Posh to be Poor? Food

Food is a hot topic these days and will continue to be in the next few decades as Earth's population grows to record numbers...every year. Food has taken the spotlight high atop the green podium due to the massive amounts of chemical pesticides used for agriculture as well as the enormous amount of transportation-elated energy that is required to provide us all with raspberries in January. Terms such as organic, locavore, CSA, and most importantly community gardening have become common language for many progressive westerners. Over the last decade there has been an increasing trend toward growing one's own food. This can be attributed to the rising costs of food as well as to light being shed on CAFOs and the massive amounts of media attention focused on the conditions in which our foods are grown and nurtured.

Overall, food prices are rising, which isn't exactly helpful to the middle class worker. This is leading to a movement toward homesteading: if you can't afford to buy food, grow it yourself. Shrinking cities are filled with abandoned lots waiting to be developed; however, seeing the state of economy, one can figure that won't be happening for a while. In the meantime, residents in these neighborhoods can capitalize on this open space by planting and harvesting a garden, thereby reducing their grocery costs. There is a significant movement to convince the Feds to plant a garden on the White House lawn. This symbolizes the American movement toward urban gardening and sustaining oneself with the land that one maintains. You don't even need a lot of land to hop on the garden train: some folks in New York have started a Chicken Coop Co-op in their tiny backyard. It's apparently become quite the hit as the local breakfast spot offers a specialty dish using only eggs from this co-op. According to UrbanChickens.org founder K.T. LaBadie,

Their [eggs] production cost is cheap: you can buy chickens for as little as a couple of dollars, and three hens will likely average about two eggs a day. You can also use their waste to help revitalize a garden...There've been recalls on everything from beef to spinach, and I think people want to have peace of mind knowing their food is coming from a very trusted source.

Another trend that has garnished a lot of attention in the last 10 years is the growth of the Freegan Movement. If you aren't familiar, the concept is to eat only what you can find for free. This usually includes scavenging through bakeries' and big box stores' dumpsters for bagged and canned goods. In New York, there was a Freegan group who would throw rooftop parties and everyone was required to bring some found food. I'm not saying it's a great idea, but people are doing it, and loving it. In the western world we tend to undervalue what goes into our bodies. Rarely is a plate scraped clean, and a massive amount of organic waste is created. Likewise, bakeries and grocers overstock, causing outdated items to be pitched. This group capitalizes on the waste of others. For some, dumpster diving has taken on a new image in the 21st century as a rouge sport as opposed to a last resort for the poor. Many of the people taking part in these events have jobs and don't need to dumpster dive. They do it for the experience.

Posh to be Poor? Introduction
Posh to be Poor? Transportation

(Photos from Eat the View, New York Times and Freegan.Info. The original full-sized versions can be viewed by clicking the photos.)

WEEKEND READING: September 22-28, 2007

Lots of good reading for this weekend. Don't miss Item Six if you're a fan of absurd humor.

ITEM ONE: Deputy Dog (photo credit) went all out on this post about where different vehicles go once they are decomissioned. Kind of makes me wonder if there's a forest of defunct CTA train cars somewhere in Chicagoland...

ITEM TWO: According to APTA, "when compared to other household actions that limit carbon dioxide (CO2), taking public transportation can be more than ten times [more effective] in reducing this greenhouse gas."

ITEM THREE: I *heart* Jane Jacobs, but I really strongly do not *heart* how her message has been co-opted and bastardized over the years. This wonderful and succinct piece from New York magazine sets the record straight. (Found via Neighbors Project's excellent daily Neighbor News report -- a must-read for anyone interested in gentrification!)

ITEM FOUR: A trust fund for affordable housing, first proposed in the 1980s, may finally be on its way to becoming a reality. (Here are some more good ideas about the subject).

ITEM FIVE: Wendy Waters speculates about an urban baby boom over at All About Cities.

ITEM SIX: Some guerilla urban art on the CTA trains that'll give you a good laugh. Cut, paste, and try it in your city. The more ridiculous, the better!

ITEM SEVEN: Can Second Life actually improve real-world physical environments? Here's the first compelling argument I've read that says "yes."

Have a great weekend!

(Photo from Flickr user shadeofmelon.)

Why "Smart Growth" Isn't

"Smart Growth" (henceforth "SG") is a grossly misused term these days. Almost exclusively used to describe slightly modified suburban development -- moderately smaller lots, more narrow streets, excessive subsidies, "walkable" "communities", and those detestable Towne Centres all come to mind -- the term is a bit of old fashioned semantic smoke and mirrors. The promise is that we can continue to build much as we have for the past fifty years if we consume a couple less farms, or if we move things just a little closer together. Of course, the fact is that these minor changes are producing minor results.

