Our Work

Explore the scholarly, curricular and creative work of our faculty and students as we mobilize our disciplines on today's most pressing societal challenges. Through studios, sponsored and independent research, faculty and students across our programs engage with real-world projects that reimagine our built environment, innovate modes of practice and transform communities both locally and globally.

Our approach to research

Intersight, our journal of student work

Urban and Regional Planning

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  • Historic preservation studio informs major East Side development, wins planning award
    7/5/23
    A recent urban planning studio at UB has generated critical insights on alternative approaches to historic preservation for marginalized communities, receiving the attention of the professional planning community and directly informing an adaptive reuse project under way on Buffalo’s East Side.
  • Students honored at UB's annual celebration of academic excellence
    6/19/23
    Two students from the School of Architecture and Planning were recognized with awards at UB's 2023 Celebration of Student Academic Excellence.
  • The Life and Afterlife of Gay Neighborhoods Renaissance and Resurgence
    12/13/22
    This book sheds new light on the assumptions underlying neighborhood change.
  • Planning Corruption or Corrupting Planning?
    12/1/21
    Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah, assistant professor of urban and regional planning, and Wes Grooms, planning theorist, urban political economist and a visiting assistant professor of urban and regional planning, join forces with renowned authors  to better understand corruption and how it complicates planning. 
  • Rooting Resilience: Planning for the future of urban agriculture in Buffalo, New York
    8/1/21

    Lanika Sanders, a 2021 graduate of the Master of Urban Planning program, was recognized with the MUP Best Professional Project for her research on Buffalo’s urban agriculture landscape, synthesizing existing plans and policies to highlight opportunities for enhancement of Buffalo's agricultural capacity.

  • Upstate Road Train
    12/1/20
    The Upstate Road Train (URT) proposed for New York State is a state-of-the-art concept for intercity transportation. The overarching idea for this report was provided by Tim Tielman, executive director of the Campaign for Greater Buffalo History, Architecture & Culture. This report analyzes existing infrastructure to recommend how this URT system can be integrated into its fabric.
  • Villusion
    12/1/20
    This short film was created using the zoom interface by two students studying on different continents. Miguel Ortiz-Teed, working in Buffalo, and Yogesh Ravichandar, working in India, wanted to examine and express the specific difficulties of personal interaction in the video-conference environment.
  • Neighborhood Walk
    12/1/20
    This project invited urban planning students to plan and carry out a walk through a neighborhood of their choice. Their walking route needed to be safely navigable as a pedestrian and between .5 and 1 mile in length (around a half hour walk).
  • Methods in Preservation
    12/1/20
    This course introduces students to the basic guidelines, standards, research methods, and documentation techniques used in historic preservation to identify and record historic structures and sites. These kinds of research techniques explored by students included the development of site descriptions, creating historical narratives, reviewing existing scholarly and/or professional literature, collecting primary and secondary data, developing skills in architectural photography, and understanding the basics of documenting and analyzing historic material fabric. The course makes use of lectures, discussions, and fieldwork to introduce the various ways in which preservationists document historic sites and resources.
  • People & Place
    12/1/20
    Willert Park Courts (WPC), known today as A.D. Price Homes, is currently a vacant residential housing complex made up of ten buildings located in the Ellicott District of the east side of Buffalo, New York.
  • Near-Term Strategies for the Northland Campus
    12/1/20
    For decades, the area around Northland Avenue suffered from divestment and abandonment, especially as many of its former manufacturing anchors succumbed to outside economic forces. Due to the adjacent Belt Line railroad, the corridor had become a strategic industrial hub able to move both people and products en masse. Once home to manufacturers such as Houdaille Industries, Otis Elevator Company, Curtiss-Wright Corporation, Northland Rubber Company, and Niagara Machine & Tool Works (later Clearing Niagara), the products that left the loading docks went on to forge modern America. A blue-collar workforce, building aircraft engines, plunger elevators, and automobile parts, established residency near their employers starting around the turn of the 20th Century. Over time, this pattern of settlement formed the Delavan Grider neighborhood we know today.
  • UB’s Daniel B. Hess contributes to viewpoint series on urban planning's response to the pandemic
    11/30/20
    Daniel B. Hess, UB professor and chair of urban planning, is co-editor of a viewpoint series on the planning discipline’s response to a changed world, published this month by Town Planning Review (Liverpool University Press).
  • Botanical Garden Master Plan
    8/1/20
    The North Tonawanda Botanical Gardens is an 11-acre site located on 1825 Sweeney Street in North Tonawanda, NY, bordering the Niagara River. The site is overseen by the North Tonawanda Botanical Gardens Organization (NTBGO), a nonprofit working towards restoring the garden to a scenic destination for community education and activity. Three members of the NTBGO, David Conti, Robbyn Drake and Laura Pecoraro, gave students the opportunity to design a proposal for the renovation and re-imagination of the North Tonawanda Botanical Gardens.
  • The digital life of the #migrantcaravan: Contextualizing Twitter as a spatialtechnology
    7/10/20
    Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah, assistant professor of urban and regional planning, examines the relationship of spatial mapping and social media for migrant caravans in South America. 
  • Should architecturally significant low-income housing be preserved?
    7/9/20

