The Campaign for Greater Buffalo is hosting a series of three profusely illustrated presentations called Urban Revival Buffalo that it hopes will inspire fresh thinking on ways to revitalize the city while making it more equitable, sustainable, and attractive. The full slate of events is free and open to the public, with donations appreciated.

Eugene Debs Hall

The series kicks off on Wednesday August 30 at 6:00pm at Eugene Debs Hall, Peckham and Clark streets, Buffalo, with “Bikeopolis,” a look at European bicycle cultures in Dutch, Belgian, and German cities by Campaign Executive Director Tim Tielman. Tielman rode his bike to school and on urban explorations while a child in the Netherlands. A bike rider ever since and fresh off a working holiday in Holland and Germany, Tielman will show what it takes to embed “bikethinking” in everyday life and how that creates an ever-improving local bikeway standards (yes, there is a manual for that) and networks, 11,000-space underground bike garages, an international network of intercity bikeways, vital cities and happy citizens.

It wasn’t always that way, even in The Netherlands. It took riots and bike “die-ins” by citizens to turn the tide of car culture and restore lost freedom of movement for those on bikes and to protect the historic architecture and land uses of Dutch cities that made walking and biking possible. Buffalo bicyclists once had the freedom to safely roam, too. The local bike network stretched to Lake Ontario and included a 23-mile path around Grand Island, built by the Erie County Sidepath Commission. How can Buffalo start rebuilding the ecosystem that makes a bikecity possible?

Bernice Radel, executive director of Preservation Buffalo Niagara and bike enthusiast, will provide an introductory talk relating her experience biking in The Netherlands. The event is a “Jane’s Talk,” a series of lectures held at Debs Hall.

Lafayette Brewing Company

The Urban Revival then moves downtown for its second installment at the Lafayette Brewing Company in the Hotel Lafayette on Wednesday September 6 at 5:30pm and a look at the radical reconstruction of the lost cores of Berlin, Dresden, and Frankfurt. In “Back by Popular Demand,” Tielman explains that the cities were first bombed flat in WWII, then rebuilt in Modernist and Brutalist styles. Residents found them soul-crushing and unsupportive of a rich urban life.

That is, until the 1990s, when German reunification gave impetus to citizens’ movements to demolish the oppressive post-war constructions and empty spaces and fill them with outwardly exacting reconstructions of what existed before the war: medieval and baroque streets lined with everything from modest shophouses to imperial palaces. complete with streets and squares where cars are tightly controlled and humans given free-range, the reconstructed precincts are much-loved vessels of memory and vitality.

In the third and final installment in the series, “New Amsterdam,” again at the Lafayette Brewing Company, on Wednesday September 13 at 5:30pm, Tielman looks at the new neighborhoods built since 1990 that tourists, absorbed by charming and ingenious 17th century canals and canal houses, don’t see. Whether in old office parks, lumber docks, or on new man-made islands, the new neighborhoods employ techniques that emulate the comfortable domesticity of the 17th century within 21st century systems. You could call it paleo-urbanism. Buffalo, originally named New Amsterdam, could learn a lot from Old Amsterdam!

The largest Dutch cities were actually losing population due in no small part to post-war government policies favoring decentralization and road construction, combined with Modernist planning theories and architecture. With a lot of encouragement from an informed and demonstrative public, the city did an about-face and built new districts of thousands of apartments and houses according to principals, emphasizing materials, scale, and locomotion that supported human nature. It also refurbished existing streets and neighborhoods to increase quality of life by de-emphasize speed and cars.

The result? Amsterdam is better and more popular than ever, with steady growth, world-class historic areas, beautiful new architecture that compliments the old, and a superb mobility system that ties it all together.

To recap:

Bikeopolis
6pm Wed. Aug. 30, 2023 at Debs Hall,
435 Paderewski Dr. (near Central Terminal). Free (donation appeciated).
The bicycle is a vehicle for equitable, sustainable, mobility and freedom in historic cities worldwide. How do cities do it? Can Buffalo do it? A “Jane’s Talk’ in collaboration with Debs Hall. Come early—$3 pizza slices while supplies last!

To be safe and sociable, bikeways should allow side-by-side riding.

Back by Popular Demand
5:30 pm Wed. Sept. 6, 2023 at Lafayette Brewing Co., Hotel Lafayette, 391 Washington St. Free (donation appreciated).
Citizens demanded Frankfurt, Berlin, and Dresden demolish Brutalist and Modernist post-war buildings and street plans and reconstruct entire historic areas. They got their souls back, and an economic boost. Could Buffalo do the same?

Every building in this image of Frankfurts Aldstadt has been reconstructed following available documentation or according to historic construction techniques and materials.

New Amsterdam
5:30 pm Wed. Sept. 13, 2023 at Lafayette Brewing Co., Hotel Lafayette, 391 Washington St. Free (donation appreciated)
Buffalo was founded as New Amsterdam. (Old) Amsterdam and Buffalo tried urban renewal and highways in the 1960s and 1970s. Massive fail. Amsterdam changed its approach to “paleo-urbanism” and became an international marvel. See the Amsterdam tourists don’t see, and what makes it work.

New housing outside Amsterdam conforms to innate human preferences, like Amsterdam canal houses of the 17th century.