City on the Lake
Goldman, author of High Hopes: The Rise and Decline of Buffalo, New York (State Univ. of New York Pr., 1984), aims to analyze the process by which Buffalo in the 1970s and 1980s sought to turn around a city plagued with declining "rust belt" industries and massive unemployment; poor housing and decaying neighborhoods; a weakened central business district and inadequate mass transit; as well as an inferior segregated school system and strained race relations. His discussion, however, is loosely structured and discursive so that the main thrust is often lost. The account of the long battle to desegregate the schools is unnecessarily detailed, while industrial recovery, downtown revival, urban renewal, and mass transit are treated skimpily. Suitable only for regional and urban collections.-Harry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter Coll . , CUNYCopyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.