The CAO-UB Community Wellness and Neighborhood Development Center

The CAO-UB Community Wellness and Neighborhood Development Center serves the purpose to turn the Fruit Belt and Martin Luther King, Jr. neighborhoods into healthy, vibrant, and economically viable communities and to develop a model of neighborhood development, which is replicable across the city, state, and nation. Read project overview.

News Updates

Dr. Henry L. Taylor's Book Signing, May, 2009

Professor Henry Louis Taylor, Jr. has written a powerful and provocative book on everyday life and culture in Cuban neighborhoods, Inside El Barrio: A Bottom-up View of Neighborhood Life in Castro’s Cuba.  Taylor explores Cuban life and culture through the lens of neighborhood life in the poorest communities, mostly in Havana, Cuba.  This approach is based on the view that you can discover the hear t and soul of a society by examining the lives of those at the bottom of the social order. Read More.

Press Release, November, 2008

The Community Action Organization of Erie County (CAO) and the University at Buffalo Center for Urban Studies (UB-CENTER) are entering into a historic partnership to launch the CAO-UB Community Wellness and Neighborhood Development Center, which will focus on the regeneration of the Fruit Belt and Martin Luther King, Jr. neighborhoods. The partnership enables the CAO to blend its service capacity with the UB Center for Urban Studies’ research, neighborhood planning, community development, and technical support capacities. Read more about the partnership.

UB Press Release, April, 2008 

UB Planners Win International Award for East Side Development Work

UB won the award for an "outstanding program utilizing the principles of good practice as adopted by the society." 

June, 2008 

Woodlawn Park Steering Committe present Artpark Concept

Discussions between members of the Woodlawn Park Steering Committee has produced the concept of an arts related pocket park that would spark revitalization of an entire community. This concept incorporates both the traditional uses of a playground such as green space, active recreation and a summer lunch program site, but it will also facilitate more artistic and cultural uses such as a place for public art and a fully operational outdoor
amphitheatre for performances.