Community Partnerships

Last summer, graduate students in urban planning in the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning and the University of Stuttgart in Germany worked collaboratively to produce a planning proposal designed to promote the expansion of Buffalo's green infrastructure and its economic prosperity while offering a new landscape-planning methodology in response to the destructive October 2006 storm.

The new home of the University at Buffalo's Ira G. Ross Eye Institute -- a collaboration of the Department of Ophthalmology in UB's School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, the Elizabeth Pierce Olmsted, M.D., Center for the Visually Impaired and University Ophthalmology Services -- opened today at 1176 Main Street.

They include judges, doctors, businessmen and "respectable gentlemen;" one of the famous Tuskegee airman; the proprietor of the 19th century's Hughson House hairdressing saloon, and Vernell Melson, "grandpa" to the neighborhood children on Buffalo's East Side. These are among Western New York's "uncrowned kings," hundreds of men living and dead, who built, led and sustained the local African-American community for the past 150 years

The Regional Institute's latest Policy Brief, "Governing the Green," examines Erie County's complex parks history and its current struggles to provide adequate support for assets that are at once local and regional.

The effort to grow the University at Buffalo and dramatically transform its three campuses has taken a major step forward with the awarding of a master planning contract to a team of internationally renowned architectural, planning, landscape and design firms.

A study by a University at Buffalo urban planning researcher has found that houses located within a half-mile radius of Buffalo's light rail stations are assessed at $1,300 to $3,000 more than similar properties that are not within walking distance of the stations.

Contrary to the unhappy experience of the first little pig, straw bale is a strong, cost-effective, exceptionally insulating, fire-resistant, sustainable, natural building system. University at Buffalo architecture students and community members -- cold, covered in mud and stuck with hay -- recently raised 130 50-pound "two-string" straw bales that will constitute the load-bearing walls of a community greenhouse on Buffalo's West Side.

University at Buffalo's Office of Community Relations will host the 6th Annual UB Community Forum on March 29 from 7-9 p.m. in 105 Harriman Hall on UB's South (Main Street) Campus.

This semester, the University at Buffalo will celebrate its decades-long commitment to environmental conservation while exploring the climate change crisis and other critical environmental issues through a series of speakers and activities under the theme "A Greener Shade of Blue."

The former Cazenovia Branch Library, closed as a result of the Erie County budget crisis and back in operation as a community resource center thanks to the grassroots efforts of volunteers and state and city lawmakers, is increasing its Internet access thanks to the loan of six computer workstations by the University at Buffalo School of Social Work.