City of Trees

City of Trees.

"City of Trees," a still from the film, of the Frederick Law Olmsted-designed "city in a park," a system of interconnected parks and parkways throughout Buffalo.

When brought to Buffalo in 1868 to survey potential sites for a park in the city, Frederick Law Olmsted envisioned something bolder—a city in a park. In lieu of setting aside grounds for a single, central park, Olmsted's plan for Buffalo evolved into the firm's first proposal for a system of interconnected parks and parkways woven throughout the city's fabric. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the city in a park notion continued to characterize Buffalo's attitude towards the urban landscape, as the city grew its forestry division and planted over 300,000 street and park trees.

Visions and Works

  • Remembering America’s lost buildings
    9/8/17

    Preservation efforts must be galvanized; they require mobilization, time and resources. Preservation planner and UB professor Kerry Traynor was one of five architecture experts who answered the question: What’s one American structure you wish had been saved?

  • Buffalo 101
    9/4/17

    Incoming students jumped right into the classroom on a daylong orientation tour of Buffalo's world-class architecture and urban design. A key component of orientation, the tour introduces UB's future architects and planners to the city as a source of inspiration and site of investigation.

  • Urban Design Project Wins Major Award for its Plan for Buffalo
    6/17/09

    The City of Buffalo has received the 2009 Charter Award from the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), one of the foremost international advocates for the revival of cities, for an ensemble of plans produced by UB’s Urban Design Project.

  • 'Bat Cloud' Draws Attention to Misunderstood Species
    7/28/12

    Eco-sculpture installed in a woodland refuge in Buffalo provides a habitat for bats, educates the public about them and draws attention to an illness that is decimating the bat population.