Buffalo’s Foresight Lab
We build foresight capability across Buffalo and help integrate long-term thinking into planning, policy, programming, and decision-making.
We build shared intelligence about the future of Buffalo by scanning, tracking, and mapping signals of change; synthesizing what they mean through our journal; and developing a long-range vision for the region through Buffalo 2050.
We build Buffalo’s capacity to practice foresight and shape its future by creating practical resources and tools; providing workshops and certificate training; convening communities of practice through gatherings large and small; and partnering on collaborative projects that put foresight into action.
We help organizations build their own futures through custom foresight services and research; strategic consulting and planning; workshops and masterclasses for leaders and teams; industry-focused presentations and briefings; and ongoing support through a fractional futurist.
For Buffalo, the rise of autonomous drone logistics offers a transformative opportunity to bypass the region’s aging highway infrastructure and notorious winter-weather road delays that frequently disrupt local supply chains.
For Western New York, the repurposing of nuclear exclusion zones like those surrounding the Nine Mile Point and Ginna facilities offers a strategic opportunity to reconnect the fragmented ecological corridors of the Lake Ontario shoreline.
For Buffalo, the normalization of emergency governance threatens to undermine the progress of the Queen City’s ongoing economic revitalization by bypassing critical legislative oversight of the aging, century-old water and sewer infrastructure buried beneath its historic neighborhoods.
As Buffalo leverages its waterfront assets to attract energy-intensive data centers and advanced manufacturing, the reality of a sub-one-percent renewal rate necessitates a pivot toward a circular water economy rather than reliance on perceived abundance.
As Buffalo accelerates its transition into a hub for fintech and healthcare data analytics, the vulnerability of cloud-based archives threatens the region’s hard-won momentum in economic revitalization.
For Buffalo’s emerging tech corridor and bi-national logistics hubs, this regulatory volatility threatens the operational continuity of cross-border data flows that are critical to the region’s Canadian trade ties.
The shift toward screenless wearables presents a strategic opportunity for the Buffalo-Niagara region to leverage its existing strength in medical research institutions, such as Roswell Park and the University at Buffalo, to pioneer localized digital health monitoring pilots.
New York’s single-payer system pays for outcomes, so Buffalo becomes the first city to treat too many prescriptions as a public health problem. A medication-review service on the Medical Campus, plus longevity technology adapted from pro sports and youth injury programs, turns the East Side’s neighborhood health hubs into a model for healthy aging. The open question is whether the system, and residents’ trust in it, can hold.
The world’s top eVTOL racing series finishes its season over Buffalo’s Outer Harbor and the Niagara Gorge, drawing a new aerospace cluster to a city with a century of aircraft-building behind it. Delivery drones and digital rail keep moving when lake-effect snow closes the roads. But the noise falls on some neighborhoods while the benefits go to others.
Buffalo stops treating cemeteries and shrinking parishes as problems to manage and starts treating them as shared ground. Burial grounds become biodiversity reserves, and former churches become community centers with indoor farms downstairs and conversations about dying, grief, and care upstairs. The result may be a distinctive Buffalo institution, or a patchwork that differs from one neighborhood to the next.
