︎ Community Food Forests
Designing access to healthy food creations from local community gardens
By Keerti Nair ︎
Hypothesis
The design proposal involves the creation of food forests in public parks around the neighborhood, especially ones that are access routes for people in the community. This can be measured by checking footfalls through the parks. Once a community food forest is created and a source of food products is available in the communities - it becomes vital to inform and educate the residents on better eating practices. This is achieved by downloading an app that pings relevant information onto a persons phone as they pass by the produce that is growing.
The design proposal involves the creation of food forests in public parks around the neighborhood, especially ones that are access routes for people in the community. This can be measured by checking footfalls through the parks. Once a community food forest is created and a source of food products is available in the communities - it becomes vital to inform and educate the residents on better eating practices. This is achieved by downloading an app that pings relevant information onto a persons phone as they pass by the produce that is growing.
- What/ Why?
The provision of access to healthy food combined with the access to knowledge of healthy recipes will push people in the community to have a healthier diet.
- So What?
The impact of the design proposal would be the accessibility to both healthy food and the information that makes a difference when it comes to following a healthier diet. The information that becomes vital to low-income families is less about calorific value and more about the ease of preparation and the time required to prepare a meal.
The design outcomes
Design to Outcomes
The visual impact of both seeing fresh food being grown in the community along with the images that pop-up on the phone along with the recipes act as a driver for people to eat healthier. Measuring the success of the design intervention in the short term could be through checking the footfalls through the parks. Longterm success can be measured by checking diabetes rates in hospitals in the area and checking for visible changes.
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Works Cited
1. https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2011/december/data-feature-mapping-food- deserts-in-the-us/
2. https://www.nber.org/papers/w24094
3. https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/survey/survey-2009diabetes.pdf, p. 2
4. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/01/its-not-the-food-deserts-its-the-inequality/550793/
“But a new study by economists at New York University, Stanford University, and the University of Chicago adds more evidence to the argument that food deserts alone are not to blame for the eating habits of people in low-income neighborhoods. The biggest difference in what we eat comes not from where we live per se, but from deeper, more fundamental differences in income and, especially, in education and nutritional knowledge, which shape our eating habits and in turn impact our health.”5. https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/interactives/whereyouliveaffectshowlongyoulive.html
“People living just a few blocks apart may have vastly different opportunities to live a long life in part because of their neighborhood. Unfortunately, significant gaps in life expectancy persist across many United States cities, towns, ZIP codes and neighborhoods. The latest estimates of life expectancy reveal differences down to the census tract level.”6. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-atlas/go-to-the-atlas.aspx#.UUDJLTeyL28
7. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-atlas/documentation/
8. https://worldreliefseattle.org/garden