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.

Last summer, Wilson and Szurpicki noticed that their cities—Pittsburgh and Detroit, respectively—shared problems in kind with cities throughout the Great Lakes watershed, both on the ground and in their public images. By and large, the region faces problems of rapidly declining heavy industry, racial segregation and suburban flight, abandoned and vacant properties and poor public transit and infrastructure, to name a few. The two women put their heads together and came up with GLUE, a multi-state, multi-issue, Web-based community revitalization effort. Wilson and Szurpicki hope that by sharing their stories, experiences and best practices, civic-minded people from each of 21 member cities will be better armed to deal with and eventually fix their own city’s problems. Cities that are part of the effort include Buffalo and Rochester, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Flint, Milwaukee, Chicago, Duluth and even such far-flung locales as St. Louis and Des Moines.

GLUE’s Web site, Gluespace.org (currently under development), will soon become a resource hub for its members, who will tell their stories there through new media, such as blog posts, podcasts and videos. Make no mistake, though, GLUE is more than a Great Lakes tourism group. “This is not a booster effort,” says Wilson. “There are plenty of positive stories to tell about all of these cities, but it’s not just about the Land of Oz. It’s also about trying to figure out who’s doing the work in the trenches to turn these cities around, and engaging those people.” That means city planners, folks in economic development, artists, activists, creative entrepreneurs and community organizers—the kind of people who roll up their sleeves daily and do the dirty work of ensuring a better future for our cities. They fight for green, livable cities with good public transit and strong, just economies. And now they’ll be fighting together. “I think a lot of these cities view each other as competitors rather than collaborators,” says Wilson. “We want to shift that paradigm so that we gain hope, power, inspiration and food for thought from our colleagues and peers across the region who have similar goals. I think there’s a lot to learn from long-term comparative conversations about we, as cities, individually responded to the circumstances that led to our decline.”

The beginning of those conversations was last week, when GLUE met for the first time ever in Buffalo. That’s how I happened upon Szurpicki and Wilson mid-morning on Friday, perched high above the city in the 12th floor of the Marine Trust Company building, where they met with dozens of others who, like themselves, are committed to the future of their Great Lakes city. In one of the conference’s few open sessions, groups from various sectors—community development, arts, entrepreneurs and education, among them—shared best practices with their peers.

Later in the day, John Austin of policy think-tank the Brookings Institution gave a “Big Picture” presentation at Hallwalls. In it, he reviewed mountains of data that he’s compiled as part of Brookings’ Great Lakes Economic Initiative. From Austin’s perspective, there are plenty of reasons to be hopeful for revitalization in the Great Lakes—we host the bulk of the nation’s infrastructure, human capital, fresh water, international trade and economic powers. We just do a poor job of selling ourselves. And that’s why Brookings has decided to help fund and support GLUE’s initiatives.

With GLUE’s first meeting past, Wilson believes that momentum is building in the network. She says it was pleasantly surprising to see how easy it can be to build consensus when everyone just listens to each other respectfully. “I look forward to building out this network in the next few months and, hopefully, years.” Hopefully, indeed.

—peter koch