Kids have their faces painted at the Spring Into Health Festival at MLK Park. photo: Kim Kumpart

“Celebrate Health!” is the main message of the the Spring Into Health Festival that will be held this weekend at Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The event is more a health “festival” than “fair,” said North Area Neighborhood Development Council (NANDC) representative Yelba Castellon. It is an opportunity for the community to celebrate healthy living by participating in activities related to health, fitness, and the environment, in a family-oriented, fun setting.

This year, about 40 local community organizations will be present, offering a variety of services. In the area of fitness, the 24th St. Theater will be offering yoga classes while the Southern California Tennis Association will offer tennis lessons. Organizations like Community Services Unlimited, Revolution Foods, Tree People, and the L.A. Food Bank will offer help with gardening (and offering plants people can take home), nutrition, and cooking. There will be entertainment, an Easter Egg Hunt, and arts and crafts, as well as a raffle for bikes, scooters, and skateboards.

The NANDC tried to ensure that most of the organizations were very local, said Castellon, so that there would be continuity after the festival. If people found a particular clinic or organization that met their some of their health needs, they would easily be able to follow up and visit them after the festival.

A patient has her blood pressure checked at the Spring Into Health Festival. photo: Kim Kumpart

Opportunities for health care that will be available, include dental sealants for kids and screenings for anemia, blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, and HIV.  These booths will  help deal with the challenge of access to care in lower-income neighborhoods.

More importantly, the care clinics on site will present opportunities for people to receive care in a non-threatening environment. Many people from the area, particularly those in the Latino community, have a distrust of the medical community, said Castellon, a medical student herself. They may feel they do not receive adequate care when they try to access it, they may not feel it is their place to ask questions,  they may not know which questions to ask, or they may have a different cultural approach to health that is at odds with what their medical professional suggests.

Even if there was greater access for people, they might not take advantage of it. Having open clinics in environments such as the one planned for Saturday help put everyone at ease and make it easier for some trust to be built.

It’s a good experience for the medical students, too, said Castellon. They need to understand the context from which their patients come in order to treat them appropriately and in ways that the patient will respond to. It is easier to see that context in festival setting when the “patient” has their whole family in tow. In short, open air health clinics can be a positive learning experience for all involved.

About 300 families, or 800 people came through the festival last year. The organizers are hoping to match or beat that turn-out this year. For more information on the festival please visit the NANDC.

The organizers of the Festival are the NANDC, the Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science, and the Department of Parks and Recreation The event will be held at Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center, 3916 South Western Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90062.

Photo: L.A. Times

The new study by Helen Lee of the Public Policy Institute of California found that there are actually very few official food
deserts in California, and that obesity is not correlated with how many grocery stores a community has.

Not many food deserts?  So what’s all the fuss been about?

In most communities it’s not a lack of food that’s the problem, it’s a lack of healthy food compared to an over abundance of unhealthy food.  Back in 2007, research by CCPHA, the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, and PolicyLink, found a strong and direct relationship between the RFEI of the area in which someone lives and their likelihood of being obese or having diabetes.

The what? The Retail Food Environment Index (RFEI) is a ratio of unhealthy outlets (fast food restaurants and convenience stores) to healthier outlets (grocery stores and produce markets) in a given area. It’s a measure of how unhealthy the options are when you walk outside your door.  The higher the number, the more junk is being sold around you.  Statewide, the RFEI is 4.2, meaning there are a whopping four times as many unhealthy outlets as healthy ones. (For more statistics on RFEI, or how it applies to local communities, visit this story from last October on Healthy El Monte.)

California adults living in high RFEI areas (RFEI of 5.0 or higher – five times more unhealthy outlets than healthier ones) had a 20 percent higher prevalence of obesity and a 23 percent higher prevalence of diabetes than their counterparts living in RFEI areas of 3.0 or lower. A higher RFEI was associated with a higher prevalence of both obesity and diabetes for people living in lower-income and higher-income communities alike. Not surprisingly, the highest rates of obesity and diabetes are among people who live in lower-income and higher RFEI communities.
This relationship between RFEI and obesity and diabetes rates hold true regardless of household income, race/ethnicity, age, gender, or physical activity levels of respondents.

