Buffalo Turning the Corner Publications Released!

The Center for Urban Studies at the University of Buffalo led the local Turning the Corner research, collaborating with the city Urban Renewal Authority and planning departments on the engagement activities. Buffalo and Phoenix were the two non-NNIP cities participating in the project. The project was funded by the Ralph Wilson, Jr. Foundation in coordination with the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo. The team focused on three neighborhoods facing diverse market conditions: Lower West Side, Ellicott and Fruit Belt. 

Publications

• Buffalo Turning the Corner Final Report (June 2019): This report includes an analysis of local and national data sources on neighborhood change in the  three focus neighborhoods and researchers' policy recommendations.

• Buffalo: Turning the Corner Policy Brief (June 2019): A policy brief that summarizes the aspects of the research report that enjoy broad support among the city staff and university researchers, framing the factors that should influence development policy. 

• Perceptions of Residential Displacement and Grassroots Resistance to Anchor Driven Encroachment in Buffalo (November 2018): This journal article in Urbanities focuses on residents’ perceived effects of anchor institution (e.g. hospital and university) expansion on core city  neighbourhoods and offers insights into the  processes driving neighborhood displacement.

• There goes our family friendly neighborhood: residents’ perceptions of institutionally driven inner-city revitalization in Buffalo, NY (May 2019): This article in the Journal of Community Practice describes how residents' perceived urban revitalization having a destabilizing effect on traditional neighborhoods and as detrimental to the sustainability of family-friendly neighborhoods (article available by subscription or for purchase). 

• Are We Still Going Through the Empty Ritual of Participation? Inner-City Residents’ and Other Grassroots Stakeholders’ Perceptions of Public Input and Neighborhood Revitalization (April 2019): This article in the Critical Sociology journal revisits Arnstein’s “ladder of citizen participation” focusing on inner-city residents’ perceptions of public input in a neighborhood revitalization project and makes recommendations about strategies that expand citizen control (article available by subscription or for purchase).

• Place making as a form of place taking Residential displacement and grassroots resistance to institutional encroachment in Buffalo, New York. (June 2019). Rresidents perceived institutional encroachment as relatively unabated and unresponsive to grassroots concerns. This led to heightened concerns about residential displacement and concomitant changes in the neighborhoods’ built and social environments. Experiences with encroachment also increased residents’ calls for greater grassroots control of development