Farewell, buffalo.

• Author: Burke, Julia
• Position: FIRST PERSON SINGULAR - Buffalo, New York - Essay

YOU'LL BE BACK," JOKED MY FRIEND, THE PRESIDENT OF A LOCAL nanobrewery, tipping back his glass. "Five to ten years, when you've got kids and you want to settle down." He's the sixth person to utter those words since I broke the news that I'd be leaving my hometown of Buffalo, New York, to move to Madison, Wisconsin. He also knows full well that "settling down" is the last thing on my agenda--and the funny thing is, I don't think it's on his, either. He owns one of the city's truly exciting startups, and he leads a team that's putting Buffalo on the national map in craft beer. But that doesn't matter right now. Buffalonians are a little too accustomed to saying good-bye, and I've just been refiled under "deserter."

This town, where I've lived nearly twenty years, guilt-trips young people like a jealous lover. Smart? Creative? Passionate? Great. We need you, we're told. But make no mistake, you'll need to wait tables or flip burgers for a while, because the kind of job you're looking for, you'll need to invent yourself. And you'll need to pick your battles. You may want bikeable and walkable streets, affordable housing, public transit, well-integrated communities, and a vibrant city center, but we've heard all this before. Just, for God's sake, don't move somewhere else--then you'll be part of the problem.

While 46.8 percent of Buffalo children live in poverty, the city's wealthy Elmwood Village residents toast its "low cost of living" (read: low taxes) over cold-brew coffee. One of the much-adored grain elevators collapsed during a 2011 demolition right into a Buffalo River already so polluted that you can't eat its fish. The shattered echoes of the failure of the American Dream permeate the city.

In Buffalo's golden age at the turn of the twentieth century, America was a place where the opportunity to live in luxury and excess was said to be only a few years of hard work away. The wide thoroughfares of its most expensive city neighborhoods recall a time when a car for every household seemed plausible. Today's long highway lines of commuters escaping downtown for their homes in the suburbs would argue that vision is downright necessary.

But many of my fellow post-college peers and I see no point in sacrificing the life we want on the altar of "paying the mortgage." We dream of a city where you don't need a car, where diversity and vibrancy come naturally through walkable, accessible neighborhoods. We want to embrace the freedom that comes...