NEIGHBORHOOD CHARACTERISTICS,CHAIN GROCERY STORES,AND FOOD: A Research Note

ABSTRACT: Food prices, selection, and quality, and the cleanliness of stores were examined among 2 7 chain grocery stores in Charlotte, North Carolina Neighborhood income was, at best, modestly related to measures of these variables, while the percentage of blacks in a neighborhood was more strongly related The size of the chains with which grocery stores were affiliated strongly affected food prices, but had little influence upon other variables. The percentage of elderly in a neighborhood had very modest effects upon dependent variables     

SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS AT URBAN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES: A SURVEY OF U‐21 UNIVERSITIES

Urban communities are challenged by the conventional food system in diverse ways. To mitigate these challenges, a growing sustainable food system (SFS) movement mobilizes existing resources—including public institutions—to resolve disparities in access to healthy food, increase economic opportunities, conserve natural resources, and build a stronger, more local food system. Many public universities located in inner cities have adopted missions committing themselves to the improvement of their cities and regions. They also perform anchoring roles to revitalize their immediate neighborhoods, and, in a contemporary extension of their civic purposes, embrace sustainability as an institutional goal. Urban public universities therefore can play many SFS leadership roles, including through links to innovative scholarship, campus dining halls, other food retail such as farmers markets, and civic engagement activities such as community gardens. Through a study of 21 urban public universities, this paper investigates the presence and characteristics of SFS leadership, underlying rationales, and factors that support and oppose leadership.     

Volatile organic compounds in fourteen U.S. retail stores

Retail buildings have a potential for both short‐term (customer) and long‐term (occupational) exposure to indoor pollutants. However, little is known about volatile organic compound (VOC) concentrations in the retail sector and influencing factors, such as ventilation, in‐store activities, and store type. We measured VOC concentrations and ventilation rates in 14 retail stores in Texas and Pennsylvania. With the exception of formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, VOCs were present in retail stores at concentrations well below health guidelines. Indoor formaldehyde concentrations ranged from 4.6 ppb to 67 ppb. The two mid‐sized grocery stores in the sample had the highest levels of ethanol and acetaldehyde, with concentrations up to 2.6 ppm and 92 ppb, respectively, possibly due to the preparation of dough and baking activities. Indoor‐to‐outdoor concentration ratios indicated that indoor sources were the main contributors to indoor VOC concentrations for the majority of compounds. There was no strong correlation between ventilation and VOC concentrations across all stores. However, increasing the air exchange rates at two stores led to lower indoor VOC concentrations, suggesting that ventilation can be used to reduce concentrations for some specific stores.     

Cooking‐related PM2.5 and acrolein measured in grocery stores and comparison with other retail types

We measured particulate matter (PM), acrolein, and other indoor air contaminants in eight visits to grocery stores in California. Retail stores of other types (hardware, furniture, and apparel) were also sampled on additional visits. Based on tracer gas decay data, most stores had adequate ventilation according to minimum ventilation rate standards. Grocery stores had significantly higher concentrations of acrolein, fine and ultrafine PM, compared to other retail stores, likely attributable to cooking. Indoor concentrations of PM_2.5 and acrolein exceeded health guidelines in all tested grocery stores. Acrolein emission rates to indoors in grocery stores had a mean estimate about 30 times higher than in other retail store types. About 80% of the indoor PM_2.5 measured in grocery stores was emitted indoors, compared to only 20% for the other retail store types. Calculations suggest a substantial increase in outdoor air ventilation rate by a factor of three from current level is needed to reduce indoor acrolein concentrations. Alternatively, acrolein emission to indoors needs to be reduced 70% by better capturing of cooking exhaust. To maintain indoor PM_2.5 below the California annual ambient standard of 12 μg/m³, grocery stores need to use air filters with an efficiency rating higher than the MERV 8 air filters commonly used today.     