With her forceful support for healthy eating and physical fitness, First Lady Michelle Obama made the words ‘food desert’ part of the public lexicon when she launched the Let’s Move campaign. Now, with the Administration pledging to get rid of food deserts within seven years by helping communities invest in healthier food outlets, the question is being raised whether poorer neighborhoods really do lack healthy food access.

In the 1964 obscenity case of Jacobellis v. Ohio, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote what is perhaps his best known judicial opinion. In his short concurrence in Jacobellis Stewart wrote that ”hard-core pornography” was hard to define, but “I know it when I see it.”

Given the growing epidemic of obesity and diabetes among young people in places like Los Angeles, Pico Rivera and El Monte, perhaps what is more important than what we call these challenged neighborhoods, is what we are doing about them.  It’s not just about getting more grocery stores in them, it’s also about increasing the availabilty of healthy food, compared to fast food and junk food, in the community. This is the kind of decision that every community gets to make for itself.  It is one of the powers that zoning ordinances give local residents.

Are you sick of, and from, all the unhealthy choices sold in your community? Don’t despair; to the extent you can, vote with your fork and work with community leaders to bring into your neighborhood markets deserving of your business. And be sure to tell your city council that you and your kids deserve better.

Joel Epstein is an at-large member of the Board of California Center for Public Health Advocacy and a Member of the L.A. Streetsblog Editorial Board.

A map of the 1600 wells which have been drilled over the past ~90 years in the Inglewood Oilfield near Baldwin Hills. Photo courtesy of KCET.

(Part 1 of the series is here.)

IF FRACKING IS such a safe practice, then why is it such a secretive one?

For the past several years, outspoken journalist and media critic Earl Ofari Hutchinson has likely been asking himself that question. Hutchinson is a resident of Windsor Hills, a community that sits adjacent to the 1000-acre Inglewood Oilfield — the largest urban oilfield in the country. Beyond the regular complaints of health problems, noise, and pollution of residents in the area, Hutchinson and others in the area have complained for years that the drilling has been so violent that the foundations of their homes are cracking. One resident had to put his home up on blocks, another resident claims he hears the house cracking at night. Hutchinson himself had to spend $100,000 to fix the foundation of his home because it was, according to SoCal Connected correspondent Jennifer London, “splitting in half.” London interviewed Hutchinson as part of the report she prepared for KCET’s feature on fracking in L.A., slated to air tonight.

Cracks in the home of Windsor Hills resident. Photo courtesy of KCET

It would seem that all was not well in them thar hills. And although all signs would seem to point to the drilling — and the fracking that likely was part of the drilling process — as the possible culprit, getting PXP to explore taking responsibility for that has been a long and difficult process.

In 2011, PXP finally launched what they called their “first annual ground movement survey.” They found that 7 of their 42 monitoring stations had experienced ground movement of greater than 0.6 inches (0 – 0.6” being the acceptable range). Two of those sites were in the Windsor Hills area. Based on these results, the L.A. County Dept. of Public Works asked PXP to determine whether or not the ground movement was related to oil field operations. They were hoping to find some resolution to the 12 complaints that have been lodged regarding ground movement and structural damage.

“At this time,” however, PXP’s report states, “the data suggested that the recorded ground movement may be related to the movement of the Newport-Inglewood fault zone.” The data, however, is PXP’s own data (as I understand it). And because PXP has concluded that they are not the source of the problem, the Department of Conservation’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR), the agency tasked with overseeing drilling, has not been called in to evaluate the fluid injection and withdrawal rates or assess the validity of the findings.

