The Irony of Regional Peace in the 20^th Century

It would be easy to ascribe the region's economic decline to uncontrollable or “natural” forces, but the Niagara Frontier’s history suggests otherwise.  Little that might appear natural in this story has been entirely untouched by human effort.  Buffalo’s advantageous positioning at the terminus of the Erie Canal, for example, relied not on an existing harbor but on a community-wide effort to dredge and build an artificial one.  The “natural” gravitation of the steel industry to the city had to be well-greased through negotiation and tax abatements.  The railroads threaded through the region because of tireless efforts by locals to make themselves invaluable as a trading hub.  Virtually all economic development, in fact, from Niagara Falls tourism to Niagara-powered industry, has been the direct result of active efforts to shape and then market the region.

When successful, these efforts have been undertaken by people who correctly gauged the direction of economic and technical change, and who were brilliant at transforming what was available to them ­ a waterfall, a border, a creek ­ into the “natural” and obvious advantages that secured the region’s future:  a power source, a regional trade zone, an inland harbor and canal terminus.  And the most successful efforts have been those that understood the Niagara Frontier as a diverse but unified region, with a distinct regional culture and a distinct role to play.  Or, to put it another way, the region has been at its best when the de facto community of interests that extends across the border has been reflected and embodied in formal commercial and political activities and organizations.

The Niagara Frontier today is beset with new challenges.  In the Falls it boasts one of the world’s largest tourist draws, but the region around the spectacle is so under-interpreted and poorly presented that visitors are there and gone too quickly to influence the economy as they could.  The area has a proud heritage of creatively re-inventing itself as a nexus of trade and transportation, but still seems dazed by changes in shipping patterns that happened half a century ago.  A similarly noble heritage of adaptability is marred by unused brownfields that testify only to decay, not rebirth.  The environment features a wealth of truly remarkable natural and built wonders, but they are underappreciated, undermarketed, and sometimes even demolished for little apparent reason.  And, finally, the region has been taking tentative steps toward remaking themselves as a communications hub in the new information economy, but no region-wide collaborative efforts in the Niagara Frontier’s historic style have been initiated to propel these steps forward.

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The irony of this failure of regional vision is that barriers to cooperation would seem to be lower now than at almost any other time in history.  No garrisons line the Niagara on opposing sides; instead, the US and Canada are joined in one of the world’s most successful military alliances.  No high tariffs block trade across the river; indeed, NAFTA far exceeds the 1854 Reciprocal Treaty as a facilitator of international trade.  True, the Peace Bridge has presented a thorny problem in international cooperation, but the very inadequacy of the existing bridge only underlines the volume of people and goods that constantly travel over the border.

If we conceive of the Niagara Frontier as a distinct bi-national region with its own unique and dynamic cultural, economic, and environmental history, then each of its problems suddenly presents itself as an opportunity:  an opportunity to invest in heritage and cultural tourism; to implement new technology and creative facilities to encourage trade and transportation in the modern economy, especially across the border; to develop a new and purposeful sense of place by reusing old industrial brownfields; to integrate natural and built landscapes into a single, world-class destination; and to reinvigorate the region’s historic “economy of connections” by investing in knowledge-based industries.  Considered from only one side of the border, or from one town or city, the logic that sustains these opportunities disappears.  As always, the Niagara Frontier’s future will in large part be determined as a region, and especially in these times of peace we ignore that at our peril.

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