Envisioning “City” and “Nature” Across Three Moments of Roadway Development in Buffalo, NY

• In Event: Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 7: City and Environment

Abstract

The twentieth century witnessed the paving over of urban parks and neighborhoods—many of which were inhabited by the poor and people of color—in the name of efficiency. As many cities are being reimagined, urban residents are now organizing to restore the “greener,” more “community-oriented” past. But how? Is this return possible? This research uses historical, ethnographic, and interview methods to address these questions in a longitudinal case study of infrastructural transformation in Buffalo, NY. Specifically, I outline and compare three moments of roadway development through which meanings of “the city” and “nature” were imagined, debated, and acted upon since 1868. In doing so, I aim to illuminate how the future materiality and meaning of cities and their relationships with nature may be informed by commemorations of the past in (socio-environmentally) risky ways, especially when such nostalgia rationalizing urban change goes unquestioned.

Author

• Jonas Adams, University at Buffalo, SUNY