Beyond bodegas: affordable groceries through an innovative store format

Low‐income areas often face a “grocery gap” whereby residents lack accessible grocery stores and must spend disproportionate resources to shop outside their neighborhood or purchase food at less desirable stores. Traditional grocery stores will not locate in these neighborhoods for market‐based reasons. An alternative model appears feasible based on a literature review of current grocery industry practices and their theoretical application on a study neighborhood. The alternative store could be a satellite of a larger chain, stock a select product mix, and combine technology and customer service to provide groceries and community development. This model is promising: each part works profitably under market conditions, and planners are beginning to understand the need to work creatively with industry and communities to bring stores to underserved areas.     

Contaminant levels,source strengths,and ventilation rates in California retail stores

This field study measured ventilation rates and indoor air quality in 21 visits to retail stores in California. Three types of stores, such as grocery, furniture/hardware stores, and apparel, were sampled. Ventilation rates measured using a tracer gas decay method exceeded the minimum requirement of California's Title 24 Standard in all but one store. Concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), ozone, and carbon dioxide measured indoors and outdoors were analyzed. Even though there was adequate ventilation according to standard, concentrations of formaldehyde and acetaldehyde exceeded the most stringent chronic health guidelines in many of the sampled stores. The whole‐building emission rates of VOCs were estimated from the measured ventilation rates and the concentrations measured indoor and outdoor. Estimated formaldehyde emission rates suggest that retail stores would need to ventilate at levels far exceeding the current Title 24 requirement to lower indoor concentrations below California's stringent formaldehyde reference level. Given the high costs of providing ventilation, effective source control is an attractive alternative.     

In-flight particulate matter concentrations in commercial flights are likely lower than other indoor environments

Air quality in indoor environments can have significant impacts on people's health, comfort, and productivity. Particulate matter (PM; also referred to as aerosols) is an important type of air pollutant, and exposure to outdoor PM has been associated with a variety of diseases. In addition, there is increasing recognition and concern of airborne transmission of viruses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome corona-virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), especially in indoor environments. Despite its importance, indoor PM data during the COVID-19 pandemic are scarce. In this work, we measured and compared particle number and mass concentrations in aircraft cabins during commercial flights with various indoor environments in Atlanta, GA, during July 2020, including retail stores, grocery stores, restaurants, offices, transportation, and homes. Restaurants had the highest particle number and mass concentrations, dominated by cooking emissions, while in-flight aircraft cabins had the lowest observed concentrations out of all surveyed spaces.     

THE LIMITS AND POTENTIAL OF NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS IN PARTICIPATORY PLANNING: A CASE STUDY OF THE NEW YORK HIV PLANNING COUNCIL

ABSTRACT: In addition to providing a wide range of essential services in local communities, service‐providing nonprofit organizations play an important role in shaping de facto local social policy through their participation in community‐based planning processes that guide or determine the distribution of federal funding for health and social services. This social policy role has become increasingly important in the United States as the federal government continues to privatize health and human services through providing grant funds to states and cities that are ultimately used to support local nonprofit health and social service organizations. The important role of service‐providing nonprofits in shaping local social policy has been understudied, as most studies on nonprofits and policy‐making focus on citizen advocacy organizations and their lobbying and protest activities, primarily at the national level. This study uses the case of the New York HIV Planning Council to address this gap in the literature, highlighting the benefits and pitfalls of an urban community planning process dominated by service providers from local nonprofit social service organizations whose own organizations are affected by the planning group's decisions. Factors that contributed to nonprofit providers' dominance as well as factors that limited their self‐interested behavior are reviewed. The relationship between the HIV nonprofit service system and the AIDS social movement is explored in light of theory on new social movements to help explain why nonprofit providers were sometimes able to promote attentiveness to the general public good while also advocating for their more self‐interested organizational needs.     

