Imagine how much more vibrant and prosperous our region could be in 2050 if we actually grew by 265,000 people. But what would this change look like if we continued to build most of our homes on open land disconnected from older neighborhoods? What types of homes would we build, where would we build them and what would it mean for the neighborhoods we call home today?

What if we supported new growth by building homes the same way we have in the past? More people means we would need more homes. And 265,000 more people would mean that about 150,000 new homes would be needed to house our population. Though we have plenty of available homes (45,475 vacant housing units as of 2010), our “business-as-usual” approach over the last couple of decades has been to build newer homes on larger lots in areas with mostly green space rather than moving into older neighborhoods in our cities and first-ring suburbs. 1 (See the map below)

Extending these trends to 2050 could mean that only 36% of our new homes would be built within areas of our region that we have already developed (see blue in map), while the rest (64%) homes would be built on currently undeveloped, green space (orange in map). It could also mean that only some new homes would be built in tightly-knit neighborhoods with a mix of housing styles, while the rest (62%) would be built in more spacious, homogeneous single-family communities.2

What kinds of homes will we build?

Building more homes when we already have thousands available, means that some homes will get left behind. If these projections hold true, we can expect to leave 41,291 additional homes abandoned by 2050.3 This abandonment would continue to sweep through places with high concentrations of vacant homes today, while spreading into other residential areas most prone to become abandoned (see purple in map), based on the conditions that have been associated with increased abandonment in the past.4

If our region were to grow, continuing to build outward as we have in the past would create new, quaint neighborhoods with abundant open space, removed from the grind of city life. But it would also mean the emptying out of many historic neighborhoods, etching vast holes in our core cities that would far surpass the blight these communities endure today. These disenfranchised neighborhoods would be more than just an eyesore – they would present an array of social, environmental and fiscal impacts that would tear at the fabric of our entire region, not just the neighborhoods left to become urban wastelands. One of the many impacts would be costs of home demolition; and if it cost $10,000 to demolish one home5, the cost of demolishing just half of the 44,000 homes projected to become abandoned would approach $222 million dollars.

But this story is only part of the picture – there are innumerable other ways in which the way we develop our land in the future will affect the places we call home. What would this new growth, if coupled with the development patterns of the past, mean for our farmland, our environment, our mobility and our fiscal well-being?

If we look at this picture and like what we see, we know what we would need to do –more of the same. But recently, citizens have expressed an urgency to carve a new and different path for the future of Buffalo Niagara by reinvesting in the places we already call home. And whether or not we continue to build off of this momentum will be (at least partly) up to us.