Hackerspace (Buffalo NY)

[Michele Zone]

I thought folks here might be interested:
http://blog.changegrow.com/2009/08/hubs.html

Any city would be challenged to turn itself into the next Silicon Valley. For Buffalo, a city challenged just to survive, it may seem impossible.

Despite this, there are advantages that our city could leverage to get a leg up in the climb out of obscurity. We have ready access to cheap hydroelectric power and we are already a world leader in the field of bioinformatics.

I thought folks might even discuss it. If not, I suppose it could be merged into Random Thoughts.

Thx.

[Linda_D]

I think one of the biggest problems with Buffalo is that there really is two Buffalos (and I mean the city and its suburbs not just the city itself) ... one is the Buffalo that still sees itself as a gritty blue collar city where learning, creativity, and diversity are, at best, tolerated while the other is sees itself as Manhattan West on the Buffalo River. Neither one is grounded in pragmatism, and the tension between the two creates roadblocks to actually accomplishing much.

[Michele Zone]

I haven't been to Buffalo. The thing that grabs me about stuff like this is the intersection between cyberspace and actual space. It seems like a natural topical fit for a website devoted to planning the urban environment. When I decided I was interested in planning, I picked up a bunch of books and read most of them -- books about more than the physical architecture of cities. Books about social fabric and such and how that relates to the built environment -- how it shapes it and is shaped by it.

I was a military wife for a long time. Being rooted in the military community is not about a specific place. Military families move and sometimes run into the same people elsewhere. Military families remain in touch with the families (parents, siblings, cousins) they left behind in their hometowns. Etc. I see similar patterns in immigrant families. About a year ago, my place of work had two Hispanic women get married and move away to Florida with their husbands. This happened just weeks apart. That stuff intrigues me. And I think you see the same thing with the online world. If you are interested in a particular subject, you run into some of the same people over and over if you join different forums and email lists related to the subject. Some people meet in person. And so on.