A casino downtown, ongoing waterfront development, urban sprawl, poverty, and an industrial past that looms large over the city's continued economic development.

The city of Buffalo has much in common with the city of Hamilton.

"Buffalo is ahead of the renewal curve [happening in Hamilton] . . . They've done a lot of things we're talking about," said Martinus Geleynse, editor and publisher of Urbanicity, a monthly broadsheet about the city of Hamilton.

Inspired by those parallels, Geleynse and Terry Cooke, President and CEO of the Hamilton Community Foundation, organized a bus trip to Buffalo as a way of considering Hamilton's present and future within the context of a community dealing with many of the same issues.

Both cities were big steelmaking towns that have seen a significant decrease in manufacturing jobs, said Graham Crawford, founder of HIStory + HERitage in Hamilton. Buffalo and Hamilton also share unfavourable status in their respective locations, he added.

"Buffalo is a much maligned city in the U.S., much as we are [in Ontario]. People think we're a hellhole just as many Americans do of Buffalo," said Graham.

Rust & Renewal

Rust & Renewal: The Success and Failure of City Building in Buffalo left the Mulberry Cafe on James Street Saturday around 9 a.m.

The tour was sold out, with approximately "50 Hamiltonians on board," said Geleynse.

Filling the seats were urban planners, interested citizens, representatives of neighbourhood associations, architects, and designers, said Donna Reid, a community activist and founder of Doors Open Hamilton, who was on the bus too.

Bruce Fisher led the tour of Buffalo.

Fisher knows Buffalo better than most. The former city manager for the city of Buffalo, he's currently the director of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies at Buffalo State College. Previously he was part of President Barack Obama's Urban Policy Advisory Committee.

Fisher said the cross-border contingent of Hamilton "thought leaders" which he calls the "conscience and consciousness" of the city, coming to Buffalo to have such an experience represented a "truly civilized approach to community learning."

So impressed by the cross-border conversation initiated, Fisher is planning to bring a Buffalo contingent over to Hamilton soon. Urbanicity is also planning future bus trips to other U.S cities such as Cleveland and Detroit.

Lessons for Hamilton

The purpose of the bus trip, said Crawford, wasn't just to note the similarities between the two cities it was to say "so what? What are the lessons for Hamilton?"

Those lessons range from a need to pay greater attention to our architectural legacy to instituting greater civic pride, said Reid.

"They have incredible buildings, and a will and the money to maintain their architectural heritage," said Reid. "They've embraced cultural tourism," said Reid, something she feels Hamilton should do more of in future.

Reid also said that the universality of the issues should cause Hamilton's civic leadership to look outside its borders for solutions.

There were a few warning signs to heed in Buffalo too.

Snickers filled the bus as it passed Buffalo's downtown casino, said Geleynse.

"It looks like a warehouse with a sign that says 'Casino'," said Geleynse.

Reid concurred and added that the bleak surrounding area seemed devoid of people or cars.

"This is the glamour you can expect with a casino downtown," quipped Geleynse.

Sitting in the Hotel Lafayette for lunch, an iconic hotel in downtown Buffalo that was "beautifully" restored, Reid was put in mind of The Royal Connaught's potential.

"A number of us were saying how lovely it would be to have an iconic downtown hotel restored . . . and then, rather sarcastically, we said 'Oh, we do. It's vacant."

It was the startling differences between the waterfront developments that had many reconsidering the merit of Hamilton's efforts to build up the waterfront in a positive light.

"Buffalo spent $250 million on the waterfront," said Crawford. "If you saw it, you'd be shaking your head and saying 'where?' We spent a grand total of $11 million and ours isn't finished."

Reid took some civic pride in seeing how well Hamilton has fared on a limited budget. "Their waterfront is so behind ours. Even though we've spent less, we're ahead in terms of recreational use, restaurants and trails and parks."

Don't screw this up

Fisher, a self-described "fan" of Hamilton (he's a member of the Royal Botanical Gardens) said he had "hard lessons" in mind for his Canadian visitors to take back home.

No. 1 on his priority list was to underline the "the need for making land use planning and income integration work together," something Buffalo failed to do, he said.

Fisher wants Hamiltonians to pay close attention to how Buffalo's population has dramatically decreased as a result of public policies that allowed wealthy, largely white residents to flee the city for the suburbs, leaving the city's poorer largely African American residents isolated in bleak downtown neighbourhoods. The result has been "urban sprawl without growth," said Fisher.

"Don't screw this up the way the Rust Belt cities did," said Fisher.

Crawford and Reid both felt the pervasive influence that racism has had in Buffalo. And while Hamilton has issues with poverty and unemployment similar to Buffalo — issues that can fall along race lines — many left feeling that Hamilton is in a stronger position to tackle the issues.

Grand plans: Legacy of art and design

But there was a "nice soft lesson," said Fisher, and that was how city planners in Buffalo wisely invested in a "beautiful legacy of art and design."

Buffalo possesses the oldest system of coordinated parks and parkways in the U.S. All of which were designed by renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted in the late 1860s.

"Civic leadership bequeathed Olmsted and his parkways," said Fisher and while he laments the absence of such philanthropic civic leadership today he believes that the effect endures.

"What you spend the public's money on matters."

The Olmsted legacy struck Crawford as particularly inspiring. It caused him to wonder why something similar can't happen here.

"When was the last public-private partnership in Hamilton?"

"Where's the grand plan?" wondered Crawford.