Part of the reason that PXP can avoid accountability is that they do not have to disclose where they are fracking. Once a company is permitted to drill for oil, they don’t have to get a second permit to engage in fracking. And DOGGR has not felt the need to ask for that information, even though it is within their mandate to do so. And until the legislature requires it or DOGGR is handed “evidence of manifest damage and harm,” they do not plan to monitor or manage use of the technology. Worse still, Congress exempted fracking from federal environmental laws, including the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act, meaning that it is harder for the public to find entry points by which they can hold companies like PXP accountable.

At the meeting I attended in Baldwin Hills a few weeks ago, DOGGR and PXP repeatedly said that fracking has been a regular practice in California for the past thirty or forty years (although it has likely been practiced for longer than that), as a way to reassure people that it is safe. Moreover, companies claim, fracking is often a small part of what they do. Although it may take several weeks to drill, actual fracking may only take place over a couple of days during that period.

True as that may be, when multiplied over the number of wells in the area, it means that there could be an awful lot of fracking going on. Between 2000 and 2008, 692 wells were drilled in Los Angeles County and over 25,000 in California, the fourth largest oil producing state. Production at the Inglewood Oil Field alone – a field that has been open since 1924 – has averaged between 2.5 – 3.1 million barrels a year for the past decade.

All that activity, and the only ones who get to know which wells have been fracked are the oil companies. Something seems wrong with that picture. And it isn’t that the Muppets are oil-hating communists.

The lack of concern for public health both at PXP and at DOGGR has been difficult to comprehend. Then, I stumbled across this graphic in one of PXP’s newsletter reports that seemed to make things clearer. If I pictured the only “living organisms” to be sperm in the ocean, I suppose that it would be easier to not think about environmental concerns.

The graphic is taken from “Geology 101″ in their 2011 newsletter (check the newsletter out for historical photos, maps, and other helpful graphics).

Want to know more? Tonight KCET sits down with Tim Kustic, the head of the Department of Conservation’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR), for his first (and probably last) TV interview. Reporter Jennifer London asks about their unwillingness to require more transparency regarding fracking in light of the environmental and health concerns of the community, as well as the complaints of nearby residents regarding extensive damage to the foundations of their homes. The preview is available here: http://www.kcet.org/shows/socal_connected/socal-connected-97.html

Young men play soccer in a parking lot at the Coliseum. photo: Sahra

RIDING BACK FROM an interview at a school garden off King Blvd., I came across a dozen guys engaged in a serious game of fútbol in a Coliseum parking lot. Curious, I plopped myself down next to Oscar Villatoro, a sweet guy in glasses who was sitting out the game because of a bum knee.

Why play here? I wanted to know. Asphalt is flat and fast, sure, but pretty unforgiving on the body.

There was nowhere nearby to go, he told me.

“There are fields over there,” he pointed behind the swim stadium, “but since they don’t play on a team, they can’t use the fields.”

They’ve tried playing on grass around Exposition Park, but security usually shows up pretty quickly to shoo them away, he said. So they just meet here. And they’ve been meeting here for a while — Oscar started joining them here last August, but they had been playing here well before then.

“In August?” I asked, surprised.

It was one thing to play there on a warm spring afternoon, but another entirely to play on sun-baked, shoe-melting asphalt in the dead of summer.

“Yeah,” he laughed. “Some of the guys get holes in their shoes and all that. But they like it.”

Apparently they do. They didn’t mind it, they told me. They had a lot of space in the parking lot and no one bothered them.

“There’s really nowhere else for you to go?” I asked.

“There are a lot of parks,” said one. “But you can’t play soccer there — it’s not allowed.”

Most parks prohibit soccer. In fact, parks do not only prohibit soccer, but many appear designed specifically to make it difficult for people to try to play soccer, should they feel inclined to try. Some of the South L.A. pocket parks sport strategically placed play areas, boulders, exercise equipment, or trees that chop up open space and make it impossible to play.

The desire to limit soccer playing is understandable. It tears up the grass and can turn a green location into a dustbowl. The space needed for games leaves less park for everyone else and scares away picnickers and people looking to relax or let small children run around. In park-poor areas like South Los Angeles where green space is at a premium, it’s not hard to understand why soccer usually gets the boot.

