a bit of a long preamble.) Today it’s a somewhat huffy editorial in the NYT about generational bad behavior. The author of this editorial is outraged that […]