Projects and publications

Our faculty, researchers, and students engage in purposeful research that tackles complex societal challenges and generates transformational impacts both locally and globally.

Faculty research is catalyzed by diverse partnerships with public, nonprofit and private partners and prominent public, nonprofit and industry funding sources. Outcomes include peer-reviewed publications, books and evidence-based action in new plans, policies, designs, and programs in Buffalo and beyond. The breadth of our impact spans the fields of inclusive design, food systems planning, material and build systems development, and climate resilient design.   

Read about our approach to research

Project sort

Discipline

Topic

Type

  • Introducing Architectural Theory: Expanding the Disciplinary Debate
    11/20/23
    Building on the success of the first edition, an engaging and reader-friendly work on complex ideas, Introducing Architectural Theory: Expanding the Disciplinary Debate, broadens the range of themes, voices, and geographies represented to provide a more comprehensive and contemporary theory book.　 
  • The Life and Afterlife of Gay Neighborhoods Renaissance and Resurgence
    12/13/22
    This book sheds new light on the assumptions underlying neighborhood change.
  • Figure to Fiber
    12/9/22
    The Spring 2021 Situated Technologies research studio returned to the topics of geometry and topology through surface disclinations, introduced by Assistant Professor Nicholas Bruscia in 2019 as both a developing area of research and a pedagogical exercise.
  • Minus Minimums
    3/21/22
    Eliminating parking minimums can reduce unnecessary parking supply and encourage development constrained by excessive minimum requirements. Land use, location, and transportation demand initiatives affect the quantity of off-street parking supplied in response to market conditions. Our findings suggest mixed-use developers are likely to take advantage of the ability to provide less parking in highly accessible locations. Though many developers quickly pivot to the newfound possibilities of providing fewer parking spaces, others continue to meet earlier requirements. Cities of all types stand to benefit from undoing constraining parking policies of the past and allowing developers to transform parking lots to “higher uses.”
  • Rust Belt Cosmopolitanism: Resettlement Urbanism in Buffalo, New York
    12/20/21

    Buffalo at the Crossroads is a collection of essays where twelve authors highlight the outsized importance of Buffalo, New York, within the story of American urbanism. Özay’s contribution reflects on the urban impacts of refugee resettlement in Buffalo, situating in the historic context of immigration and pluralism fostered by the city.

  • 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. 
  • Climate Adaptation and Resilience Across Scale
    11/16/21

    This book highlights North American cases that deal with issues such as climate projections, public health, adaptive capacity of vulnerable populations, and design interventions for floodplains, making the content applicable to many locations around the world. The contributors in this book discuss topics ranging from how built environment professionals respond to a changing climate, to how the building stock may need to adapt to climate change, to how resilience is currently being addressed in the design, construction, and operations communities.

  • Evaluating users’ perceptions of a Main Street corridor: Before and after a Complete Street project
    10/1/21

    The evaluation of users’ perceptions of a Main Street corridor was carried out through a post occupancy evaluation (POE) methodology was used to evaluate a Complete Street (CS) project and the findings highlight the need for outreach and evidence-based CS implementation.

  • Barry Sampson Teaching + Practice
    9/14/21

    This book documents the ideas and work of notable Canadian architect Barry Sampson, who was Professor of Architecture at the University of Toronto for nearly thirty years, and an instrumental part of the evolution of Baird Sampson Neuert, a significant critical practice in Toronto that influenced the development of ideas in the city, throughout the region, and more widely.

  • Code as urban vision: A critique of the Buffalo Green Code
    9/1/21

    This paper provides a critical reflection on the Buffalo Green Code and the city’s efforts to elevate it as a comprehensive vision for the city. The paper pays particular attention to the affordable housing and vacant land challenges of the city, which remain unaddressed in the code, despite the claims of comprehensiveness.

  • 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.

  • Giga Shed Urbanism
    8/1/21

    Reid Hetzel (MArch '21) was recognized with the Design Excellence Award for his thesis, a reimagining of Buffalo's Tesla Gigafactory as civic space,

  • Race and Modern Architecture: A Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present
    1/14/21

    This volume of essays offers a welcome and long-awaited intervention for the field by shining a spotlight on constructions of race and their impact on architecture and theory in Europe and North America and across various global contexts since the eighteenth century.

