Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
have large numbers of vacant lots because of abandoned houses are being trans-
formed into productive agricultural land. Mogk's (
2010
) survey of urban agriculture
reported estimates that the city could generate $ 200 million in sales and over 5000
jobs, providing not only a local source of fresh vegetables but new skills for a dis-
advantaged population.
These and other examples illustrate the possibilities of creating real change in
the health of inner cities by providing fresh food in areas where local greengrocers
and butchers have long disappeared and which were replaced by fast-food outlets
that mainly sell highly processed products full of fat and sugar products. In the
developed world San Francisco in particular promotes itself as a legislative leader
in urban agriculture projects (CA
2012
). Elsewhere, Lim (
2010
) has described a
project in Guangming, China, where stepped housing blocks provide terraces which
can be used for urban agriculture, by using a soil layer above a thick, imperme-
able membrane to protect the building. Although applied to buildings the stepped
approach has echoes of the terraces used by the Incas for food production on the
steep slopes around settlements such as Machu Picchu in Peru where innovative
drainage systems and the use of different textures of soils at various levels ensured
that the terraces were sustainable for farming. However, despite these encouraging
examples in the contemporary world, the growth of community gardens alone can-
not provide all the healthy food needed for their local areas. Nevertheless they can
add to the amount of nutritious foods, provide work, new skills and job satisfaction,
as well as physical exercise and often increased community interaction, creating a
real benefit to parts of cities that were plagued by ill-health, making a contribution
to creating more Healthy Cities (see Chap. 13). However if the policies are to flour-
ish, many of the ideas, especially in less developed countries, can only be applied
if there are clearer land tenure laws and implementation as well as better security.
The development of interest in community gardens has also focused on the types
of food products sold in poor income areas, leading to the use of the term
'food
deserts'
for areas where people do not have easy access to affordable, healthy, fresh
food products, unlike the ready availability of fatty, sugar-saturated, fast-foods
(Wrigley
2002
; ver Ploeg et al.
2009
; Whiteacre et al.
2009
). Definitions of what
is a food desert vary drastically, with a recent comparative survey claiming that
there was little evidence of the phenomenon in the United Kingdom, although there
were many examples in the U.S.A. (Beaulac et al
2009
). The U.S. Department of
Agriculture attempted to define these areas nation-wide, identifying a food desert
as those census tracts that had a third of the population below the poverty line, and
were a mile from nearest supermarket or large grocery store (a distance increased to
ten miles in rural ones). The research also provided on-line maps of the distribution
of these defined areas (USDA
2012
). This led to the claim that 10 % of the census
tracts in the country, accounting for 13.5 million people, lived in food deserts. This
still seems an excessive claim due to the definitions used and the coarseness of the
census tract grid. But whatever the dispute over the actual areas involved, is clear
is that such conditions do exist and provide another disadvantage for many already
impoverished areas. A recent report on the concept to Congress described one of the
consequences of these food deserts, namely a three-fold increase in child obesity
