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Originally Posted by someone123
I would take that with an enormous grain of salt.
It's great to have people from other places come to Halifax and talk about their experiences. Sometimes, however, these people make pronouncements about Halifax without knowing much about the local context. Planners are also particularly bad for presenting "soft" arguments without a lot of facts to back them up.
Halifax isn't completely unique by any stretch but it also doesn't have much in common with Rust Belt cities like Buffalo. The biggest problem in Buffalo and the US Rust Belt is deindustrialization, not suburban sprawl. The most important part of the economy picked up and moved elsewhere. Halifax was barely affected by this trend because it has almost zero manufacturing. It seems like a big stretch to think that continuing the status quo in Halifax will produce the same results, particularly when the urban population is still growing substantially...
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I don't know if Buffalo was chosen as a comparison to Halifax for industrial measure. The comparison, as far as I know, was only along the lines of city planning--and how neither Halifax nor Buffalo puts amazing effort into long term goals. Both cities do have an overwhelming suburbia. Until recently, Halifax seemed on course for continued urban neglect.
But yes, the cities are supported by different economies.