But the debate over the need for soccer fields is one that the city has been having for at least two decades now. You would think we would have come up with a better solution in that time.

For the parking lot soccer players, the inability of the city to act on the demand for soccer facilities means that the closest areas where they might have been able to play were almost two miles away.

“These guys all live around here,” said Oscar. “It’s too far.”

Since it is unlikely that new soccer fields are going to be built in numbers that can meet neighborhood demand, what if parking lots were looked at as potential fields? What made this place semi-perfect was the fact that it was fenced in on most sides, flat, and there were no signposts or other obstacles to the space. What if lots were just to be paved differently? Perhaps covered with a slightly softer or rubberized surface layer (more like a running track) so that they could be dual use? We certainly have enough parking lots around town, and most sit empty for large blocks of time. Could something like that be a solution? Perhaps you have a better one? Let us know in the comments.

According to the Center for Disease Controlslightly more than 1 in 4 adults in LA County are obese (26.2%). One in five students in LA

Programs such as the "Bike Wrangler" are funded through a RENEW Grant. For more on that program click here.

County are obese. Obesity is one of the most significant risk indicators contributing to chronic disease such as diabetes, heart disease as well as high blood pressure and high cholesterol. With such a high percentage of residents on a course towards poor health the LA County of Department of Public Health is rightly concerned about future high health costs.

This is why LA County recently earmarked $16 million in funds for RENEW LA. RENEW LA targets the issues that lead to obesity and sedentary lifestyles. The program wants to make a “new norm” in which healthy eating and active lifestyles replace fast food and sitting in front of the TV. The program focuses on three key elements:

1. Eating healthy.  RENEW LA will increase accessibility to healthy foods in high-need areas transforming the corner store environment to include health options. Schools will have more nutritious meals. County hospitals and health departments will implement breast feeding education policies.
2. Move healthy. RENEW LA will expand physical education in elementary, junior high and high schools including after-school programs.
3. Live healthy: RENEW LA will provide safe, open spaces for recreation and physical activities. It will also help strengthen and enforce policies that make the streets safer for walkers, bikers and exercising.

The policy hopes to have far reaching effects on the community, local business and the individual. The next step should be to engage health and medical employees in LA to promote healthy behavior. The best way to teach the benefits of healthy living is in person and who better to have a talk than a trusted doctor. For example continuing education services in the medical sector like Pacific Medical Training’s Los Angeles ACLS classes would be ideal instruments to relay instructions and RENEW LA goals to regional medical professionals.

Good luck, RENEW LA. If this means more healthy people walking around LA, then its $16 million put to good use.

Why are you using discredited science? asks a member of the Community Advisory Panel of Supervisor Tim Kustic and Chief Deputy Director Jason Marshall, representatives of the Department of Conservation

Last night, representatives from the Department of Conservation’s Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR), Plains Exploration & Production (PXP), the oil company in charge of the Baldwin Hill Oil Field, and other officials went head to head with members of the Greater Baldwin Hills Alliance and a highly a skeptical community in a standing-room-only meeting at the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area Community Center.

They were there to talk about fracking — a controversial practice that aims to access hard-to-reach deposits of oil and natural gas by enhanced drilling techniques that inject a mixture of water, sand, and toxic chemicals into the ground — and the steps PXP has taken to increase health and safety protections in the oil field, the largest contiguous urban oil field in the country.

The community has reason to be skeptical. In early 2006, noxious fumes released by PXP’s drilling operations wafted through nearby residential areas. Complaints about the odors came from as far as two miles away, and a number of residents evacuated the area.

Residents were stunned to learn at the time that, although PXP had begun one of the most extensive drilling programs in the state – drilling only hundreds of feet from some residences – there had been no environmental impact review as required by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Moreover, DOGGR, a state agency, had been the one to issue PXP the permits without requiring the CEQA review.