  • Good Neighbors Studio
    12/15/20
    The fifth edition of the studio will emphasize critical thinking on basic architectural issues through the design proposal of a group of three houses for three very different families that will be sharing a single undivided lot in the east side of the city of Buffalo, New York – the City of Good Neighbors.
  • 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.
  • Efflorescence
    12/1/20
    The Fall 2020 semester for junior architecture studio focused on the Tectonics of Buoyancy and the Buffalo Niagara Region’s relationship and response to water’s edge. This design studio encourages students to re-examine the prevailing Western tendency to fortify ourselves against the elements for fear of catastrophic ecological, social, and cultural impacts. Throughout the semester, students explored the relationship between human settlement and water and how architects can offer new tectonic responses to these issues. 
  • Urban Life: Self + Society
    12/1/20
    In the Fall of 2020, students in the Senior class designed multiple-unit housing within the Bedford Stuyvesant district of Brooklyn, New York. The semester focused on the urban dwelling as a threshold between self and society, between local and global, and between nature and culture. This project aimed to develop connections in the student’s mind about context and developing systems of housing that would relate to a greater social, technical, cultural, political, and economic understanding of urban space.
  • Good Neighbors
    12/1/20
    The fifth edition of this studio, the introductory studio experience to the 3.-5-year Master of Architecture program, emphasizes critical thinking on basic architectural issues through design proposals for a group of three houses for three different families sharing a single undivided lot.
  • 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.
  • 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).
  • 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.
  • Transformable Shells
    12/1/20
    In 2018, the School of Architecture and Planning hosted a competition to address a design problem: students sitting on the HVAC units in the newly renovated Hayes Hall. The competition embraced the issue by inviting students to offer a design solution that would allow students to use the systems in a safe manner.
  • 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.
  • Urban Renewal and School Reform in Baltimore
    8/18/20

    Urban Renewal and School Reform in Baltimore examines the role of the contemporary public school as an instrument of urban design. Bridging facets of urban design, development, and education policy, this book contributes to an expanded agenda for understanding the spatial implications of school-led redevelopment and school reform.

  • The Fifth Ugliest College Campus in America
    8/1/20
    The campus story of the University at Buffalo is an alliterative tale of excessive optimism and investment, followed by passive indifference and resignation. The result: three campuses—each a stunted fragment of a vision left unfulfilled—the whole less than the sum of its parts. This seminar explored the trials and tribulations of university growth and campus planning at UB—acknowledging the university's checkered past as a means to project a more effective campus future.
  • 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.
  • Off the Grid
    8/1/20
    During the Summer 2020 semester, Off the Grid, led by Professor Jon Spielman, was one of three remote programs being offered. This studio investigated new ways of exploring systems requiring energy established by the man-made grid system. 
  • 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. 
  • Black Spaces Matter
    6/25/20

    As the nation roils over its glaring inequities in racial justice, UB assistant professor of architecture Charles Davis II explores the historic connections of race and place in this contribution to the architectural history journal Aggregate.

  • The Border and the Market
    6/11/20

    Samendy Brice (MArch '20) has been awarded the 2019-20 ARCC King Medal, the Deptartment of Architecture's Thesis Prize, for her proposal of a border market as a structural element and condition of exchange along the contested border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

  • 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.  

