UB students inspire junior urban planners

UB students inspire junior urban planners
By BRENDON BOCHACKI
Assistant News Editor

Eight graduate students and one undergraduate student in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning were recently awarded for their efforts in a public service project involving two Buffalo public schools.
The nine students, all members of the Graduate Planning Student Association (GPSA), received an award from the American Planning Association for Outstanding Planning Student Organization for their "Buffalo Urban Planners" project.
The mission of the student-conceived project was to inform younger Buffalo public school students about the relationship between a school and its surrounding neighborhood and environment.
Led by president Kimberley Moore, GPSA students encouraged seventh and eighth graders of PS 74 Hamlin Park School and PS 30 Frank A. Sedita Academy to become involved in their community and fight for the changes they want to see.
"[Our] goal was to illustrate the links between a healthy school and a healthy neighborhood," Moore said. "We wanted students to become active stakeholders in their communities and become focused on a revitalization project, as well as become more aware of the history and community around them."
Under the direction of the GPSA project team, students were urged to come up with their own ideas and projects for their neighborhoods in areas they thought were most in need of improvement.
"We really left it up to the students," Moore said. "Being able to give them a voice and an outlet is very important in encouraging them to believe in their project. I think if we would have given them the outcomes or the projects it would have been inorganic. They live there, they know what's best and what's most necessary."
With little instruction from the UB students, the kids at both schools came up with practical plans for community improvement. At the Hamlin Park School, the kids proposed a strategy for improving a local park, including the addition of a community garden. At Frank A. Sedita Academy, kids wanted to work on bettering the conditions of nearby housing.
"The students are a smart bunch," Moore said. "They knew the types of things they wanted without too much input from us."
In addition to motivating the kids to get involved in their community, the project also sought to inspire the children to consider careers in urban planning.
The American Planning Association (APA) award, in the category of Community Outreach, was given to the GPSA based on an evaluation of a formal write up of their efforts.
According to Alfred Price, a professor of urban and regional planning and the director of the students' internship program, the report was originally written as a mere formality.
"I told them, ‘I think you all ought to conclude this effort with some kind of formal write up of the project, if for no better reason than to keep a record of what you did at the university,'" Price said.
The APA judged the GPSA's write up against the urban planning projects of 70 other schools across North America.
The GPSA was presented with the award and a $1,000 cash prize on Tuesday at a national APA conference in New Orleans.
The "Buffalo Urban Planners" project will continue into next year as part of a larger regional effort to revitalize more than 60 kindergarten through 12th grade public schools in the city of Buffalo.
Known as the Buffalo Public Schools Program, the district-wide project is managed by LP Ciminelli, a local contracting company, and calls for nearly $1.4 billion in improvements to the schools and their surrounding communities.
"This is an ongoing process," Price said. "We realized going in that teaching [students] urban planning and expecting a finished project was too much for one semester. So we're going to continue to work with LP Ciminelli and the Buffalo Public Schools to help them implement the projects and programs the children want to see in their communities."

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