Back in November, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown’s office announced that the mayor had signed a memorandum of understanding between the city and Steelfields, Ltd., a three-way partnership that has been remediating a 220-acre stretch of brownfields off of South Park Avenue since 2002. The mayor said that the city would spend about $4.6 million to purchase 185 acres from Steelfields with the intention of developing it in the same, largely successful mold as Lakeside Commerce Park, the light industrial and office complex that sits beside the former Union Ship Canal.

Buffalo needs to find a better way to tell its story to the world. The story that is too often told by national media is one whose main characters are heavy industry, snowstorms, the “brain drain,” shipping, failed sports teams, blue-collar workers, assassinated presidents, Niagara Falls, “real” people and chicken wings (please, no more about chicken wings!). It’s true, most of the world—and, sadly, even the rest of the country—imagines Buffalo as some kind of Siberian, post-apocalyptic industrial wasteland chock full of simple, straightforward, meat-and-potatoes citizens and winged bison. While all of the above characters have played important roles in shaping Buffalo’s history, they don’t accurately convey the reality of modern Buffalo, with its unique assets and mounting challenges. Abby Wilson and Sarah Szurpicki (pictured above), co-founders of the newly organized Great Lakes Urban Exchange (GLUE), are hoping to change all of that.