  • The Village of Kenmore: Planning & Design Recommendations
    5/20/20
    The 2020 Plan for the Village of Kenmore was developed in collaboration with municipal leaders and community members in the community located along the northern border of the City of Buffalo. The plan considers current issues being tackled in the village, the planning board’s goals for the future of Kenmore, as well as a broad idea about how village planning works in Kenmore.
  • Wanderland
    5/20/20
    This report was prepared by freshman and sophomore students from across UB in a seminar class taught by urban planning professor Ernest Sternberg. The purpose of the class was to involve students in the experience of conducting a real project for a real client. In this case, students worked with the Town of Amherst, represented by Town Supervisor Brian Kulpa and Margaret Winship, the town’s Director of Strategic Planning, to help envision a Central Park in relationship to a recently expanded and reorganized town park system. 
  • 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.
  • Playing Against Type
    5/1/20
    The Spring 2020 Inclusive Design studio, Playing Against Type, was a critique on the typological thinking present in western architecture. Assistant Professor Charles Davis encouraged students to examine the reuse of European-inspired developer housing by the material customs of Black life on Buffalo’s East Side. It is understood within these investigations that the typological diagram of a building emulates the function of the cultural potentials of “primitive” peoples against the standards and norms of European civilization. 
  • Architectural Sketching and the Built Environment
    5/1/20
    The sketches featured here were drawn after this course went completely remote. Before this transition class activities were dependent upon the freedom of movement and close inter-personal contact. Until this point the mode of interaction and learning was very direct and experiential.
  • Solitude Pavilion
    5/1/20
    Solitude Pavilion is located on the University at Buffalo’s South Campus between Hayes Hall and the Hayes B Annex. The project aims to create a nesting environment by combining two contrasting systems using terracotta as the primary material. 
  • Victorian Dreams
    5/1/20
    Encompassing the period from about 1840-1900, Victorian architecture is characterized by a wide range of interpretations and re-combinations of distinctly different historical traditions. The evolution of Victorian architecture was spurred by many factors including the desire of building owners to create associations with past cultures and times, the role of builders (carpenters, masons, cabinetmakers, etc.) as designers, and the newly emergent technological capacities of industrial mass production.  
  • Resilience Hub
    5/1/20
    During the Junior Spring semester an integrated design studio is carried out and aimed toward incorporating various systems into a larger building tectonic. In the Spring of 2020, students designed a laufmachine, a self-propelled, two-wheeled vehicle; it is the 19th century predecessor to the bicycle. This portion of the semester prompted students to begin thinking about a multitude of systems within their designs through this construction process. 
  • Architectural Alchemy
    5/1/20
    The spring semester of 2020 for freshman architecture explored form in relation to the scale of the human body. This was done through examinations of scaled materials and the ways in which people interact with and sensorially respond to space. Students were encouraged to consider all construction scales as possessing the power to develop critical and influential architecture for those who interact with them.
  • 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. 

