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Robert G. Shibley

Robert Shibley, AIA, AICP came to the University at Buffalo as a full professor in 1982 to chair the Department of Architecture, serving until 1990 when he founded The Urban Design Project (UDP).

As Director of the UDP, in partnership with the City of Buffalo and Buffalo Place, Inc, Shibley led the development of the City’s national award winning The Queen City Hub: A Regional Action Plan for Downtown Buffalo and its related implementation campaign (1999-2004). Working with David Carter International and the Institute for Local Governance and Regional Growth, he was a primary author of the City of Buffalo’s first comprehensive plan in over thirty years (adopted in February 2006).

Professor Shibley served for four years as a member of the New York State Fire Prevention and Building Code Council as a nominee of the Governor ratified by the State Senate. The code effort was part of a successful program to bring the International Building Code to bear on building practices in New York State. In 2007 Shibley was appointed as a Commissioner to the Erie Canalways National Heritage Corridor by the US Secretary of Interior based on a nomination by US Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. He currently serves as both a Senior Fellow at UB’s Regional Institute and as a Senior Advisor to the President at UB for Campus Planning and Design.

He is an author of eight books, including Urban Excellence, with Philip Langdon and Polly Welch (Van Nostrand Reinhold:1990); Placemaking: The Art and Science of Building Communities, with Lynda Schneekloth (John Wiley and Sons:1995), and the McGraw Hill compendium on the state of the art in urban design Time Savers Standards for Urban Design (2003) with Donald Watson and Alan Plattus. He has more than one hundred articles in scholarly and professional journals and a dozen book chapters.

In 2004, the Architectural Research Centers Consortium presented the James Heacker Award for Distinguished Leadership in Architectural Research to Professor Shibley. The lifetime achievement award was in recognition of his outstanding national contributions to advancing architecture and planning research. In 1992 Professor Shibley led a White House conference on the Los Angeles efforts at recovery from the violence in the aftermath of the Rodney King verdict. That effort convened eleven federal agencies, local LA counterparts, community based organizations and some L.A. gang leadership to frame strategies for a multi-agency response to the problems.

Prior to his appointment to UB, Professor Shibley was director of the US Department of Energy's Passive and Hybrid Solar Commercial Buildings Program (1980-82) and he practiced architecture and planning as a client representative for the Office of the Chief of Engineers, US Army Corps of Engineers (1970-80); He holds a B.S. in Psychology and B. Arch. from the University of Oregon, as well as a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from the Catholic University of America. Shibley also leads The Caucus Partnership, a consulting practice on environmental and organizational change, with Lynda Schneekloth. The firm has clients around the world and now celebrates its 33ed year. He is a licensed architect, a certified planner, and a Fellow of the Institute for Urban Design.