Go to this site!
http://msj3328.wix.com/foodnyc
After coming across Starved for Attention, I began thinking about how to bring about change without asking for donations. Something that we talked about a lot during the discussion about Starved for Attention was the site’s use of a petition. We came to the conclusion that the petition was a good idea, but some parts of the website were not entirely convincing enough (i.e. the amount of content on the site, stereotypes of women and children) to prompt a viewer to enter their name into a petition and support their cause.
For my final project, I was inspired to tackle the idea of hunger in New York City. Like Starved for Attention, I thought that creating a site that ultimately encourages users to sign a petition would be an effective way to present a problem, and a call to action. I then realized that impoverished around the world tend to grow their own foods, despite having little to no money. The opposite is true in New York City. The more I thought about it, the more I understood that people living in poverty in New York City are more likely to buy unhealthy and nutritionally lacking fast food rather than fresh, pure foods. That is because seemingly basic items, like tomatoes, lettuce, radishes, etc. can be considered luxury items, and a privilege if one is able to afford them.
The cost of living in New York is excessively high. According to the Council for Community and Economic Research, groceries in New York cost between 28% and 39% more than the national average (Wallace). To that end, New York City sees elevated levels of poverty. In 2015, New York City reported an 18.3% poverty rate, compared to statewide poverty rate of 15.9% (NYSCAA). With necessities like food costing significantly more than the rest of the country, and considering the poverty rate in New York City, I wanted to explore the cost of food in New York City and try to find a solution to help those of low socioeconomic statuses to be able to attain healthier foods. Clearly, those who are impoverished are not doing anything wrong when they buy fast foods. But for a dollar in New York City, one could buy either an entire meal at McDonald’s, or a single, raw vegetable at a market—if that.
At first, I created a website to demonstrate the price of food in New York. I attempted to contrast food that can be bought at different price points, such as $1.00 pizza and McDonald’s, versus a Russ & Daughter’s lox and bagel board, or farmer’s market vegetables. For the sake of my own aesthetic style and also to dignify the food at all price points, I attempted to make each photo look as appealing to the viewer as possible.
Once I created that, I had decided that I proved a point, but in emulating Starved for Attention, I needed a potential solution to the issue and some call to action. I immediately thought that community gardens placed in empty lots in low-income neighborhoods would not only help to beautify the city, but would also help to educate and empower people who may not be able to afford fresh foods. Similarly, community gardens are sustainable, and would ultimately save its residents money.
In an NPR podcast titled, There Goes The Neighborhood, an organization called Arts East New York had created art installations in an empty lot, which served to educate the community and bring people together. This is exactly my intent for advocating the development of community gardens. However, the lot mentioned in the podcast was taken over by developers under Mayor DeBlasio’s 80/20 affordable housing project.
This development program, titled, the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program creates new buildings (often in low income neighborhoods) that guarantee a certain percentage of housing to be allocated for low-income buyers. While this is a great idea in theory, the podcast mentions that many of these new buildings are going up in areas where gentrification is happening. To that, if predominantly young, well-off residents move into these buildings and gentrify the area, this will create bigger disparities in the community, and original residents will continue to struggle. We can see this through the opening of “high end” grocery stores like Whole Foods, which cater to a much higher price point than many can afford.
As a result, I decided that my call to action would be to petition Mayor DeBlasio. While his development plan has been approved by the city council, the goal of my website is to convince him to allocate a certain percentage of lots in low income neighborhoods to be developed as community gardens.
In order to convince website visitors to sign the petition, I’ve also included two resources that demonstrate how to create a community garden. The first, called Urban Reviewer, is an interactive map created by 596 Acres, a nonprofit aiming to create community spaces in New York’s empty lots. This feature could be used to demonstrate the number of empty lots in New York City, but could also encourage viewers to find an empty lot near them. Additionally, I provided a link to an article that explains how to start a community garden in New York City. It attempts to make the process easy. Ena McPherson, a woman who works at two community gardens in New York, states, “You don’t need money to start [a] garden, you just need to get yourself hooked up with the [city] agencies, the resources out there to get you started” (Evelly).
In the end, I hope that my website serves as a good starting off point for people to begin thinking about the benefits of a community garden. I think that my choice of digital format is necessary in presenting multiple issues. The photos that I took for this project are only a starting point. Through a well-organized, visual experience, I would hope that the simplicity of the website that I created would ultimately help to convince people to sign the petition.
Works Cited:
http://www.starvedforattention.org/
https://smartasset.com/mortgage/what-is-the-cost-of-living-in-new-york-city (Wallace).
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/neighborhood/
http://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/plans/mih/mandatory-inclusionary-housing.page
http://www.urbanreviewer.org/#map=12/40.7400/-74.0012&sidebar=plans
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