  • Trellis at Silo City
    5/1/20
    Willow Way aims to create a space for observing time and growth of both the site and structure by using architecture as the infrastructure for habitat and landscape.
  • Regional Economic Development & Equity
    5/1/20
    This study focused on investigating economic development opportunities for four cities along the New York State I-90 corridor: Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany. 
  • Adaptive Architecture Study
    5/1/20
    This study is inspired by Lina Bo Bardi’s adaptive reuse project, SESC Pompeia Factory. The main factory building is comprised of a large open space ruled only by a rectilinear grid of columns. 
  • Domesticity and Mass Customization
    5/1/20
    The Situated Technologies studio of the Spring 2020 semester focused heavily on ideas of domesticity and “mass-customization” in their design investigations. Mass-customization is a term used to describe a change in business perception from a mass market to a mass-customized market. Products developed within a mass-customized market are often altered to fit an individual customer’s needs, leading to more effort placed into manufacturing and retail methods. 
  • Anachronistic Spaces
    5/1/20
    Through the design of Anachronistic Spaces, this thesis speculates on futures in the Great Lakes Region through a stance on Architecture that advocates for sensitivity towards a world often ignored or neglected in sedentary frameworks. Research into Nomadism reveals that many nomadic communities have long been cognizant of the relationships between resources, consumption, and environment. As a counterpoint to modern sedentary living, nomadic communities are a case study on resiliency and adaptation in the face of increasingly extreme climactic, political, economic, and social conditions. 
  • Manufactured Housing
    5/1/20
    The affordability of housing has become a critical problem in most of the United States, especially in large, fast-growing cities where there are shortages of vacant land and housing. Post-industrial cities also face severe housing affordability problems due to population loss and deindustrialization, even though vacant land and abandoned houses are common. These “shrinking” or “legacy” cities face problems of low incomes, combined with surplus housing stock that has deteriorated to the point where it is no longer economical to rehabilitate it. The purpose of this report is to propose a unique opportunity for meeting the affordable housing needs of residents in post-industrial cities.
  • Fitting In
    5/1/20
    Students in the sophomore year in the Spring of 2020 made many explorations regarding site context. This approach was taken to help students understand how architecture achieves a sense of belonging in a given place, especially in an ever-evolving context.
  • Farming within a dual legal land system
    1/9/20
    Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah, assistant professor of urban and regional planning, and Samina Raja professor of urban and regional planning, join James Sumberg in examining how Ghana’s dual legal land system affects urban farmers
  • Building Character: The Racial Politics of Modern Architectural Style
    12/3/19
    Assistant professor of architecture Charles Davis II reveals the parallels between race and style in modern architecture.
  • Incubator
    12/1/19
    The Inclusive Design studio focused on developing a student oriented, small business incubator to foster creativity and entrepreneurism at UB. The designs were tailored to meet the needs of different “personas” for an imagined incubator design team through the use of inclusive strategies.
  • Sun_Food_Water design prototype
    10/29/19
    Affordability is defined based on monthly costs, with reductions for incorporating solar gain & PV-generated energy, water collection, and food production. 
  • Senior citizen cooperative housing Masten Park
    10/29/19
    These projects were part of a larger studio examining models for infill housing within two Buffalo neighborhoods, one of which was the Masten District.
  • Health hostel design prototype
    10/29/19
    Health Hostel provides temporary housing for those that may have just finished medical treatment of some sort or just need help navigating daily life activities.
  • Care house design prototype
    10/29/19
    The conceptual design developed by Alexa Russo, student, working with architecture professor Edward Steinfeld. The model was built in Spring 2018 by clinical assistant instructor Stephanie Cramer’s fourteen inclusive design students.
  • Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries
    9/17/19
    Professor of urban planning Daniel B. Hess and Tiit Tammaru of the University of Tartu, Estonia are editors of this book focusing on the formation and later socio-spatial trajectories of large housing estates in the Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
  • Exclusivity in the street railway era
    9/17/19
    Professor of urban planning Daniel B. Hess and Evan Iacobucci examine the role of historic entry gateways to American streetcar suburbs as markers of exclusivity. 
  • Making Bibelot: Casting material research within cultural frameworks
    9/4/19

    Bibelot gives a detailed account of the entire process and the working assumptions behind a terra cotta installation built by the authors, which explores untapped potential material to expand design and manufacturing possibilities. The project also demonstrates how bridges could be built between practice and material research without sacrificing the cultural significance of architectural artifacts.

  • Serendipitous conservation
    8/30/19
    Assistant professor of urban planning Ashima Krishna and Masters of Urban Planning graduate Enjoli Hall examine the conversion of former churches on the East Side of Buffalo as they are transformed into spaces for other faiths.
  • Buffalo Turning the Corner
    6/26/19
    Professors of urban planning Henry Louis Taylor, Jr. and Robert Silverman join associate professor of urban planning Li Yin collaborated on the Buffalo Turning The Corner Initiative through the Urban Institute’s National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership University at Buffalo Center for Urban Studies.
  • Aldo
    6/13/19
    Based on observations that spaces of play are rare moments where people from different economic, political and racial backgrounds share experiences, and influenced by the opportunistic infill-urbanism of Aldo van Eyck in post WWII Amsterdam, we propose a network of social infrastructures for playful encounters in the public realm.
  • Hidden in plain sight
    5/30/19
    Hidden in Plain Sight is Joyce Hwang and Nerea Feliz's proposal for a series of urban furnishings that aim to amplify and bring awareness to various forms of urban “life” through visual, tactile and ecological means. The project is designed to support an inclusive web of interdependent species, both human and non-human.
  • Smart Mobility
    5/20/19
    The following report on the applicability of various smart mobilities for the Buffalo-Niagara region is a synthesis of the full findings produced by the spring 2019 Masters of Urban Planning Studio Practicum led by Professor Bumjoon Kang, PhD in collaboration with the Greater Buffalo-Niagara Regional Transportation Council (GBNRTC). The emerging technologies that are quickly transforming the transportation systems of cities worldwide are considered in this report in an effort to present local transportation planning professionals with a framework for implementing these technologies in the Buffalo-Niagara region. 
  • Resilience Hub
    5/1/19
    The junior studio followed the laufmaschine project (see page 128) by designing a Bicycle Institute / Resilience Hub / Community Center in Cleveland, Ohio. The site sits directly adjacent to the Superior Viaduct and the Lake Link bike trail. 
  • Snap Interlock Module System
    3/20/19
    Snap Interlock Module System (SIMS), developed by UB associate professor of architecture Jin Young Song, imagines a new system for building with steel in the 21st century construction industry. The prototype is the winner of the 2019 Forge Prize.
  • Terra cotta grotto
    3/20/19
    “Terra-Cotta Grotto” is a design intervention constructed with standard terracotta extrusions that explores the spatial, material, structural and ecological conditions of a grotto.
  • Build as you earn and learn
    3/4/19
    Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah, assistant professor of urban and regional planning, and Clifford Amoako explore informal housing dynamics in Kumasi, Ghana.
  • Boundary Sequence Illusion - Ian MacDonald Architect
    3/4/19
    Edited by professor of architecture Brian Carter, This book considers the contemporary house through close scrutiny of works designed by Ian MacDonald, and the ideas that are embedded within them. 
  • Ground-level Agricultural Survey System (GLASS)
    3/4/19

