Why Can’t Seattle be more Like… Buffalo?

Economists among others warn that the Trump administration’s policies—particularly high tariffs and draconian cuts in health and science research—threaten to throttle the U.S. economy and cede leadership in technology to the Chinese. If so, Seattle may be in for a major reversal of fortune, more than most other cities. I’m here to suggest that a long-term economic decline is possible and—hear me out—may not be entirely a bad thing for Seattle. Not if it can become more like Buffalo—the city in western New York, not the hoofed mammal with an imposing set of horns.

That’s a lot to unpack. Here goes.

Seattle’s relative proximity to major markets in Asia has long made our region heavily trade dependent. It’s said that 40 percent of jobs in Washington State are tied to trade, especially trade with China, which Trump seems intent on curtailing. Fewer dolls for Christmas, etc., would bode ill for Seattle’s economy, even more so because, even if tariffs succeed in repatriating jobs in manufacturing, those jobs assembling dolls and whatever are unlikely to grow in high-wage areas such as Seattle.

That is, not until local wage scales come down, which may happen eventually because of Trump’s initiatives in relation to the other major driver of Seattle’s rapid growth. Our population has risen by one-third in the past 25 years largely because of job growth in technology. We now have more men per capita than any other major U.S. city.

Good times. But some of our recently arrived tech bros may be replaced by artificial intelligence, which should free up space at local health clubs and stem area growth generally. And thanks to the Trumpinator, our bubble may be further deflated by a flagging pace of U.S. innovation flowing from his attacks on higher education (especially the exclusion of foreign students) as well as from his gutting of the National Science Foundation, et.al.

So far, Seattle continues to metastasize. New figures from the state Office of Financial Management estimate that the city’s population grew by more than two percent again during the past year, to 816,600. Anybody here remember Emmett Watson’s lesser Seattle? In a tribute to Watson, Knute Berger wrote, “The city we loved is being choked by gigantism. The small, livable, sensible, sustainable city we once purported to love is dead.” That was in 2006, when metro Seattle was 20 percent less crowded than it is today.

The area endured a bust before, in 1969 when Boeing, on which we were about as dependent as we are now on tech, nearly went bankrupt. It took some three decades for Seattle to regain the population it lost. Now, if trade drops off and technology expatriates, the downturn could last longer. Seattle may face a future like the past of many once-prosperous industrial cities in the Northeast and Upper Midwest. A long, slow decline. Moss Belt, meet Rust Belt.

At least, one can hope. I’d like to think our future could look something like the present in Buffalo, for example. My wife and I happened to spend a week there recently—don’t ask—and I came away charmed, wishing Seattle could be more like it. A bit stagnant. A shadow of its former self. It’s heresy to say so, but in certain circumstances such as Buffalo’s, doldrums offer advantages in terms of quality of life, at least for those who remain and can earn a living.

Bear with me here.

Buffalo was a small village until 1825 when it was chosen as the eastern terminus of the Erie Canal, which enabled movement of goods between the East Coast and Midwest. Local inventors devised and built the first grain elevators, and Buffalo became the world’s largest grain port. Area flour mills were among the first to benefit from hydroelectricity generated by the nearby Niagara River. Steel mills followed, as did makers of chemicals, automotive parts—you name it.

The town boomed. Major companies grew up in and around Buffalo, not only manufacturers (Goodyear, Hormel) but also retailers (Woolworth) and financial-services firms (American Express and Wells Fargo, the latter co-founded by a Buffalo mayor). Great fortunes were amassed. Buffalo boasted of having more millionaires than any other U.S. city. This was 100 years ago when a million was a fortune and not just the price of a bungalow in Ballard.

As the 20^th century dawned, Buffalo was the nation’s eighth largest city. Population peaked in 1950 at 580,132, almost one-quarter larger than Seattle at the time. But then de-industrialization and suburbanization set in, and folks began to shuffle off from Buffalo. Last year, population stood at 276,617, less than half what it was in 1950. Buffalo is still the state’s second largest city, but it’s only a little more than one-third the size of Seattle.

In other ways too, the Queen City (one of Buffalo’s several nicknames) comes up short in comparison with the Emerald one, whose median income is almost double, its poverty rate less than half of Buffalo’s. Those numbers don’t yet reflect the eventual impact of Trumponomics on the underpinnings of Seattle’s prosperity, but for now at least, Buffalo is outclassed economically. And then there’s the weather. Residents shrug it off, as you might expect.

So, what’s to like?

