Power Failure: Politics, Patronage, and the Economic Future of Buffalo, New York

Buffalo native and community development expert Dillaway chronicles the sad story of Buffalo's decline from vibrant American port and industrial center to rust belt poster child. She lays the blame firmly at the feet of the city's white Protestant business elite, an old guard who, she claims, mismanaged the city because of their arrogance, bad judgment, racism, overconfidence and infatuation with their own power. The book tells of how beginning in the 1960s, this cabal refused to cooperate, with the rest of Buffalo's citizenry to adapt to changing economic and cultural conditions, such as the declining steel industry and the spreading Civil Rights movement. Missed opportunities to revitalize the city abound, including the failure to develop a light rail system and the equally shortsighted decision to reject the building of a new State University of New York campus in the downtown district. Strangely, Dillard rarely names those she is accusing, preferring to refer to them generically as, for instance, "one banker." As a result, this treatise is antiseptic and rarely humanized, an irony given the very human sources of the decay she cites. Although Buffalo's story is a powerful cautionary tale of the dangers that can accompany valuing turf and power over a city's well-being, the dry, case-study approach is most likely to appeal to city planners, academics and Buffalo residents. (Apr.)