Characterizing the bacterial communities in retail stores in the United States

The microorganisms present in retail environments have not been studied in detail despite the fact that these environments represent a potentially important location for exposure. In this study, HVAC filter dust samples in 13 US retail stores were collected and analyzed via pyrosequencing to characterize the indoor bacterial communities and to explore potential relationships between these communities and building and environmental parameters. Although retail stores contained a diverse bacterial community of 788 unique genera, over half of the nearly 118K sequences were attributed to the Proteobacteria phylum. Streptophyta, Bacillus, Corynebacterium, Pseudomonas, and Acinetobacter were the most prevalent genera detected. The recovered indoor airborne microbial community was statistically associated with both human oral and skin microbiota, indicating occupants are important contributors, despite a relatively low occupant density per unit volume in retail stores. Bacteria generally associated with outdoor environments were present in the indoor communities with no obvious association with air exchange rate, even when considering relative abundance. No significant association was observed between the indoor bacterial community recovered and store location, store type, or season. However, predictive functional gene profiling showed significant associations between the indoor community and season. The microbiome recovered from multiple samples collected months apart from the same building varied significantly indicating that caution is warranted when trying to characterize the bacterial community with a single sampling event.     

RELOCATING THE POOR: SOCIAL CAPITAL AND NEIGHBORHOOD RESOURCES

ABSTRACT:  This article examines the social capital available to low-income households which were relocated to different types of neighborhoods with the HOPE VI program, an initiative aimed at redeveloping U.S. public housing developments into mixed-income communities. Along with improving the living environment, HOPE VI is thought to improve residents' access to social capital by changing the economic mix of their neighborhoods. This article contributes evidence from multivariate analyses of survey data of Boston HOPE VI residents in their post-HOPE VI neighborhoods. Findings indicate that rather than neighborhood socioeconomic mix, neighborhood resources, such as libraries, recreation facilities, parks, grocery stores, and social services, followed by place attachment and feelings of safety, were the strongest predictors of social capital. A discussion of why neighborhood resources may be so important for social capital is presented, and implications for policies aimed at improving poverty neighborhoods and low-income people's access to social capital are considered .     

URBAN POVERTY AND THE SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF PRIVATIZED FOOD ASSISTANCE

ABSTRACT: Urban affairs research has not examined how broad social forces and policy changes affect daily life in urban communities, organizations, and families. Drawing on ethnographic field work in urban food assistance sites as well as analyses of the comparative roles of government and the voluntary sector in responding to social problems, this study provides evidence that: (1) voluntary organizations (in this case food assistance providers) have been drawn into a growing institutionalized “shadow government” (Wolch, 1990); (2) this newly institutionalized voluntary bureaucracy closely parallels the bureaucracy, the rigidity, and the depersonalization of government agencies; (3) willingly or not, this increasingly institutionalized food provision network contributes to the continued view of poverty in America as primarily the result of personal defects and temporary misfortunes requiring only an “emergency,” albeit virtually permanent, response from society; and (4) these changes have consequences for the transfer of responsibility for assistance from the public to the private sector under welfare reform.     

INFORMATION,SPACE, AND THE CONTROL OF LOCAL DECISIONS

Policy scientists have long recognized that economic institutions located far from cities can manipulate resources to affect local policies and politics. Too often, however, these same students have failed to consider the implications of these same actors' control over the production and manipulation of information used to affect economic and political issues. This article assesses the current balance of control over information between cities and the economic and political institutions city officials must deal with to plan for the future of their communities. After detailing the declining ability of cities to control their own information environment and the factors leading to this state of affairs, a series of recommendations is proposed to help local decision makers regain control over their local economic space.     

Neighbourhood Provision of Food and Alcohol Retailing and Social Deprivation in Urban New Zealand

Recent research has considered whether a range of social and physical characteristics of residential neighbourhoods are important in explaining social and spatial inequalities in health. One strand of this research has investigated the role of neighbourhood access to retail provision of healthy and affordable food. In this national study we used Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to examine the association between food retail (supermarkets, convenience stores and fast food outlets) and licensed alcohol outlet locations, and an area measure of deprivation for urban neighbourhoods across New Zealand. We found that contrary to the international evidence, for all outlet types, access to a range of retail options tended to be better in more deprived neighbourhoods. The implications of this socio-spatial distribution of food and alcohol retailing in reducing health inequalities are discussed.

