One of the most important and productive cities in 19th- and 20th-century America, Buffalo was the nation's eighth-largest city in 1900 and the largest grain port in the world. The city was the easternmost US port on the Great Lakes and a thriving intermodal center. Here, lake ships exchanged cargoes with Erie Canal boats, and grain from the Midwest and Canada s Prairie Provinces was milled and shipped as flour, cereal, and livestock feed to markets in the northeastern United States and Europe. With the nation s first system of parks and parkways, designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Buffalo was both an industrial powerhouse and an urban landscape of uncommon grandeur and beauty. The Pan-American Exposition of 1901 presented the wonders of contemporary technology in an enchanted setting that showcased Buffalo s wealth, industrial power, and its proximity to the wonders of hydroelectric power generated at Niagara Falls through a dazzling display of incandescent lighting on towers, buildings, fountains, and waterfalls.

Introduction--Buffalo's Olmsted Park System--Making the Plan: The History of the Planning Process--Implementing The System Plan--Conclusions.

"Placemaking is the way in which all human beings transform the places they find themselves into the places where they live." In this groundbreaking new book, landscape architect Lynda H.Schneekloth and architect and planner Robert G. Shibley challenge the most fundamental assumptions about the ways human being transform the places in which they live. A call to action for amore inclusive, democratic approach to the design of human spaces, the authors use stories from their own practice to cast a new light on the relationship between communities, design professionals, and the shaping of their physical "places." The stories they tell reveal techniques for generating a collaborative spirit that will help designers, planners, and community development professionals understand the human values that lie at the heart of their professions."

developed under the direction of the City of Buffalo Office of Strategic Planning and the City of Buffalo Department of Public Works ... ; prepared by the Urban Design Project, School of Architecture and Planning, University at Buffalo, State University of New York in association with Wendel Duchscherer Architects and Engineers].