The 2008 lawsuit filed by community members resulted in a settlement whereby PXP agreed to reduce the number of wells drilled, commission additional studies on health and air quality, and determine the effects that fracking could have on the surrounding area.

To study the effects of fracking, however, said the PXP representative, one must actually do some fracking.

Hence the need to come before the Community Advisory Panel to report to concerned residents about their activities and give neighbors the opportunity to voice their concerns, help shape the fracking study currently underway at the oil field, and continue to push for more transparent communication related to all fracking activities going forward.

Chief Deputy Director Jason Marshall from DOGGR addresses a concerned full house

DOWNWARD DOGGR
The DOGGR representatives appeared as part of the agency’s commitment to be more responsive to community needs going forward.  One staffer acknowledged that, “You haven’t seen DOGGR in meetings before,” and that, “That’s probably been a bit of an oversight.”

The community did not find their presence particularly reassuring.

Statements such as “DOGGR doesn’t know where all the wells are in California” and “We are not required to be told” where fracking is occuring, although in line with existing law, evoked cries of disbelief, disgust, and lots of angry head shaking from participants.

But aren’t you the monitoring agency? some wanted to know.

Yes, they said, but there is no regulation specifying that companies report where they are fracking. DOGGR monitors the integrity of wells and requires operators to conduct pressure tests and submit that data.

The idea that DOGGR was relying on the honesty of companies instead of conducting the tests themselves provoked more outcries and even questions about who was paying the DOGGR representatives’ salaries.

Trying to inject the voice of reason, Damon Nagami, Staff Attorney from the Natural Resources Defense Council, encouraged participants to contact their state senator and ask them to support AB 591, a bill requiring that oil and gas companies provide DOGGR with information regarding the chemicals injected, the source of the water used in the process, how much water was used, whether any radiological components were injected  and what happened to the components once underground. The bill would also require public disclosure of where fracking was occurring and whether it was near fault lines, a big concern of many of the community members who feared that the fracking could trigger earthquakes.

Some pushed the DOGGR representative on whether he would try to hold companies accountable for this information, regardless of whether the bill passed, and were not pleased with his answer when he backed away from a commitment. People muttered under their breath about how DOGGR had dragged their feet on holding companies accountable in the past.  The agency had even sided with oil companies who opposed the legislation for fear of having to release trade secrets — their chemical “recipes” used in fracking — and potentially losing their competitive edge.

Just as the DOGGR representatives seemed to breathe a sigh of relief that they were going to make it through the meeting relatively unscathed, a member of the Advisory Panel raised his hand and asked why DOGGR was basing its practices on discredited science. He cited a task force report on methane gas migration that DOGGR was basing its safety assessments for the area on, despite the fact that the report had been widely discredited several years ago.

Somewhat taken aback, the DOGGR representatives looked at each other, said they weren’t so familiar with the report, stammered a bit, grabbed some paper, started writing things down furiously, and then handed the panel member their business cards, saying maybe they should chat.

A man who had been shouting out things all night finally lept to his feet and announced everyone needed to contact their local representatives to get AB 591 passed so that they could keep DOGGR in line.

“And on that note…” the panel chairman said with an audible sigh, the meeting was adjourned.

The meeting was facilitated by Community Health Councils, Inc., with the help of the Greater Baldwin Hills Alliance.

Episode 4: Searching for Shangri La – (preview) from MPC on Vimeo.

(Jackson will be speaking as part of the UCLA’s Luskin Center for Innovation’s “Complete Streets Conference” this Friday.  Tickets are sold out, and despite an earlier report they won’t be accepting walk-ins .   If you check back here Monday for Streetsblog’s coverage. You can also read his thoughts on the importance of a federal transportation bill that caters to healthy communities in a 2011 op/ed published on Streetsblog.- DN)

Dr. Richard Jackson is the head of UCLA’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences.  While he’s been on television as part of the Designing Healthy Communities series on PBS and is known as an advocate for public health in American planning, he still remembers his roots.

