Posts Tagged ‘philadelphia’

This week I spoke with Anaiis Salles.  Anaiis is the founder and Executive Director of Green Sanctuary Earth Institute of Pennsylvania. After traveling the world over a decade, exploring the Northwest and Seattle before moving to Vermont where she worked as an outreach coordinator for Senator Bernard Sanders, Anaiis has returned to her Philadelphia roots. Menu for the Future Collaboration is a ground-breaking community food hub program of GSEIPA, providing social service agencies with fresh produce, conventional and site grown. She is a new grower with City Harvest Growers Alliance. An artist and creative spirit, Salles is an avid cook, environmental activist, translating her political outreach experience with Senator Sanders into food justice work back in her home town. 1. Tell me a bit about Menu for the Future – what do you do, and who is your client base? Our community food hub program is Menu for the Future Collaboration.

Johanna Hoffman from Next American City covered another case of urban ag innovation coming out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In this case, a community gathering place -slash- art installation -slash- soil testing lab -slash- community kitchen. Those who ventured inside [an abandoned building in Northern Liberties] found Soil Kitchen, a temporary public art project offering free soup and free soil testing to Philadelphia. From the 1st to the 6th of April, hundreds of interested parties from all over the city brought in soil to the site, where they ate bowls of soup, talked with EPA scientists about the chemical composition of their soil samples, and participated in free workshops ranging from wind turbine construction to the mechanics of compost. “It’s about getting people connected to their landscapes,” said Dan Allende, a member of Futurefarmers, the San Francisco-based art collective responsible for the project. “It’s about pointing out the connections between our

Those of you that know me know that Philadelphia is a city that’s got a piece of my heart.  Having done both undergrad and grad school there, I have those fond memories you can only have while experiencing a city from  the warm comforting womb of academia.  I’m glad to know that Mark Bittman (who linked to GitC in his NYT blog here), also loves Philly!  In his new post, “Go Philly!”, Bittman gives a shoutout to Mayor Nutter, stating: Nutter took office in 2008; while on the Council, he sponsored legislation that banned smoking in restaurants and bars, and he’s a true believer on the food-access issue: “I’m going to invest in this,” he told me in the nearly 120-year-old Reading Terminal Market. “It is to the long-term benefit of the city and our health. Ultimately, it’s going to save us money.” The mayor is doing a great job, but it’s

This week, we cover the intersection of planning and public health.  Clint Randall is the City of Philadelphia’s Healthy Communities Coordinator, working in the Department of City Planning.  He has an undergraduate degree from Boston University and an M.C.P. from Penn Design at the University of Pennsylvania.   -Photo, left, shot by Michael Persico for Flying Kite Media  1. Tell me a bit about Philadelphia2035 – how can the comprehensive plan be used to improve public health? Philadelphia2035 is Philly’s new comprehensive plan. Comp plans typically set forth a vision for a municipality’s future, and then provide a roadmap of how to get there. As a planning document, its focus is the built environment: what changes can we make, from a physical development standpoint, that will help the city progress towards where we want it to go. The recommendations are a mix of policy-based ideas, such as reforms to our zoning code, and

Carolyn Beeler from WHYY interviewed Kim Hodgson, AICP, Manager of the American Planning Association’s Planning and Community Health Resesarch Center (and Grown in the City contributor) about Philadelphia’s new comprehensive plan, which includes aspects on public health and explicitly addresses food systems.  You can listen to the full interview here, with Kim’s peice coming toward the end: Kim Hodgson Interview According to the report, Goals written into the comprehensive plan are already affecting proposed zoning laws, and how the laws will be applied. Proposed codes would allow for urban agriculture and community gardens in most residential and commercial districts, and for raising bees or livestock in industrial areas. And new rules will limit the number of parking spaces in some districts to encourage people to take public transit and walk. The article also quotes Clint Randall, a planner with the city of Philadelphia whose work is funded by a federal grant administered

From my friend, Stephanie Chiorean: Philadelphia Orchard Project Music Festival Saturday, July 17 @ 3:00-8:30pm Liberty Lands Park, Northern Liberties (3rd & Wildey, Philadelphia, PA) Please join us for the 2nd annual POP Music Festival and fundraiser! Musical performances by 5 great local bands: West Philadelphia Orchestra, Betty Iron Thumbs, Elder Brother, The Mean, and The Weeds. Generous in-kind donations and support from Northern Liberties Neighborhood Association/ Liberty Lands Park, Johnny Brenda’s, Philly Compost, and Philadelphia Brewing Company. Food available for purchase from Honest Tom’s Taco truck, Dapper Dog, and Buttercream Cupcakes. Please contact Kim (kjordan@phillyorhards.org) to volunteer or for more information. Also, thanks to everyone who voted for PoP in the Green Heroes Grant contest, which I posted about in April.  They won!  From the PoP newsletter: In April, the Philadelphia Orchard Project was voted first place in the national Green Heroes grant contest and awarded a corresponding $15,000

Courtesy of Treehugger, check out this beautiful vertical garden in Getafe, Spain.  When I was in graduate school, we explored the possibility of using vertical gardens or “living walls” to spruce up alleyways and shade parking garages (for both natural cooling on the inside and beauty for those looking at the garage from the outside), but we really couldn’t find very many good case studies to sell our idea.  So, it’s good to see that this “ugly cooling tower” will host “2,500 types of ferns, herbs and perennials will supply enough oxygen for 128 people in a year.” Granted, they faced many design challenges, as we would have in Philadelphia.  The article discusses how they overcame many of them: “One of the most important factors when selecting the different specimens of species to use, was one hand the orientation of each side as the sun shines differently on each of