Center for Urban Studies

Who We Are

We are a research, neighborhood planning and community development institute devoted to building a just metropolis by eliminating neighborhood inequality and spatial injustice through the development of a neighborhood regeneration project that turns distressed urban places communities of hope and opportunity. We are concerned with the transformation of distressed neighborhoods in shrinking cities and regions. We seek to these understand neighborhoods, cities and metropolitan regions in order to change them.

What we do

Conduct Original Research

Join Our Team Our research focuses on shrinking cities, distressed urban neighborhoods and on precarious neighborhoods in Cuba and Latin America. In both domestic and international studies, our focus is on housing, abandonment, anchor institutions, education, tourism, black liberation studies, health and built environment issues.

Develop and Implement Place-Based Educational Strategies

frida teaching children gardening techniques We work with the Buffalo Public Schools to connect school reform to the redevelopment of distressed neighborhoods. Our strategies emphasize problem-based project learning and distressed neighborhoods as a classroom where students use the knowledge and skills learned in the traditional classroom to work with neighborhood residents and stakeholders to solve problems in the ‘neighborhood’ classroom.

Partner with National and International Groups on Public Policy

We partner with many policy centers such as the National Anchor Institutes Task Force, the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute, the Council of Europe, the Pan American Health Organizations and World Health Organizations Health on democracy and higher education issues, health and housing, public policy, institutional development and social justice issues.

Collaborate with Community-Based Organizations and Local Institutions

We work with community organizations and institutions on neighborhood redevelopment projects, including the development of neighborhood plans, commercial corridor and retail plaza development, food security, community needs assessment, community outreach initiatives and discrete research studies on varied neighborhood revitalization and community economic development.

Want to see more? View all of our work

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The Center for Urban Studies seeks to understand the world, so that we can change it. Towards this end, our team, which encompasses some of the brightest thinkers and doers in the nation, works to combine analysis with action as we work to improve cities and metropolitan regions.

– Dr. Henry Louis Taylor, Jr., Director

Featured News

The Harder We Run: The State of Black Buffalo in 1990 and the Present

By Henry-Louis Taylor, Jr., Jin-Kyu Jung, and Evan Dash

The U.B. Center for Urban Studies is releasing its study, The Harder We Run: The State of Black Buffalo in 1990 and the Present, by Henry-Louis Taylor, Jr., Jin-Kyu Jung, and Evan Dash. Thirty-one years ago, in 1990, the U.B. Center released its study, African Americans and the Rise of Buffalo’s Post-Industrial City, 1940 to Present. This investigation was the most comprehensive study ever conducted on Black Buffalo. This past summer, the Buffalo Health Equity Center asked the U.B. Center to use the 1990 Black Buffalo Study and answer the question, “Has Black Buffalo progressed since 1990?” The U.B. Center took on the project but did not request any funding. The report, The Harder We Run, answers the question, “Has Black Buffalo progressed since 1990?” The report tells us what happened to Black Buffalo over the past thirty-one years, why it happened, and what we can do about it.

TaylorHL The Harder We Run

Council seeks judge’s opinion on legislation to eliminate school speed zone cameras

Read the full article from Buffalo News, here.

Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown has said he will not sign expedited legislation approved by the Common Council to eliminate school zone speed cameras because council members did not follow the proper process.

Mayor Brown didn’t budget money for speed zone cameras – but he’s not giving up on them

Read the full article from Buffalo News, here.

Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown did not include any revenue from school zone speed cameras in his 2021-22 budget proposal.

State AG says Buffalo can establish a civilian review board

Read the full article from The Buffalo News here.

“Buffalo can take steps now to establish a civilian review board to investigate allegations of police misconduct, according to the New York State Attorney General’s Office. Such a board should hold final disciplinary authority over officers and subpoena power, and it should have a substantial budget and a qualified professional staff to carry out its duties, according to a letter from the office’s Civil Rights Bureau to Mayor Byron W. Brown.”