Hortaliza: A Youth Nutrition Garden in Southwest Detroit

This paper documents a youth garden that was developed in 2000 through a university-community partnership in a low-income, predominantly Latino neighborhood in southwest Detroit. It involved four community-based organizations and several residents -- youth among them -- from the neighborhood, in garden planning, set-up, and management. Kids grew vegetables of different kinds to take home and ate healthy snacks at the garden. They learned about the importance of vegetables and fruits to healthy diets, the nutritional value of particular vegetables, and how to grow vegetables. At the end of the season, we documented increased interest among kids in eating fruits and vegetables, kids making new friends, an appreciation for working with neighborhood adults and improvement of neighborhood appearance. Kids also showed increased knowledge about nutrition, plant ecology, and gardening and indicated interest in participating in the garden the following year. Although the garden lot was sold two years later, this documentation of benefits is helping inform advocacy of youth gardens with local public agencies and community based nonprofits

Building Sustainable, Just Food Systems in Detroit: Reflections from SEED Wayne, a Campus-Community Collaborative

This article describes a campus-community collaborative, SEED Wayne, which was developed to build sustainable food systems on Wayne State University’s campus and in Detroit neighborhoods. The discussion traces the nature of SEED Wayne’s partnerships and reflects on the program’s past three years of existence, including experiences within the university, practical challenges associated with defining sustainability uniformly across diverse campus and community activities, gaining consistent student involvement, and the mutual benefits of the university-community partnership

The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

Book Review: Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, Eric Schlosser, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. Available only in hardcover: $25.00.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/60278/1/KamiReview.pd

Sustainable Food Systems: Perspectives on Transportation Policy

Global agri-food and transportation systems have dramatically expanded food production and distribution worldwide. This integration, however, also adversely affects human health. The negative effects arise from unequal access to healthy food, unequal access to transportation for agri-food workers, increasing geospatial and economic concentration in the agri-food industry, and an emerging competition between food and fuel. Because the health of individuals is inextricably tied to the health of communities, regions, and ecological systems, health and transportation professionals need to act to both mitigate current disparities and enhance the future viability and sustainability of these systems. This paper offers numerous, specific recommendations for improving health through transportation policy and programs as they relate to agri-food systems

The Detroit Food System Report 2009-2010

Assesses the state of the city’s food system, including activities in production, distribution, consumption, waste generation and composting, nutrition and food assistance program participation and innovative food system programs

Standing in the Shadows of Obesity: The Local Food Environment and Obesity in Detroit

Much of the literature examining associations between local food environments and obesity fail to consider whether or not respondents actually utilise the food stores around them. Drawing on survey data, this study examines the relationships between the neighbourhood food environment, mobility and obesity among residents from the lower eastside neighbourhoods of Detroit, Michigan. Certain dimensions of the local food environment are found to contribute to obesity, but these dimensions occur at different scales. Residents who rely on their immediate neighbourhood food environment have a higher likelihood of being obese than residents who do not utilise the stores around them. At a broader level, lower eastside Detroit residents with a greater concentration of fast food establishments around them have a higher possibility of being obese than residents with fewer fast food restaurants around them. The salience of the fast food environment warrants additional attention in terms of public health interventions.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139092/1/tesg12227.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139092/2/tesg12227_am.pd

Bringing Fresh Produce to Corner Stores in Declining Neighborhoods: Reflections from Detroit FRESH

The paper reports and reflects on an action research project to increase availability and sales of fresh produce in 26 neighborhood corner stores in Detroit, Michigan. Through analysis of neighbor­hood, store-related, and supply-chain character­istics, I identify factors in successful operations as well as challenges confronted by stores between 2009 and 2012, when many Detroit neighborhoods lost population due to tax foreclosure and aban­donment. Neighborhood distress was reflected in challenges experienced by a majority of stores, including those that dropped out of the project prematurely (five out of seven), or participated only inconsistently (seven out of 10). Nine stores supplied fresh produce consistently. Operators with high levels of performance tended to be in zip codes experiencing population losses at a lower rate than the citywide average, be more committed to their store-neighborhood, have more experience with fresh produce sales, and be more willing to test alternatives. This paper reflects on the chal­lenges of implementing corner store strategies in rapidly depopulating neighborhoods without ongoing subsidy. It also demonstrates the lessons in implementing them as action research projects including with students and community partners

