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Main PageFrom Foodsystems
[edit] Repairing the Local Food System: Long-Range Planning for People's Grocery Alethea Marie Harper
West Oakland is a community with limited access to healthy food. My work for People’s Grocery, a local nonprofit, will help the neighborhood and the nearby agricultural community work together to repair the local food system. Local production, self-sufficiency, and restoration of knowledge and local bonds are emphasized throughout. This project exemplifies how analysis and planning can combine pragmatism with idealism, creating a realizable vision for a thriving neighborhood and a robust local food system. [edit] Thesis Document, Executive Summary, and Presentation Boards[edit] Individual Presentation Boards with Summaries[edit] Project OverviewLike many inner-city neighborhoods in the post-industrial United States, West Oakland is a neighborhood in need of an economic anchor. Once a thriving industrial center with plentiful blue-collar jobs, West Oakland now finds itself with high unemployment, deteriorating housing stock, disheartening crime statistics, high rates of heart disease and diabetes, and a lack of fresh, healthy food. While access to high-quality food may seem like a small problem in comparison to pervasive crime and major health disorders, it is in fact a quiet crisis on par with these other problems. Repairing the local food system is one step in the process to reinvigorate West Oakland’s food culture and local economy. This project, a master’s thesis, was prepared for People’s Grocery. People’s Grocery is a non-profit organization in West Oakland working “to develop a self-reliant and sustainable food system in West Oakland that fosters healthy and equitable community development”. I set out with four main objectives: first, to evaluate neighborhood food justice and agricultural potential; second, to summarize best practices for achieving food justice; third, to inventory and analyze ongoing efforts in West Oakland; and fourth, to make recommendations for repairing the local food system. Over the course of the project, I employed several methods for gathering and synthesizing information. These methods included: a literature review to identify key ideas and leading theories; interviews with experts to identify obstacles and learn about ongoing food justice efforts; GIS mapping to identify resources or lack thereof; an inventory of produce price and availability to provide a clear picture of the severity of food injustice in West Oakland; case studies to create a toolkit of successful food justice strategies; fieldwork to identify appropriate sites for various proposed elements; and design exploration to generate and refine possible solutions to site, neighborhood, and regional design and planning problems. [edit] Links[edit] News
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