Last month, Ashoka Changemakers announced the finalists in their Sustainable Urban Housing: Collaborating for Liveable and Inclusive Cities competition. PUSH Buffalo was one of the 11 finalists, and GLUE asked you to vote for their project, as the winners would be decided by online voting. Changemakers announced the winners yesterday, and PUSH Buffalo was one of the three. The winning projects each receive a $10,000 award sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the American Planning Association, and the Department of State, to continue supporting the projects they've developed to help their communities.

Over the next few weeks, GLUE is going to be introducing you to a new team of bloggers, hailing from several cities around our region.  First up, Joseph DiDomizio, whose first post with GLUE will be up later today.  Welcome, Joseph!  (Interested in joining our new blogging team?  Email us!)

Tell us about one of the primary ways you spend your time (work, volunteering, fun--pick whatever is relevant to GLUE). I work at a university, helping students find their path to a career. Otherwise, I spend the rest of my time writing about music, movies, and community.

Tell a story about how or why you ended up living where you do.  I moved out to Hamilton, NY to be with my fiancee, who is also a Buffalo native. While we currently live outside of Buffalo, we plan to move back and raise our family in our hometown soon.

PUSH Buffalo, one of GLUE's favorite local organizations, received exciting news today one of its programs is a finalist in an international competition devoted to sustainable urban housing and sponsored by HUD, the Rockefeller Foundation and the American Planning Association.
The Green Development Zone combines cutting-edge green-design affordable housing, sustainable landscaping, community planning, urban agriculture, and green jobs training in a twenty block area on Buffalo's West Side.  At present more than fifty parcels of property in

The I Will Stay If... party in Buffalo was a great success last Thursday, and with some unusually quick turnaround on the part of the photographer, you can already browse Buffalonians' dreams for a better Buffalo. The photos are up on the IWSI site, so check them out HERE...

We wrap up our series on deconstruction with an interview of Michael Gainer, a founder of Buffalo ReUse and member of the Building Materials Reuse Association. Buffalo ReUse really evolved from a few people trying to salvage materials out of planned demolitions, into a community-based organization whose operations include building deconstruction-demolition, greening efforts, a store that sells reclaimed materials, and community education and networking...

This event was forwarded by our friends at the EPA:
Date: June 13, 2009 (Saturday)

What: Centennial Ceremony Recognizing the Boundary Waters Treaty (U.S.

Every week, GLUE brings you a profile of an active GLUEster. This week, meet Ann Mestrovich, of Buffalo, NY. Title, Organization: Manager, Business Development at the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, a business advocacy and development organization, and Manager of Buffalo Niagara 360, the Partnership

GLUE is happy to announce a new weekly feature: Kate Giammarise and Angie Schmitt from the months-old Rust Wire blog will be sending us a weekly summary of their work. Rust Wire aggregates news from blogs and traditional media around the mega-region, and produces some original content. Our first installment in this exciting collaboration follows. Thanks Kate and Angie! ...

I've been meaning to post this article from the New York Times all week--though I was secretly hoping some Buffalonian would blog about it--on Buffalo's singular architectural history (complete with slide show) and the efforts underway to preserve a few treasures in spite of economic scarcity. The article lauds the preservation efforts as being inspired by true "civic pride," rather than economic hunger. In that respect, the efforts of historic preservationists could be a stand-in for almost any other effort underway in our cities...

Eric Walker is the lead organizer at PUSH Buffalo. I talked with him on Wednesday, Sept. 17th: "Organizing has four simple steps: identify a problem, identify a solution, find out who can give you what you want, and present your idea to them from a position where they are likely to give it to you. Then we have to make sure that we create a pathway for decision makers to put our solutions into practice..."