    The recent demolition of the Paul Rudolph-designed Shoreline Apartments in Buffalo, NY, highlights one of the key tensions of preserving modern architecture: how to balance the needs of occupants with historically significant designs.

  • The Northeast Greenway Initiative
    5/20/20

    A graduate-level studio engaged the neighborhood surrounding UB's South Campus in exploring the possibilities for extending a critical rails-to-trails greenway. This one-mile trail, called the Northeast Greenway, would be a much needed link in Buffalo’s trail network connecting the existing North Buffalo and Tonawanda Rails to Trails to the East Side.  

  • Feasibility Assessment of an Innovation District in Buffalo
    5/20/20
    In the pursuit of creative and contemporary economic development strategies, a group of leaders in Western New York identified an innovation district (ID) as an important potential resource for our region. This term describes urban neighborhood-scale geographic places where a new economy combines high-tech businesses and institutions within a collaborative built environment that is conducive to living, working and playing. The original nomenclature was established by Julie Wagner and Bruce Katz as part of a series of Brookings Institute publications.
  • Greater University District Plan
    5/20/20

    The Greater University District (G.U.D.) Plan provides a clear and cohesive vision to enhance the intersection of the Town of Amherst, the Town of Tonawanda, and the City of Buffalo. By building on existing initiatives and plans, the G.U.D. Plan aims to strengthen assets and transform this area into a healthy, vibrant, and welcoming community.

  • Kaisertown Development Plan
    5/20/20
    The Kaisertown Neighborhood Development Plan aims to strengthen this Buffalo neighborhood's existing assets through a series of improvements. The studio findings aim to promote social participation, economic development, main commercial corridors, and urban environment as well as raise awareness of Kaisertown within the region and the context of the Buffalo.
  • Board and Batten: The legacy of Kirkbride and the therapeutic landscape
    5/20/20
    Students in this graduate preservation planning studio, directed by clinical associate professor of planning Kerry Traynor, completed an adaptive reuse proposal for a 19th-century barn located on the historic Richardson Olmsted Campus in Buffalo.
  • Post-industrial housing: An affordable housing opportunity for post-industrial cities
    5/20/20
    Cities grappling with limited supplies of high-quality, affordable homes are exploring alternatives in housing policy and form. This graduate-level studio in the Master of Urban Planning program explores the potential for manufactured housing in Buffalo and post-industrial cities more broadly.
  • Regional economic development & equity assessment for Buffalo, New York
    5/20/20
    A graduate-level studio directed by associate professor of urban planning Jiyoung Park, PhD, This study is focused on investigating economic development opportunities for four cities along the New York State I-90 corridor; Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany. 
  • Scajaquada Creek: The Existing Conditions & The Future
    5/20/20
    This graduate-level studio in the Master of Urban Planning program explores the Scajaquada Creek and its potential for development as a cultural and ecological asset for the City of Buffalo.
  • Restoring Scajaquada Creek
    5/1/20

    Architecture and urban planning students in a joint urban design studio explored redevelopment solutions for the Scajaquada Creek corridor and opportunities to integrate the natural and surrounding built contexts to boost public health.