This study introduced regionalism in the Buffalo metropolitan region and ignited over a decade of debate and discussion regionalism and city-county consolidation. At the request of late UB President, William Griener, the UB Center organized a research team consisting of faculty from the Department of Urban and Regional Planning. The Governance Project, as it was called, was based on the premise that a energetic and prosperous region required competent, informed decision making, especially in the public sector. Its goal was to “encourage and advance dialogue on how to create a responsive, cost-effective structure of governance and to propose action steps to support that critically important effort.” The report spawned a shift in regional governance and led to the founding of the UB Regional Institute in 1997 to create a framework for supporting regional action in Western New York.