     

Development of an urban health and wellbeing index for work precincts: A comparative study in Sydney,Australia

Work precincts are recognized for their significant role as generators of employment and associated commerce within urban areas. This study describes a method for analyzing the physical characteristics of urban work precincts in promoting the health and wellbeing of their occupants. The following physical parameters are analyzed: public transport accessibility, green and blue spaces, food environments, fitness facilities, supermarkets, and grocery stores. The parameters are assessed using quantitative spatial analysis based on street network data, as well as point of interest data acquired from OpenStreetMap (OSM). The streets and their intersections are stored in the OSM database as links and nodes, respectively. The evaluation of the performance metrics involves measuring the street network distance from each node to the closest node of interest for each parameter. The metrics are then combined, forming an urban health and wellbeing index (UHWI), which can be used to compare the performance of different precincts. The method was tested by investigating four work precincts in Sydney, Australia, all hosting a large office building belonging to the same business institution. Our results identified two of the four precincts with a high UHWI and resulted in the identification of one underperforming precinct.     

上海城市社区的发展与规划研究

上海的社区建设大体经历三个发展阶段:开展社区服务,创建文明社区,推行"两级政府,三级管理"新体制.上海的社区建设、规划多以"街道"为地域单元,社区规划的内容比较广泛.随着建设国际化大都市的迅速推进,上海的社区建设规划将纳入国民经济发展计划和城市总体规划;包括人文社会科学和规划、建筑、艺术等学科在内的广大科学工作者应积极参与规划工作.     

上海城市社区的发展与规划研究

上海的社区建设大体经历三个发展阶段 :开展社区服务 ,创建文明社区 ,推行“两级政府 ,三级管理”新体制。上海的社区建设、规划多以“街道”为地域单元 ,社区规划的内容比较广泛。随着建设国际化大都市的迅速推进 ,上海的社区建设规划将纳入国民经济发展计划和城市总体规划 ;包括人文社会科学和规划、建筑、艺术等学科在内的广大科学工作者应积极参与规划工作。     

RATING AMERICAN CITIES-CREDIT RISK,URBAN DISTRESS AND THE QUALITY OF LIFE

Since communities have failed to generate their own indicators of social and economic well-being and the quality of community life, they have been forced to rely on externally generated indicators, often presented in form of rankings comparing one community with another. Three such rankings are explored in this paper (1) credit risk, (2) urban distress, and (3) quality of life. While each of the ratings serves a particular purpose and clientele, none was designed with the needs or interests of cities in mind. These rankings affect the community in numerous ways both directly and indirectly by driving up the cost of borrowing, altering local priorities and distorting agendas, and by shaping the images held by persons and businesses of particular cities and the desirability of locating in them. Unless and until local governments are willing to generate their own indicators they are at the mercy of these and should be aware of their strengths and weaknesses.     

世界文化遗产地对城镇旅游经济发展的影响

在我国,世界文化遗产基本都采取了在属地设立专门机构直接管理的方式,所以世界文化遗产的保护与利用与遗产地所在的城镇的社会经济发展密切相关。近年来,世界文化遗产地产生的旅游经济效益备受关注。如何全面、理性地把握这种效益对城镇的影响,是我国现有的32处世界文化遗产地及更多潜在的遗产地城镇需要重视的课题。本文拟通过大量数据分析对此进行系统讨论。     

CONSTRICTION IN THE VARIETY OF URBAN FOOD PANTRY DONATIONS BY PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS

ABSTRACT: The urban poor face a number of health challenges, many linked to lack of sufficient and consistent access to nutritious foods. Social ecology models demonstrate the negative impacts of high food cost and limited availability in urban areas. These studies note that “food deserts” have a profound impact on physiological pathologies of urban poor populations. Food pantries are an understudied feature of these urban landscapes. To address this gap, this study surveys the contents of food pantry donations during the month of September 2008. Data demonstrate the socioeconomic impact of reductions of charitable food donations on the diets of the urban poor.     

交通性与居住性的整合——尽端路在美国城郊社区规划中的运用

本文概略评介了美国城郊社区规划中尽端路的模式和作用及其历史变迁 ,分析了尽端路在交通性和居住性等方面的特征