The danger here is twofold: on the one hand, "SG" advocates and the people who choose to (and can afford to) live in "SG" developments pat themselves on the back and insist that they are doing their part to save the world from global warming, when in fact they have made very little difference (and are probably likely to make it up through other small indulgences with which they congratulate themselves for being such good citizens); even more foreboding is the fact that the failure of these not-so-smart "SG" projects provides the pro-sprawl, anti-transit crowd with ample ammo in their arguments against not only "SG", but cities and urbanism in general.

Case in point: a recent article by Wendell Cox of Demographia for the Toronto Star highlights the inability of "SG" initiatives, with their emphasis on (barely) higher density and driving less (sometimes), to curb greenhouse gasses. This is no surprise for reasons discussed above. But the article also cites a University of Sydney study that makes the deceptive argument that dense, transit-linked city neighborhoods produce higher levels of greenhouse gasses per capita than sprawling suburbs.

If this seems counterintuitive, that's probably because the findings are slanted. It is true that Inner Sydney has the highest per capita outpot of GHG, but there is no mention of the fact that a huge chunk of this area is taken up by office towers, which consume massive amounts of energy for heating and cooling, thousands of acres of fluorescent lighting, and other energy-consuming systems that often continue running long after employees have left for the night. Being the central business district, Inner Sydney is also the destination of much of the auto traffic that originates in the surrounding sprawl. Outside the CBD, other neighborhoods include other offices and large tracts of industrial land (and factories are often very large producers of GHGs) that are much less likely to take up space in more far-flung areas.

Of course, 43.3% of the eco-footprint for the average New South Wales resident is created by the hugely disproportionate costs for importing food. This gets at the true heart of the problem facing cities and suburbs around the globe: the need to live locally. Of course, neither the pro-"SG" crowd nor its detractors talk much about that.

More on all of this "SG" business next week...

(Photo from Flickr user pfrench99.)


Links:
Planners denying reality (The Toronto Star)

Australian Conservation Foundation's Consumption Atlas

WEEKEND READING: May 19-25, 2007 (The Conscious Urbanism Edition)

It's been a hectic week for this blogger, hence the low post count. News in the Conscious Urbanism realm, however, has been pretty solidly frequent. So this weekend, take a gander at different projects going on around the world that are creating a more socially aware urban citizenship.

I've said before that I believe the places where you can find the most severe examples of a problem are the places with the highest potential for finding a solution. In that spirit, we'll start this post off with a story from Detroit, one of the hardest-hit cities in America's Rustbelt region. Apparently, residents on the troubled city's southwest side are taking matters into their own hands and redeveloping their neighborhood. "In southwest Detroit we don't wait for help from anyone," one resident says. "If we want something changed, we do it ourselves. It says a lot about who we are."

For our next item we travel...well, not that far, really. Just to Chicago, where Art Institute students have been surveying several neighborhoods a year to create intensely comprehensive maps of local pollution sources and green resources. These maps are great resources for residents looking to live sustainably or activists hoping to create change at the local level. (Today's photo is of the Uptown map.)

Up north a ways, in Toronto, Mayor David Miller's administration is taking advantage of new large-scale carbon footprint-measuring technology to calculate the footprint of the 50,000 city employees. The project, dubbed Zerofootprint Toronto is described on its website as "the first ever community-wide initiative aimed at engaging all citizens to fight climate change on a massive scale."

We hop the pond and head south a ways to Cape Town, where the city government has just announced that they will be providing basic services (water, sanitation, lighting) to the thousands of residents living in the South African metropolis' 222 informal settlements as part of an effort to crack down on "land invasions."

Back on the other side of the Southern Hemisphere, the NY Times Magazine this week has a fantastic article about the Brazilian city of Curitiba's evolution into one of the ecological and progressive planning capitals of the world. Curitiba, probably most famous for its groundbreaking Bus Rapid Transit system, has been ahead of the curve for a long time...I was shocked to see how early they put some policies into place.

Finally, PerfectCity has new poll up asking readers to help define what makes up "Social Structure," which came out as the top factor in their earlier poll about what is most important for creating livable cities. Place 'yer bets.

Enjoy the weekend. See you bright and early on Monday. Well, probably more like late Monday night.