Nonprofit and resident collaboratives : an alternative model for community participation in planning?

iv, 24 p.Attempts to encourage and institutionalize citizen participation in planning are fraught with tensions between democratic participation and professional expertise; the reconciliation of local or group interests with larger, citywide interests; process versus outcome; and so on. Who participates, why, on whose terms, how, and with what consequences for themselves, their neighborhoods, the decision process, and outcomes, have been the subject of numerous studies. In this context, a distinction has emerged between mere citizen involvement in planning initiated by public agencies to grassroots and bottom-up planning that originates from within neighborhoods and citizen groups and whose decisions are adopted by public agencies. Through a case study based in Madison, Wisconsin, this paper identifies an institutional alternative that addresses some of the tensions related to community participation in planning and the problems associated with collaboration: a resident-nonprofit collaborative within a larger urban context facilitative of neighborhood planning. The paper provides a brief overview of the process, identifies lessons from this process for community participation and grassroots planning, and places this experience in the larger debates on participation. It discusses the value of resident-nonprofit collaboratives within the comparative framework of alternative forms of community participation. A concluding section discusses the implications of these findings for planning practice

Building Sustainable Food Systems in a Single Bottom-Line Context: Lessons from SEED Wayne, Wayne State University

This paper discusses a four-year effort, embodied in an initiative called SEED Wayne, to implement a university-community sustainable food system collaboration involving multiple activities in campus and neighborhood settings, which also coincided with moves to institutionalize elements of the program as part of the university's core functions of education, research, engagement, and operations. The paper documents the many ways in which activities have indeed successfully integrated across the university's functions and discusses factors accounting for this integration. However, attempts to institutionalize the farmers' market as a university operation have encountered barriers heightened by an increasing focus on the single economic bottom line brought on by public funding cutbacks, which exacerbates the cleavage between functions considered academic — teaching and research — and those related to engagement and operations. The university's vast bureaucracy also challenges innovative approaches to an integrative sustainability agenda. The paper discusses the implications of these challenges and offers recommendations to others wishing to embark on a similar initiative

Immigrant women seek shelter through community-based organizations: "A place to go where we can be ourselves".

Social, economic, cultural, and political institutions in the Third World interact to reinforce women's dependence in the patriarchal family for shelter and resources. Discrimination along gender and ethnicity in the United States further exacerbate immigrant women's family-based dependence. Thus, family is underscored as a source of shelter for immigrant women. This study sought to understand: (1) how immigrant women become homeless, and their strategies to cope with homelessness; (2) the roles played by community-based organizations in providing access to shelter; and (3) the empowering potential of the shelter process for the women. Three immigrant women's organizations that address shelter issues were studied. Most women seeking shelter were identified through one of them--a South-Asian domestic-violence shelter. Most women migrated as spouses and depended on family members to cope in their new environment. The experience of abuse, however, resulted in their isolation and threatened their access to shelter. The community-based organizations which were studied provide (1) culturally sensitive assistance with temporary shelter and enhance women's ability to obtain shelter independently; (2) an environment where women can develop networks of support and assistance with others; and, (3) new cultural arrangements and conceptions that support women's self-determination, independent access to resources, and greater mobility and expression. Women appreciated the safety, strength, capacity, and community achieved through these initiatives. Many who raised their consciousnesses about their situations participated actively in community change by helping others. While these organizations enhance women's shelter choices by extending or replacing women's informal networks, they also face limits in the extent to which they can facilitate women's shelter autonomy and changes in gender relations. These limits are related to the larger societal environment in which organizations work, and their own analyses of the problems they address. This study concludes with recommendations for policy interventions that increase women's control over shelter; support community-based shelter initiatives; enhance the urban shelter infrastructure; reduce women's family-based dependence; and reduce the unpaid role of the housewife.Ph.D.Urban, Technological, and Environmental PlanningUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/104690/1/9542938.pdfDescription of 9542938.pdf : Restricted to UM users only