For starters, Buffalonians are heirs to a great legacy of civic ambitions and private philanthropy. The former is reflected in the city’s extensive network of Olmsted-designed parks and connecting parkways. Imagine Seattle adorned with not just one but several Ravenna Boulevards and Washington Park Arboretums (Arboreta?). Lining the parkways are historic mansions and Victorian-era family homes, plus a home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, one of several in the area. The city’s west-side neighborhoods resemble those in Seattle’s north Capitol Hill and Madrona, except houses in Buffalo tend to be bigger and sell for less than half of anything comparable hereabouts. That’s what depopulation will do.

A Democratic Party stronghold, the Buffalo area has long been well represented in Albany, the state capital, by officials such as Kathy Hochul, New York’s first woman governor, who hails from a Buffalo suburb. Not coincidentally, the area is blessed with infrastructure to make a Seattleite weep. Buffalo’s broad streets and uncrowded highways—dwindling population helps there too—whisk you most anywhere in under 10 minutes. And the airport… compared to Sea-Tac? Buffalo Niagara International will get you to JFK or LaGuardia in under 90 minutes; what it lacks in its own global destinations, it more than makes up for in speedy, stress-free ease of ingress and egress.

Did I mention the Bills won their AFC division last year with a 13-4 record, vs. the Seahawks’ 10-7?

Culturally, Buffalo is amazingly rich and diverse for a city its size. Back in the day, its many millionaires competed to endow cultural institutions such as the 163-year-old Albright-Knox Gallery, now known as the Buffalo AKG Art Museum after a 2023 expansion that doubled its exhibition space. Much of its art was gifted by local magnates from their own, surprisingly sophisticated collections of early and mid-century moderns, including many well-known pieces by Gauguin, Rodin, Brancusi, Seurat, Frida Kahlo, Picasso, Warhol, and Lichtenstein.

The AKG is set in Olmsted-designed Delaware Park, clustered with the Buffalo History Museum, Burchfield Penney Art Center devoted to regional art, the grand Richardson Hotel in what was a 19^th-century insane asylum, and the campus of Buffalo State University. The city has five colleges and universities, most notably the University at Buffalo, a flagship of the State University of New York system, with more than 32,000 students.

Across town is Kleinhans Music Hall, widely recognized for its acoustic excellence, to which I can attest. Designed in the late 1930s by Eliel and Eero Saarinen in the International Style, Kleinhans is home to the Buffalo Philharmonic, which has won multiple GRAMMY awards under the baton of music director JoAnn Falletta, the first woman to lead a major U.S. orchestra.

You get the idea. Buffalo’s high-culture offerings are those of a much larger city. But what makes it truly exceptional and most distinguishes it from Seattle is a vibe. The area was settled by successive waves of Germans, Irish, Poles, Italians and Jews. African-Americans first arrived on the Underground Railroad, and many more came later out of the South in the Great Migration. The city’s ethnic and racial mix contributes to a warmth, liveliness, and communal feeling that contrasts sharply with Seattle’s Scandinavian iciness, which an invasion of IT pros has done little if anything to defrost.

A further contrast is that, whereas a fast-growing city like Seattle is made up largely of relative newcomers, a depopulated city like Buffalo is made up largely of holdouts. They are loyal, and if they’re at all defensive about the city’s reduced circumstances or about their choice to stay put against the tide, the feeling bubbles up as defiant pride in and commitment to their town. Many are committed too because their families have been in Buffalo for generations. It’s too much to say that everyone in the city knows everyone else including their aunts, uncles, and cousins, but that’s not far from the truth. Thanks to depopulation, Buffalo is something of an urban village.

The attractions thereof may be helping the city to find a new equilibrium. The metro area population edged up in the past two years. There are signs that more local college grads are staying put and that other young people are moving to Buffalo, drawn by low housing costs and the relaxed lifestyle. Another attraction for the entrepreneurial is the availability and modest cost of commercial space. The main street of the trendy but unpretentious Elmwood neighborhood is lined with cafes, bars, more bars (this is a serious drinking town), and restaurants.

The dining scene is robust, well beyond local specialties like wings and beef on weck (which has its own Wikipedia entry, incidentally). We thoroughly enjoyed dinner at Quenelle, a French bistro downtown that opened this year. The food was as good as any we’ve had in Seattle and the experience better in that we could make a last-minute reservation, park easily nearby, and relax in a lively but uncrowded room staffed by crisply professional servers. Everywhere we dined, portions were larger than we’re used to, and prices were lower.

This did not help my waistline, so make of it what you will. In general, a visit to Buffalo may cause you to view Seattle with a more critical eye and wish for something—not Trump’s policies necessarily but something—to take at least a little of the boom out of our boom town.