Specifically, he remembers how he was able to ride a bus in his hometown of Newark, New Jersey anywhere he needed to go.  That experience helped shape how he views transportation and its impact on the health of our communities and the health of our children.

“Because of our car dependent sprawl, Angelenos can only do one, maybe two big things in a day,” Jackson remarks.  ”In other cities, you can do three or more.”

But a well built transportation network, the kind that gives people safe and attractive options to get from place to place, provides more than just a times savings.  It allows for a healthy lifestyle not possible in all communities.

Robert Ross, president of the California Endowment, tells audiences that he can determine how long someone will live based on their zip code.  Jackson agrees.  “In Oakland California, the average difference in life span of people living in the higher income zip codes and the people living in the lower income zip codes is about fifteen years. It doesn’t need to be that way.”

While transportation isn’t the only thing holding these areas back, access to health care, clean air and healthy food all play a major part, a car-centered transportation system is a major challenge.  Naturally, the areas that have freeways criss-crossing the community tend to be the same ones lacking in hospitals, supermarkets and farmers markets, and attractive open space.

“It’s such a huge disadvantage to be poor in America, because there is such a difficulty gaining access to physical activity, to parkland, to decent and healthy food,” Jackson remarks.

“We’ve built America in a way that is fundamentally unhealthy.”

The culprit is a country that has placed a premium on providing easy access to unhealthy food that his high in salt, sugar and calories at the same time that it has dramatically decreased the amount of physical activity that Americans undertake on a daily basis. In other words,  Americans have simultaneously increased their calorie production while decreasing the amount of calories they burn.

“The generations before ours, many of which were farmers, used to burn 7000 calories a day,” Jackson calculates.  ”We can’t continue to eat that way if we’re at keyboard burning, if we’re lucky, 2,000 calories a day.”

To address the two-fold problem, Jackson promotes the concept of building streets that are safe and attractive places for people to be outside.  Places where people can walk or ride a bike to get where they need to go.  Is Car Culture a problem?  Absolutely.  But so is a built environment that encourages an unhealthy lifestyle by encouraging people to stay in their dwellings, places of work and houses of worship unless they are moving to or from their car.

“We all know we are what we eat, but we’re also what we build.”

So what should America do next?

Focus on the Children.  Think of the Children

“As a pediatrician, I’m going to assert that most of the public health interventions that have been successful have started with a focus on children,” Jackson asserts.

Jackson isn’t advocating writing off the current generations to focus on the next ones, but points out that efforts to curb smoking, drinking and drug use all focused on kids and all focused on making those activities “uncool.”  A similar effort could be made to make bicycling and eating healthy foods be “cooler” activities.

Efforts such as PBS’s “Don’t Supersize Me” campaign and the public campaign to introduce healthier food into schools by First Lady Michelle Obama are a start, but when Mazda has cartoon characters going into schools to encourage kids to pressure their parents to buy SUV’s, we have a long way to go.

In short, America faces a great challenge.  How do you change the charecter of the country’s built environment and educate our kids about healthy lifestyles at a time when popular culture and billions in marketing is pushing America in the other direction?  It won’t be easy, but as Jackson explains, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

“Our children deserve a world that is as healthful, and beautiful and biodiverse as the one we’ve been given. I see what we’ve been building in America as, in essence, generational child abuse. We are not providing that to our next generation.”

Potential members must ride with the group for a probationary period of 45 days so that members can assess the extent to which that person will enhance the group and follow the rules, particularly when out on the road with the group. Once the period has passed and the person is approved, they can begin to invest in building up their bikes. The group is still a work in progress, says manager Shuntain Thomas. They are set in their mission of building bridges between health and kids, but are still strategizing on the best way to accomplish that goal.

In the meanwhile, they can be found at Exposition Park on Saturdays or riding in parades. Next up: the Black History Parade in Pasadena on Feb. 18 at 10 a.m.

