ABSTRACT
Today we cannot look for comfort or consensus in such past images, simply because they are still. The image of the city is enduringly ineable, since it is intrinsically in motion and
in constant metamorphosis. We can attribute this essential ineability to the mere facts of population demographics and to their appearance as an urban image. Whether in the iris scan at the airport, a policy number aecting a refugee resettlement agency or in census counts, cities are subject to constant data visualizations as never before. These urban images today are graphic representations of a city’s urban fabric, its block-by-block inhabitation according to dierent data of interest and always at the service of dierent stakeholders. Data sets always require interpretation both through and after visualization, in order to be recognized for their bias and the ways in which they constructions their subjects, just as any other image. Where densities of residential development appear on a map, overlooked considerations easily arise about displacement, culture, food, smells and more; and nothing aects this more strongly than the results of global migrations to particular cities elsewhere in the world. Such is the current story of Buffalo, particularly its West Side, as recent waves build upon and speed up the constant inux of immigrant and refugee populations that easily go otherwise unseen.
