This paper examines the efforts of the UB Center for Urban Studies to build a university assisted community school centered neighborhood development initiative in the Fruit Belt, a distresses community in Buffalo, New York. The goal is to turn Futures Academy (School 37), a traditional Pre- K through 8th grade public school into a university-assisted community school that drives the neighborhood regeneration process in the Fruit Belt.
Blog Archives
Cincinnati, Ohio 1877-1896
Back to the Future: Public Schools as Neighborhood Anchor Institutions
Solving the Dewey Problem: Where Do We Go From Here?
The purpose of this essay is to contribute to the development of the Penn Thesis by identifying the major challenges that must be overcome to advance Dewey’s goal of transforming the United States into a socially just, participatory, democratic society.
Neighborhoods Matter: The Role of Universities in the School Reform Neighborhood Development Movement
By focusing on a federal Choice neighborhood initiative, this study will not only make the case for connecting school reform and neighborhood development but also present a model that demonstrates how this can happen. The study will also make a stronger case for the university’s unique role in fostering neo-collaborative structures fit to take on wicked problems of neighborhood distress and urban decline.
The Impacts of Police Consolidation on the Masten District
The study analyzed the impact of a proposed consolidation plan for the Buffalo Police Department in the Martin Luther King Jr. Neighborhood.
Fruit Belt/Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus Tax Increment Financing District
This proposal seeks to establish a TIF (Tax Increment Finance) district for this the Fruit Belt and the adjacent Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.
Highland Avenue Public Participation Plan
This is a proposal to the City of Niagara Falls to develop and implement a public participation plan for the Highland Avenue Brownfield Opportunity Area Step 2 Nomination Study.
The Fillmore Avenue Commercial Redevelopment Plan
The Fillmore Avenue Commercial Redevelopment Plan provides a vision for the Fillmore Avenue commercial corridor that is one of a vibrant, thriving passageway that serves as the cultural commons for the Martin Luther King, Jr. neighborhood and a Gateway to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Park. The Fillmore commercial corridor will be a symbol of the vibrancy of King’s Dream and a place that brings people together from across the race and class divide to shop, play, and interact.
From Theory to Practice: The Quest to Radically Reconstruct Buffalo’s Inner-City Neighborhoods
The Inner City Transformation Project (ICTP) was launched in 2001 to develop a model of community development that can be applied to the radical reconstruction of distressed neighborhoods in metropolitan Buffalo and similar size cities in the United States. The project is based on the assumption that distressed urban neighborhoods now represent the epicenter of racism and social class inequality in the United States and that the quest to dismantle racism must start with the radical reconstruction of these neighborhoods.