    So Ra Baek & Martha Bohm join UB mathematics associate professor John Ringland in developing tools to characterize food cultivation practices along roadside transects as a potential complement to traditional remote sensing approaches.

  • Urban agriculture in and on buildings in North America
    3/4/19
    Assistant professor of architecture Martha Bohm studies potential benefits of Urban Agriculture (UB), specifically food production in cities for residents lacking good access to fresh, healthy foods. 
  • Decrypting fare-free public transport in Tallinn, Estonia
    3/4/19
    Professor of urban planning Daniel B. Hess describes a fare-free public transport program in Tallinn, Estonia.
  • Transport in Mikrorayons
    3/4/19
    Professor of urban planning Daniel B. Hess examines, twenty-five years after the disintegration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the vision and implementation of transport planning in these modernist residential districts.
  • Differences in behavior, time, location, and built environment between objectively measured utilitarian and recreational walking
    3/4/19
    Bumjoon Kang, assistant professor of urban and regional planning, and collaborators work to to provide operational definitions of utilitarian and recreational walking and to objectively measure their behavioral, spatial, and temporal differences in order to inform transportation and public health policies and interventions.
  • Repealing minimum parking requirements in Buffalo
    3/4/19
    Professor of urban planning Daniel B. Hess investigates the repealing of parking minimum requirements in Buffalo.
  • Adapting Buildings for a Changing Climate
    1/28/19
    In collaboration with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), this series of reports lead by Nicholas Rajkovich help New York’s policymakers, architects, builders, building owners and managers, and residents understand the impacts climate change has on the State’s building sector. 
  • Acculturating into (In)active Commuting to School
    1/28/19
    So-Ra Baek, Samina Raja and collaborators how the cultural backgrounds of caregivers influence their perceptions and attitudes toward their children's active commuting to school.
  • Beyond urban–rural dichotomies
    1/28/19
    Assistant professor of urban planning Zoé Hamstead and collaborators use the Technomass indicator to depict urbanization as a continuous variable.
  • Identifying street design elements associated with vehicle-to-pedestrian collision reduction at intersections in New York City.
    1/1/19
    Bumjoon Kang, assistant professor of urban and regional planning, evaluates associations between the installation of eleven street design elements, between 2007 and 2015, and subsequent changes in vehicle-to-pedestrian collisions in New York City
  • Planning and pandemics: COVID-19 illuminates why urban planners should have listened to food advocates all along
    1/1/19
    Samina Raja, UB professor of urban planning and director of the Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab, reveals that the current food system crisis was in the making long before COVID arrived, and highlights how community-led efforts in Buffalo are responding to the current crisis.
  • Landscape-Based Extreme Heat Vulnerability Assessment
    1/1/19
    Assistant professor of urban planning Zoé Hamstead and collaborators use mapping to predict the effects of extreme heat in New York City.
  • Walking School Bus Program Feasibility in a Suburban Setting
    12/19/18
    Bumjoon Kang, assistant professor of urban and regional planning, and Chunyuan Diao investigate the feasibility of suburban walking school bus programs by studying conditions at Sweet Home Central School District in Western New York.
  • Journal of Urban Affairs: Special Issue on Promoting Social Justice and Equity in Shrinking Cities
    12/19/18
    Professor Robert Silverman guest edited this special issue of the Journal of Urban Affairs (JUA) which reframes the discussion of shrinking cities, placing an emphasis on the analysis of policies to promote social justice and equity.
  • Unoriginal Things
    12/1/18
    An investigation of the Broadway-Fillmore district, Foederer’s project for Unoriginal Things began with a simple observation. What was once a thriving working-class neighborhood with a dense housing fabric, had become irreparably changed through a sustained effort by the City of Buffalo to purchase derelict homes and subsequently demolish them.
  • Pride Center
    12/1/18
    Environmental Design students worked with the Pride Center of Western and New York to assist in expanding its services, and reach to make the Western New York region an inclusive, safe and healthy community for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals.
  • City/Life
    12/1/18
    The City/Life studio puts a focus on the urban dwelling as a threshold between self and society, between the local and the goal, and between nature and culture.
  • Seneca Bluffs Public Pool
    12/1/18
    Brianna Mancini’s proposal for a community pool is rooted in process. An intensive analysis of precedents generated concepts, which were then collaged together to generate a synthesis drawing. This new geometry formed the basis and inspiration for both the conceptual and formal paradigms of the proposal.
  • Roots
    12/1/18
    The proposal, Roots, is a scheme to create a green gateway for the future Obama Presidential Library in Chicago, while also giving back to the surrounding Woodlawn Community.
  • A Home for C.R.A.P.
    12/1/18
    Through a series of introspective design exercises, students generated new designs by exploring the fragments of their architectural past that are omitted from the history they typically highlight in a polished portfolio of their best finished work. This studio was an opportunity for students to reflect on their architectural life thus far by unearthing and resuscitating forgotten, dismissed, or repressed experiences.
  • Innovation District
    12/1/18
    The relationship between the water and the city, between water and people, and between water and architecture, is a critically important issue. In the BuffaloNiagara Region, it is now understood that the typical strategy of fortifying against the elements and creating barricades along the water has had catastrophic ecological, social, and cultural impacts. The junior’s semester-long investigation explored and reflected on the role of water in human settlement and new tectonic possibilities for living in and along the water’s edge.
  • Tectonics of Buoyancy
    12/1/18
    The relationship between the water and the city, between water and people, and between water and architecture, is a critically important issue. In the BuffaloNiagara Region, it is now understood that the typical strategy of fortifying against the elements and creating barricades along the water has had catastrophic ecological, social, and cultural impacts. The junior’s semester-long investigation explored and reflected on the role of water in human settlement and new tectonic possibilities for living in and along the water’s edge.
  • Strange Towns
    12/1/18
    On May 27, 1962, the coal seam that runs through the town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, was ignited by the deliberate burning of trash at the Centralia landfill, located in the pit of a former strip mine. After two decades of unsuccessful attempts to put out the fire and remediate the site, the town was abandoned—bought out by the federal government, and its buildings subsequently demolished— leaving behind traces of an eroding street grid and an ever-dwindling number of residents that refused relocation. The fire— 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit at its core and advancing at a rate of 50-75 feet per year— still burns today and could continue to do so for another 250 years.
  • UB Cultural Campus in Madrid
    12/1/18
    The study abroad program in Spain had students design a UB Cultural Campus in Madrid. Due to the site’s position on the threshold of the urban fabric and the natural landscape of the university district, students had to navigate and understand the social, cultural, and built context of the city. 
  • Sustainable Futures
    12/1/18
    Sustainable Futures is a summer semester abroad that offers students the opportunity to live and work in the rural but rapidly developing region of Monteverde, Costa Rica. This interdisciplinary service learning program brings undergraduate and graduate students from Architecture, Environmental Design, and Landscape Architecture into interdisciplinary teams to work on community-identified public projects.