{"id":9358,"date":"2010-12-07T11:00:37","date_gmt":"2010-12-07T16:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/?p=9358"},"modified":"2010-12-07T09:55:56","modified_gmt":"2010-12-07T14:55:56","slug":"the-fall-of-niagara-falls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/07\/the-fall-of-niagara-falls\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fall of Niagara Falls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessweek.com\/magazine\/content\/10_50\/b4207078529793.htm?chan=magazine+channel_top+stories\">Bloomberg BusinessWeek<\/a> has an awesome article about Niagara Falls, New York, and the problems it has faced over the last 40 years:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Niagara Falls&#8217; descent into blight\u2014in spite of its proximity to an attraction that draws at least 8 million tourists each year\u2014is a tale that Hudson&#8217;s little newspaper has been telling for years. It encompasses just about every mistake a city could make, including the one Frankie G. cited: a 1960s mayor&#8217;s decision to bulldoze his quaint downtown and replace it with a bunch of modernist follies. There was a massive hangar-like convention center designed by Philip Johnson; Cesar Pelli&#8217;s glassy indoor arboretum, the Wintergarden, which was finally torn down because it cost a fortune to heat through the Lake Erie winter; a shiny office building known locally as the &#8220;Flashcube,&#8221; formerly the headquarters of a chemical company and now home to a trinket market. Once a hydropowered center of industry, Niagara Falls is now one of America&#8217;s most infamous victims of urban decay, hollowed out by four decades of job loss, mafia infiltration, political corruption, and failed get-fixed-quick schemes. Ginger Strand, author of Inventing Niagara: Beauty, Power, and Lies, called the place &#8220;a history in miniature of wrongheaded ideas about urban renewal.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bloomberg BusinessWeek has an awesome article about Niagara Falls, New York, and the problems it has faced over the last 40 years: Niagara Falls&#8217; descent into blight\u2014in spite of its proximity to an attraction that draws at least 8 million tourists each year\u2014is a tale that Hudson&#8217;s little newspaper has been telling for years. It&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[54,2],"tags":[4854,1577,4852,4847,4851,4853,817,1902,4850,4849,4848,723],"class_list":["post-9358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-niagara-falls-new-york","category-niagara-falls-news","tag-1960s","tag-arboretum","tag-businessweek","tag-cesar-pelli","tag-chemical-company","tag-frankie-g","tag-ginger-strand","tag-lake-erie","tag-philip-johnson","tag-political-corruption","tag-urban-decay","tag-wintergarden"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}