Apparently California is a good place to grow oranges. Photo:Budget Travel Adventures

Orange empire

Los Angeles grew up around three discoveries of what the local soil was good for. First, the ground harbored petroleum. Second, and probably more significantly, it was good for growing citrus at a time when a confluence of plant breeding and the completion of transcontinental railroad links with refrigerated cars made it possible to grow fruit here and ship the produce eastwards.  Third – linked to the second by way of picturesque citrus crate labels that advertized a pleasant life in the sun –  the land was good for subdividing.

As a result, the L.A. region boomed first as an agricultural zone and then as a population center.  In 1910 there were 8000 farms in Los Angeles County and the county was the most economically productive ag county in the state, probably number one in the country as well, with 1.7 million orange trees and more than 7000 ‘backyard’ cows not on farms but kept for milk like someone might have a chicken nowadays.

The population of Los Angeles County rose by 1197 percent between 1900-1930, the golden years of local agriculture, followed by a second demographic jump in the 40s and 50s and a third in the 90s. Groves and fields were converted to houses, businesses, asphalt.  Today, there are approximately 90 farms left in L.A. County, now ranked the 28th leading agricultural county in the state.

Regional food hubs

There is still productive farmland in surrounding counties and the Central Valley of California is one of the world’s leading producers of fruits and vegetables.  The challenge is how to expand distribution of fresh fruits and vegetables and other local agricultural products to underserved neighborhoods while also enhancing the incomes of remaining small and medium size farmers. When we were conducting the Food and Transportation in South Los Angeles project that I have written about, local residents noted the irony that it was hard to find good quality produce in areas that were, in some cases, just dozens of blocks from the terminal produce market, food warehouses, and the highways that serviced these storage facilities. How did a mismatch arise between California’s massive production of produce and parts of Los Angeles where it is hard to buy fresh fruits and vegetables?

According to a 2010 report by my colleague Sharon Cech at UEPI and other members of the Regional food Hub Advisory Council, the rise of industrial scale agriculture hollowed out the infrastructure that used to allow local food to be distributed, processed, stored and sold in the region.

“The once vast array of mid‐scale food businesses such as packinghouses, independent processors, and regional grocery stores are feeling the effects of the trend of consolidation occurring in the food industry… The mainstream food system, which increasingly favors large‐scale production–mega grocery chains contracting directly with mega growers– has undercut the terminal market system and the independent grocery stores that they supply… Mid‐size wholesale customers are critical for mid‐size growers who are not big enough to sell to large grocery chains or institutions but cannot afford the transaction costs of selling their entire production at farmers’ markets. There is significantly less labor involved in selling a single 1,000‐pound order of oranges than in selling the same oranges to 500 customers, two pounds at a time.”

Their solution is to promote regional food hubs as a way to aggregate food from small and medium farmers in a manner that can reach wholesale, retail and other distribution channels.  You can think of a regional food hub as a warehouse where food from multiple farmers is aggregated together so that there are sufficient quantities to interest mid to large scale buyers. The hub would be different from existing produce markets in also selling food at the retail scale through a permanent farmers market or on-site stores. There could also be commercial kitchens for use by small scale food enterprises and cooking classes; office space for community organizations or meetings; refrigerated trucks to source from local farms; and possibly a commissary with a fleet of fruit carts and/or grocery trucks to sell in different neighborhoods.

The wholesale warehouse + retail/ farmers market model isn’t the only form that a food hub could take. Regional food hubs could be developed by commercial food distributors who focus on local products, by farmers cooperatives, or even by one some of the region’s larger farmers markets (where restaurants and small distributors already shop). Information technologies that match farmers and buyers or that allow farmers to coordinate deliveries can also fulfill some of the functions of a food hub while a physical hub is being planned. The regional food hub report has case studies of multiple models of hubs.

