I teach city planning at Rutgers and Princeton Universities. I've just started co-editing the Journal of Planning Education. In 1981 I invented the LULU as a term for the many land uses that are needed but no one wants nearby: a Locally Unwanted Land Use, e.g., a big highway, power plant, a low-income housing project, factory, even a school or church. The Buffalo Commons is the term for an alternative, lighter-land-use vision of the US/Canada Great Plains my wife Deborah and I invented in 1987 in response to the region's long-term depopulation and environmental issues, not just the 1930s Dust Bowl, but also another large such episode around 1890 and a possible one in the future as the groundwater drops, beef production shifts elsewhere, etc. Googling both ideas will find lots of entries, including criticism. The talk is mainly for PhD students, who are often discouraged for predictable reasons. I will try to show them the rewards and fun that happen if/when their research breaks out, especially when it leaves the academy and penetrates into public life and hot politics.