Within the past decade, there has been nothing short of a call to arms to rescue the Buffalo-Niagara region from its plight. Planning has been prolific, to be sure, with the common goal to infuse new life-and hope-into the people, as well as places, that reside here.

Relationships, Robert Shibley will tell you, are what enable cities and towns to be terrific. UB's Urban Design Project (UDP), founded by Shibley more than a decade ago and part of the School of Architecture and Planning, is largely about bringing people-and places-together, fostering a dialogue among interested parties, and making that crucial connection between planning and implementation.

In a word, action.

"Knowing what to do doesn't get it done," explains Shibley, professor of architecture and planning at UB. "It's just another plan unless you have an implementation campaign."

The UDP's greatest strength, he says, is convening local governments, business leadership, community organizations and citizens who have plans, and with the help of UDP students and faculty members, helping bring those plans to bear.

	Robert Shibley, director of the Urban Design Project, says the UDP has envisioned the Genesee block of downtown Buffalo as a “mixed-use” area of both residential and commercial development.
	photo: Stephanie Hamberger

"As a community, we seem finally to be coming to grips with the demands of change," said Bradshaw Hovey, associate director of the UDP. "And what makes working in the UDP such a good thing...is that it puts us in partnership with so many people who share the same vision for the future of the community and the region."

The project, which began in 1990 with an emphasis on service learning, has grown to include contract work-upwards of $300,000 per year-on a number of development campaigns throughout the region, including such major projects such as "Downtown 2002," the City of Buffalo initiative to implement its strategic plan in partnership with Buffalo Place Inc.

Shibley, who worked "on loan" from UB as a special assistant to Buffalo Mayor Anthony Masiello from 1995-97, said the UDP continuously has had its hands in downtown Buffalo-from helping to write the city's empowerment zone application in 1998, to faculty and student participation in a series of downtown summits beginning in 1994, to working on the now-thriving Chippewa Street commercial corridor.

"Part of our effort (with Downtown 2002) is to gain consensus on what action should occur, find out what are the obstacles to moving forward," he said, while continuing to engage previous work to strengthen this next implementation.

The UDP also is working on the Chautauqua County Community Summits with County Executive Mark Thomas, as well as 44 mayors and town supervisors, and the Fredonia Center for Rural Regional Governance and Development toward developing a regional plan and government reform, and "Rethinking the Niagara Frontier," a bi-national forum for conversation about the potential for development through cultural and natural heritage in both the United States and Canada.

"The history of frontier literature describes the frontier as an edge," Shibley explains. "The history of the middle ground is the notion that it's always joining two things-not ending something."

The vision for the Niagara Falls region-which joins some 80 participants from both Canada and the United States, including the Waterfront Regeneration Trust in Ontario, the cities of Buffalo and Niagara Falls, and the Ontario cities of Niagara Falls and St. Catharines-is one that is modeled after Germany's Emscher Park. The park, situated in the Ruhr region, largely was an industrial area with a river passing through-not unlike the Niagara River region. The park, an area 20 miles wide by 80 miles long, was redeveloped over a decade to include bicycle trails, alpine climbing on smokestacks, public-art projects, renovated housing-all of which has made the park into a major tourist destination.

The targeted Niagara area, which runs through both the United States and Canada, is by comparison 5 miles wide by 35 miles long. What was undertaken in a region with a 33 percent unemployment rate and only "a fragment of the historical and natural resources that we already enjoy," Shibley said, is entirely possible here.

"Effectively, if they can do that, we can do this," he said, noting, however, that it's never about implementing the same plan, but rather, "the right cultural interpretation" for the area.

Shibley says community consensus is that "an investment in Niagara Falls, N.Y., is an investment for the region."

The UDP also is working with the City of Niagara Falls to implement a proposed $120 million in projects, which include reconfiguring the Robert Moses Parkway, rebuilding the industrial area alongside the Niagara River and creating improved flow between urban areas and Niagara Reservation State Park-all of which speak to the public-private relationship the UDP is interested in cultivating.

"The public invests in making the beauty of the river edge more powerful and better related to the city, and then the private sector says, 'Thank you very much, now I know where to put my hotel."

The UDP has played a crucial role in countless other projects in the area, including Buffalo's Canal Conversations-part of the Downtown 2002 plan-and development of Buffalo's West Side. Its success, Shibley contends, is in large part due to its low-profile status within development circles, where mediating interests and shaping public attention is UDP's focus, he explains-not stepping into the spotlight.

"It would be a mistake to say we (UDP) did these projects," he says. "The thinking here is to establish the conditions to focus attention, to encourage, to cajole, to bring additional knowledge to bear."