History of the Center for Urban Studies
The Center for Urban Studies (CENTER) was founded by Professor Henry Louis Taylor, Jr. to popularize public service at UB and to facilitate the university’s transition from a detached Ivory tower to a democratic cosmopolitan civically engaged university. Within this framework, the primary goal was to strengthen the university’s involvement in the effort to revitalize distressed inner city communities. Toward this end, the CENTER established an interdisciplinary Masters program in Applied Public Affairs, which was based on problem-based learning. To facilitate its work, the CENTER was located in the Office of the Vice President for Public Service and Urban Affairs. The CENTER has passed through two distinct periods of development.
First Period
The CENTER's activities initially focused on four activities: building connections between the university and distressed inner city neighborhoods, developing the interdisciplinary program in Applied Public Affairs Studies, creating linkages between the University and the University Heights neighborhood, and working to popularize public service across the UB campus. The development of the Interdisciplinary Masters Degree in Applied Public Affairs created important linkages between the CENTER and the various departments that supported the program: economics, political science, sociology, and urban and regional planning. Moreover, the program in Applied Public Affairs was formulated using a problem-based service learning approach, with students having to complete two semesters of internships in their specialty areas. In addition, the CENTER developed an undergraduate internship program, which provided students with service learning experiences across the metropolitan region.
During this period, the CENTER became a major force in inner city development. It carried out a number of significant regional projects, which helped to popularize public service on the UB campus. For example, the study African Americans and the Rise of Buffalo's Post-Industrial City, 1950 to the Present (Buffalo Urban League, 1990) and The Spatial Structure of Poverty and the Underclass (1991) influenced a generation of community and economic development projects in the Buffalo-Niagara region.
In 1992, the CENTER, in partnership with the UB Law School, the Department of American Studies, and the City of Buffalo Common Council launched the Office of Urban Initiatives, Inc., the region’s first minority based community economic development corporation. The 1993 marketing study on the Towne Gardens Plaza leveraged over one million dollars in financing for the construction of the Towne Gardens Plaza, which became the area’s most successful inner-city retail plaza.
The study Racial Bloc Voting in Buffalo, New York (1995) served as the cornerstone of the NAACP's battle against racial gerrymandering in the city, and the 1996 report on the siting of police stations played a decisive role in the decision to build the District C Police Station on Fillmore Avenue in the Masten District.
In 1996, at the request of then UB president, William Griener, the CENTER organized the research team that wrote the highly influential monograph, Governance in Erie County. The study initiated the new regionalism movement in Western New York and led to the establishment of the UB Regional Institute. Between 1994 and 1997, President Griener, asked the CENTER to lead an effort to spark the revitalization of the University Heights community. This led to the founding of the University Community Initiative. Over this three year period, the CENTER produced fourteen studies on the locale, founded the Regional Community Policing Initiative, and played a leading role in the regeneration of the South Campus, the University Plaza, and the Uptown commercial corridor. Its 1995 study The Main-LaSalle Revitalization Study: Toward the Formulation of a Housing Strategy for the University Community led to the establishment of the award winning Main-LaSalle housing subdivision.
Between 1987 and 1998, the CENTER realized its goal of popularizing public service at UB, and the university became a national leader in the civic engagement movement. The numerous awards won by the CENTER provide evidence of this accomplishment. For example, the study African Americans and the Rise of Buffalo’s Post Industrial City won the 1991 William Wells Brown Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Preservation of African American History, the Main-LaSalle housing project won the 1996 “Outstanding Planning Project, Special Topic: Urban Design” from the New York Upstate Chapter of the American Planning Association. The Governance in Erie County project won the 1996 Alpha Award from the Amherst Chamber of Commerce, and the University Community Initiative won the Alpha Award again in 1998. In 1995, Professor Taylor was named the first Academic Service Fellow at the University at Pennsylvania. In 1996 and 1998 Business First named Professor Taylor one of the 100 Most Influential Leaders in Western New York.
Second Period
During this period, from 1998 to the present, the CENTER transitioned from the Office of the Vice-President of Public Service and Urban Affairs to the School of Architecture and Planning. During the first period, the CENTER realized its goal of popularizing civic engagement on the UB campus. Through its numerous studies and practical experiences with the Office of Urban Initiatives, the CENTER came to realize the strategic importance of neighborhood redevelopment in the re-creation of the metropolitan region. The neighborhood was viewed as the basic social unit in the urban metropolis and the high levels of distress found in Buffalo’s inner city communities not only thwarted the city’s redevelopment, but also held back the regeneration of the metropolitan region. The CENTER concluded that the regeneration and re-creation of inner city communities was the key to transforming the region as a whole.
To advance its work in this area, the CENTER needed to be located in a traditional departmental setting. Moreover, location in such a setting would enable the CENTER to play an important role in demonstrating how scholars in traditional departments could link their research, teaching, and service responsibilities to solving urgent problems in the broader community.
Against this backdrop, during the second period, the CENTER embarked on a quest to build a social function model of neighborhood development. The goal was to develop a university assisted approach to community development based on establishing a sustained presence in a select neighborhood. In this setting, the CENTER would work with neighborhood residents and stakeholders to construct a social function model of neighborhood development, which would transform the community into a vibrant place based on participatory democracy, cosmopolitanism, reciprocity, and social justice. At the same time, the CENTER would provide distressed communities across the metropolitan region with technical assistance and planning and community development support.
In 1998, when it was transferred to the School of Architecture and Planning, the CENTER entered a new period in its development. The Interdisciplinary Masters in Applied Public Affairs was converted into the Community Development and Urban Management Specialization in the Masters of Urban Planning offered by the Department of Urban and Regional Planning. A year later, in 1999, the CENTER implemented its new strategy by launching the Near East Side Neighborhood Transformation Project in the Fruit Belt and Martin Luther King, Jr. neighborhoods. This has also become an award winning project. In 2001, professors Henry Louis Taylor, Jr. and Sam Cole won The Fannie Mae Foundation Award for the best paper on practice-based learning in community development at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning’s Annual Convention. In 2008, the Near East Side Neighborhood Transformation Partnership received the “2008 Outstanding Program” Award by the International Community Development Society.
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