Greening the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus

The Medical Campus is dedicated to improving health, and a sustainable campus will improve the health of the patients, visitors, workers, and neighbors of the campus, as well as that of the general public. Sustainability measures such as improving energy efficiency, promoting healthy transit, and reducing waste will provide long-term cost savings, freeing up dollars for research, treatment, and education. The Campus is well-poised to become a national model for the types of sustainable development that are necessary to reduce climate change

Bringing the Good Food Purchasing Program to Buffalo

An investigation of potential environmental stakeholder participation in the Good Food Purchasing Program. The objective of this report is to investigate the GFPP’s value of environmental sustainability, to assess if this value is compatible with those of Buffalo’s environmental stakeholders, and to consider if these local organizations would be supportive of bringing the GFPP to Buffalo. In doing so, this report examines the characteristics and goals of local environmental stakeholders, and compares them to the successes that the GFPP has experienced elsewhere. Of particular importance to Buffalo’s environmental stakeholders is climate justice, water quality, and regenerative economies. All of these values correspond with the GFPP’s socio-environmental accomplishments, such as decreased greenhouse gas emissions and water resulting from reduced animal product consumption, increased local purchasing, and improved working conditions. However, these victories were not achieved without overcoming numerous barriers, such as policy regulation, financial constraints, and logistical limits

Achieving a Greater Buffalo

This policy report argues that improving the quality of life for residents of all backgrounds living in Buffalo’s urban neighborhoods should be a central objective of any economic revitalization plan for the region. In the process of strengthening housing and employment opportunities in the urban core, Buffalo should strive to become a premiere destination for innovators, artists, and entrepreneurs seeking a low-cost, culturally vibrant place in which to live and work. The priorities outlined below are drawn from successful revitalization strategies employed by cities such as Minneapolis, MN, Portland, OR and Toronto, ON. These and other regions have been revitalized not by constructing commercial waterfront attractions, or by envisioning Disney-esque developments to attract tourists, or even by heavily subsidizing corporations to site temporary operations in their respective regions, but by concerted and coordinated efforts to stabilize neighborhoods, improve schools, strengthen immigrant communities, cultivate and protect natural resources, address the crisis of inner-city unemployment, elevate the arts, support small business development, create integrated transportation networks, and break down barriers separating wealthy suburban populations from poor urban communities

Policies to Encourage Biking and Walking in Buffalo

Despite having a climate that can make Siberia look attractive at time, Buffalo has a surprisingly large number of citizens who ride a bicycle or walk to work. But the City and Erie County have not done much to meet this high demand. Though there are a few streets within the City that do have marked bike lanes the vast majority do not. A similar problem exists in the suburbs; suburban roads frequently lack sidewalks, let alone bike lanes, though bicyclists can (and do) ride on the shoulder of the road. There are also a few signed bike routes (Sweet Home Road in Amherst being one of the better examples) and a nascent system of off-road bike trails (for example, the Ellicott Creek Trail, which runs through SUNY Buffalo\u27s North Campus.

A City Divided: A Brief History of Segregation in Buffalo

Buffalo-Niagara is one of the most racially segregated metropolitan regions in the nation. While racial segregation has declined slightly in recent years, economic segregation has increased, resulting in neighborhood conditions growing worse – not better – for most people of color in the region. Segregation imposes a wide range of costs on people of color, impairing their health, education, job access, and wealth. Individuals living in segregated neighborhoods tend to have less access to services that allow adequate standards of living, and their economic mobility is severely impaired

Within State Transitions From 2-Year to 4-Year Public Institutions

[Excerpt] Within many large states there are multiple 2-year and 4-year institutions. In 1998-99, only 19 states had less than 15 public 2-year institutions. Of the 31 states with 15 or more public 2-year institutions, only 3 had 5 or fewer public 4-year institutions. State policymakers and system administrators should want to know how well each 2-year public institution is doing in preparing those of its students who transfer to public 4-year institutions in the state to successfully complete 4-year college study. Similarly, they should want to know how successful each 4-year college in the state is in graduating those students from 2-year colleges that transfer to it. This information could then be used either in summative evaluations that relate to resource allocation decisions, or more preferably, in formative evaluations in which knowledge of the best practices of the most successful institutions are transmitted to their sister institutions in the state. That is, the information could be used to help improve the performance of a state’s public higher education system. Our paper uses data provided to us by the Office of Institutional Research of the State University of New York (SUNY) to illustrate a methodological approach that can be used to address these issues. While the methodology we develop is applied to data from the SUNY system, the paper’s main purpose is to illustrate the methodology because we the approach can be usefully employed in any state that has multiple public 2-year and 4-year institutions. In the next section, we describe the SUNY system, discuss the data to which we have been granted access and sketch out our methodological approach. Empirical findings are provided in the following three sections and the sensitivity of our finding to the specific model estimated and sample of data used are examined. Section VI presents a discussion of the some of the conceptual and statistical limitations of our approach and the types of data that, if available, would improve the analyses

The Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation

The ECHDC is currently developing the Inner and Outer Buffalo Harbor, most notably where the historic terminus of the Erie Canal is. The ECHDC is also developing some of the surrounding area including the old Memorial Auditorium and the Donovan State Building

Poverty in Buffalo: Causes, Impacts, Solutions

This policy report examines the scope of poverty and inequality in Buffalo-Niagara, the causes of poverty, and its impacts across health, homelessness, education, and more. It features the insights of testifiers and commissioners from the Buffalo Truth Commission on Poverty, convened on January 25, 2018 by the Coalition for Economic Justice, the WNY Poor People\u27s Campaign, and the New York State Truth Commission on Poverty. The report concludes with solutions from the local to the federal level