The City of Buffalo, well-known for its snowstorms,
is also the second largest city in New York State.
The city had a great industrial heritage,
but like so many other communities hard economic times
has led to the closure of many of these facilities.
The communities left behind
when the industries moved out
were left with reduced employment,
diminished living environments,
and associated health and socioeconomic problems.
One such neighborhood is the Commodore Perry Community,
a working class neighborhood just east of downtown
and North of the Buffalo River.
The New York Department of Health
and ATSDR
partnered with the University of Buffalo,
which has a grant
from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
and the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority
to prepare a redevelopment plan for the neighborhood.
The University established a Community Center
in the neighborhood
that is used to make sure that the community
is part of this planning process.
The Center has a library and endless suggestion wall
and a computer lab.
It also provides computer resources, training,
and Internet access to community members
who might not otherwise have access to a computer.
Dr. Henry Louis Taylor Jr.,
a Professor of Urban and Regional Planning
at the University of Buffalo
has been involved with this project
since its very beginning.
The purpose of this project, the BMHA-HUD
Perry Choice Neighborhood Revitalization Strategy,
is to turn this community into a great place to live,
work, play, and raise a family.
The idea is to transform a neighborhood of poverty,
distress, and underdevelopment
into a community of prosperity,
where the neighborhood actually serves as a platform
that will enable the residents
to realize their full human potential.
But before I tell you more about the project
what I'd like to do is give you a brief history of Buffalo
and the setting in which this community is located.
Buffalo, New York
is one of those big shouldered industrial cities
that served as the backbone of American society.
It was the city that came into prominence
with the emergence of the Erie Canal
and the industrialization of this country.
That was then, this is now.
Today, Buffalo's economy
is now driven by education, the health sciences,
professional services,
hospitality, and tourism.
At this point let me take you on into
the other part of the Center,
and especially in our War Room,
where our computers and computer operations are located.
Come on!
This is our War Room.
Now, we call it the War Room,
because we believe that
our neighborhood and the community,
we're at war with poverty;
we're at war with underdevelopment
and distress that's in this location and place;
we're at war with environmental degradation;
we're at war with all of the problems
and difficulties that keep residents
from realizing their full human potential
and being the very best that they can be.
So this is where our computer operations occur
and we're involved in a lot of the day-to-day work
that's required to develop this project.
Now, it's open to the community,
and we want it open to the community
and residents to use it,
including students,
because it's important that they have access
to knowledge and information
that they're able to utilize these resources
in the development of their own neighborhood
and in the enhancement and bolstering of their own lives.
And one of the things that the residents told us early on
in the planning of this process
is that there was very little computer access
in this neighborhood,
in this community,
and that many of the residents themselves
did not own computers.
So one of the ways that we were going to be able to link them
to the world of information and knowledge
and other resources that are electronic and digital
was through our computing system.
Now, let me introduce you to Jeff Kujawa,
the Assistant Director of the Center for Urban Studies,
and I want Jeff to show you a little bit about
some of the interactive mapping schemes
that we've been in the process of developing with DOH
as a way of enhancing and improving our abilities
to provide services for the residents
that are living in this area. Jeff!
I'm going to walk you through a tool
that the New York State Department of Health developed
for the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority Perry Choice
Neighborhood Planning Initiative.
This is a Supportive Service Provider Map
that residents can come to the P&I Center here
and sit down and use in order to find any services
or any locations that they need throughout the neighborhood.
Through our Needs Assessment process
and through our Focus Group Sessions
we found that residents either weren't knowledgeable
of the services that were located in the area,
or they weren't aware that certain services were nearby
that they could access.
So the New York State Department of Health
put together this map where people literally,
as long as you can use a mouse,
can point and click and find whether it's a business,
whether it's a service provider,
or whether it is a needed service
that they have in their lives.
There are several ways that they can use this.
They can literally, as I'm doing now,
point to the icon,
click on it,
find out information and where it's located;
it's contact information; it's website,
but you can also search each provider by name.
So if you literally know the name of the service provider
that you would like to go to,
these are alphabetical,
and you can literally point and click
to that place,
and it will show it up right on the map,
you hit the icon,
and you find the place that you need to go to.
It's also easy to use because there is a button
that is located right over here that gives you directions.
So if you want to walk,
if you want to drive,
if you want to bike to
whatever service provider you would like to go to,
you just click on whatever which way you want to go
and it will give you the detail directions
to find the place that you need to go to.
You can also use this by zooming in out an address.
So if you literally typed in South Park Avenue,
where we are located nearby and hit Go,
it will bring you right to the location where you're at.
So this is a tool that is very easy for residents to use,
it's very useful, because you're going to be able to find
any community organization,
any educational area, employment services,
faith based groups,
and you can go to them
and find them with one click of the mouse.
On average we have anywhere from 50-60 residents a week
that will use this facility.
Their use ranges into about
three or four different categories;
on the one hand we have residents
who will come in
and they just basically want to surf the Internet,
go on Facebook, check their email,
and engage in just ongoing activities
that are related to accessing information
off the Internet.
On another level, we have residents who come in
and they're trying to find a job.
And so they will go online to the various sites
where they can find out about employment information,
or they can begin to actually fill out forms
for employment or the like, or they can look up places
where they can get job training and the like.
We also have residents who will come in
and use the computer just for email purposes.
As most of us know,
emailing is extraordinarily important,
and especially in communities like this,
because people often have trouble
keeping the telephones on for economic reasons,
and I say economic reasons, it's not unlike
about 50% of the families
that live in the Perry Choice neighborhood
pay 50% or more of their income on housing.
So when you have that level of resources going to housing,
it means that other things are going to suffer.
So by accessing and establishing email addresses,
this creates a systematic way
in which these residents can communicate with others,
get information about jobs and opportunities.
This is a stabilizing force in their life.
A big group of our users are kids.
So you come in this place after 03:30,
the world changes.
And they use the facility both as a place to do homework,
as a place to get on the computer
to do research and work,
and as a place to just get on here
and use Facebook and interact with it
through their friends and the like.
Now, we established the Planning and Information Center
and staffed it with AmeriCorps workers,
and this was important because this environment
that we created here,
we wanted to help generate
and create a sense of trust
and a sense that they had an advocate and a friend
in the people who work inside of this Center.
And for that reason we also wanted it to be staffed
by residents and also by students
from the University of Buffalo,
so that they could blend together
these two different cultures
and create the type of synergism
that we believe would help create
and construct and sustain this bridge
between the community on the one hand,
and the planning conference on the other.
Now, why is all of this important?
All of this is important
because if we want to change a community,
if we want to create a community
where people are prepared
to meet the ongoing challenges
of recreating and rebuilding their community,
then the residents of that community
must also change.
And the only way that they can change
is through the process of participating in the building
and rebuilding of their community.
So through the transformation of the place where they live,
they also transform themselves.
And the final piece is that the Center
gives them a sense that we're serious,
and it gives them a place, a venue
where they can participate
on a regular basis in the transformation
of their own communities.