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Existing ConditionsFrom Foodsystems[edit] West Oakland Existing ConditionsThis project is entitled Repairing the Local Food System: Long-Range Planning for People’s Grocery. People’s Grocery is a food justice organization in West Oakland. Their projects currently include a mobile market that drives through the neighborhood selling fresh produce, a network of urban gardens and a stake in the Sunol AgPark, numerous educational programs, and planning for a full-service cooperative grocery store. Food justice, as stated on the People’s Grocery website, means “healthy food for everyone”. Local food systems, being rebuilt around the country, are alternatives to the industrial food system that does not serve poor neighborhoods adequately. West Oakland, in the San Francisco Bay Area, is bounded by the 880, 580 and 980 freeways. This formerly industrial neighborhood is home to 19,000 people, and is plagued by the high unemployment, crime, and diet-related diseases so often found in low-income communities. The neighborhood’s population is concentrated in a crescent, excluding industrial and heavy commercial areas. Services are located in this populous crescent. There is a network of corner stores throughout the neighborhood, but inventories are quite limited. Access to fresh food is further restricted by the fact that the closest grocery stores are outside neighborhood boundaries. There is a small but growing collection of community gardens in the neighborhood, along with a large number of vacant lots. Toxic materials, a legacy of the neighborhood’s industrial past, can be found throughout the neighborhood and must be taken into account when building in this area. The neighborhood may see rapid change in the near future: many new developments are slated for the area, including two with over 1,500 residential units each.
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