NIAGARA FALLS — With family flooding into town from all over the country for the past several weeks, I have had the opportunity to enjoy more picnics, reunions, weddings and concerts than I can count.

I have probably gained more than a few pounds and then lost them all as I tried my best to keep up with everything that has been going on here in the city, in Lockport, Lewiston, and Tonawanda.

Whew!

We have been enjoying our own version of a homecoming with hoola- hoops, kickball, long walks all over the city and even longer talks about everything minus the hoopla and bustle of last week’s formal events marking the anniversary of the official Niagara Homecoming event which was launched just one year ago by, among many others, my good friends Frank Croisdale, Colleen Kulikowski, and the indefatigable Marti Gorman of Buffalo Rising fame.

Inevitably, our family talks turn to the “good old days”. I am not sure why we do it, but most of us are inclined to look back with fondness to our past, almost no matter how unpleasant the past may have actually been, it almost always seems to look better in retrospect.

Such was the case last weekend when my baby sisters and I waltzed around our old home site, now a stretch of empty fields. Once a thriving community of hard working families living neck to neck in pursuit of an American dream, the old neighborhood looks like it is on a crash course toward oblivion.

It got me thinking ...

Most of the houses on our old block are gone; except for the memories, there really is not much left there. Like so many other old neighborhoods that sprung up to serve the families who depended on the factories for jobs, ours faded quickly when the economy changed and most of the factories closed or reduced production.

The supporting commercial and retail businesses that once flourished have all but disappeared along with most of the churches, schools; even the little playgrounds and parks are closed.

While it may be sad in some respects to look back at what happened, there is also reason to celebrate when you really think about it. The people who settled those neighborhoods like mine accomplished what they set out to do for the most part. Among other things like peace of mind and security, all they wanted was to work, to own their own homes, an education for their children, and a better life than what they had before they arrived.

Most of them got what they wanted and that is nothing less than a good thing.

Mission accomplished, the question now becomes, what to do with the old abandoned neighborhoods?

In my humble opinion, some of them should eventually be returned to nature. It just makes no sense what so ever to keep servicing one or two houses, the only ones left on an entire city block, at a cost unaffordable to the entire city.

Think about it.

How much does it cost to keep cutting the grass, plowing the streets, replacing street lights, providing police and fire protection, water and sewer services, electricity, gas, cable and telephone, etc. to streets that are ninety percent or more vacant?

One city in Michigan, the iconic, Flint, Michigan began seriously considering the idea of saving itself through “planned shrinkage”, a concept made possible when their state laws were amended to permit land banking.

Prior to the changes, tax delinquent properties often got caught up in legal red tape or wound up on the in rem merry- go round going from one disingenuous absentee speculator to another, thus contributing to further decline and the spread of blight which in turn added more incentive for more people to leave.

Come on; who wants to live anywhere near ransacked abandoned old houses?

The planned shrinkage concept has been the subject of considerable study at the University of California’s Institute of Urban and Regional Development at Berkeley. As a result of a 2007 symposium on the subject, a publication, The Future of Shrinking Cities: Problems, Patterns, and Strategies of Urban Transformation in a Global Context offers some very interesting observations on the phenomenon as it relates to the relationships between urban decline and the loss of employment and the consequential outmigration of population.

We are not alone.

Flint, Michigan and dozens of other cities like us may have to bulldoze hundreds if not thousands of buildings, and abandon hundreds of streets, cutting off services just to survive.

No longer a city of 100, 000, we are still paving and patching (or not) hundreds of miles of streets, providing water and sewer services at unsupportable costs where it need not be offered.

There are probably fewer than 50,000 of us left here now; why can’t we figure out a way to contract the city and concentrate the dwindling population into healthier, cleaner, safer, neater neighborhoods that we can more easily and efficiently serve thereby reducing costs, lowering everyone’s taxes and offering a better quality of life in the process?

We probably can, but we definitely need help to do it.

As my sisters and I agreed, the old tree that still stands in front of the lot where the family house once stood is monument enough. We wandered around the back yard looking for rhubarb, but realized that it had likely been overtaken by the thick shrubs and wild flowers which now populate the otherwise empty fields up and down the street.

We moved on but our conversations continued, all of it about the memories of the good old days and a time gone by remembering twenty-nine cent gasoline, a loaf of bread for less than a quarter, and a new car for less than four thousand dollars, but in the blazing summer heat, I remain haunted by the prospects for a brighter future for my home town while the lyrics and the melody of Nat King Cole’s1963 summer song roll around in my head.

Come on, sing along ...

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days, of summer,

those days of soda and pretzels and beer

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days, of summer,

Dust off the sun and moon and sing a song of cheer

Contact Bill at bill.bradberry@yahoo.com.