Ideally, a regional food hub or hubs in Los Angeles could be at the center of distribution channels for local and healthy food. Farmers’ markets or food stores can operate mobile or satellite markets, taking vans or stands to different underserved areas. Cargo bikes could deliver food between wholesale markets and farmers markets and restaurants and food stores. Social marketing and promotional campaigns can expand demand for locally grown food at new outlets like WIC only stores. Produce trucks and fruit carts that sell in low income areas could source from a food hub. Excess produce from local farms and backyard orchards can be picked and donated to food banks such as California Food Banks and Food Forward.

A greener warehouse

If a regional food hub occupied warehouse space, there is also potential to demonstrate how a wholesale distribution business can be more friendly to surrounding communities. Large warehouses abound in the Los Angeles region, linked especially to the storage and transshipment of products imported into the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The trucks and trains that carry freight to be warehoused (and trucks idling their engines at or near warehouse sites) pollute by emitting small toxic particles called particulate matter (PM) into the air. Particulate emissions from diesel vehicles and equipment contribute to health risks that include cardiovascular problems, cancer, asthma, decreased lung function and capacity, reproductive health problems, possibly brain tumors and premature death.

Trucks servicing warehouses also sometime park and idle on public streets when facilities do not provide adequate on-site parking. Warehouses are aimed at distant points: factories in china, railyards near the port, big box stores in Arizona, rather than connected to the fabric of life in the communities in which they are located. But a regional food hub with retail shops, a farmers market and other space open to the public could ‘reinvent the warehouse’ to make it a community asset. Warehouses could be electrified so that arriving delivery vehicles plug in rather than idle their polluting diesel engines. In the mid to long term all new trucks should have electric rather than internal combustion engines.

Street food in Echo Park

Having written about food & transit last week , I want to share some thoughts (and a poll) on street food.  Street and mobile food are important determinants of the food environment in Los Angeles.  They are also critical elements of more vibrant streets. But they have enemies and most of the policy activity in the city and region in recent years has been to restrict rather than support street food. I think street advocates should consider whether and how to push in the opposite direction, for legal and healthy street food.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

The rules

Street and mobile food are common in the Los Angeles region, especially in low-income, immigrant neighborhoods. Meals, snacks, drinks and groceries are sold from trucks and  push carts; from  strollers and grocery carts jury-rigged for vending; from grills, tables and tarps temporarily placed along streets and sidewalks; and by vendors carrying food on foot.

Despite its reputation as a hotbed of street food, Los Angeles, is, in fact, the only one of the ten biggest cities in the United States without legal sidewalk vending of food.  Los Angeles Municipal Code Section 42(b) prohibits sale of any products, including food, on sidewalks. “No person, except as otherwise permitted by this section, shall on any sidewalk or street offer for sale, solicit the sale of, announce by any means the availability of, or have in his or her possession, control or custody, whether upon his or her person or upon some other animate or inanimate object, any goods, wares or merchandise which the public may purchase at any time.”

Section 42 (m) of the Municipal Code allows for the “Establishment and Regulation of Special Sidewalk Vending Districts.” Complicated regulations, including a requirement that 20 percent of surrounding landowners and residents sign the application in favor of a new district and assignment of vendors to specified, fixed locations make it difficult to  establish and maintain vending districts. Only one vending zone, in McArthur Park, was ever created, and it failed.

Food trucks operating in the streets are legal under California Vehicle Code section 22455 but often subject to shifting restrictions on parking. Food trucks and sidewalk vendors are also subject to state and county health codes.

Reasons for the rules

Mobile and street food have been barred or restricted in Los Angeles due to efforts by fixed location stores and restaurants to restrict competition; a narrow definition of what streets and sidewalks are for (unimpeded flow of cars and pedestrians respectively); concerns with food safety; and a ‘suburban’ vision of what a city should look like (a fear of crowds, ethnic diversity, poor people, density etc.) If you are interested in a history of vending, check out Alfonso Morales and Gregg Kettles. “Healthy Food Outside: Farmers Markets, Taco Trucks, and Sidewalk Fruit Vendors. 26 J. Contemp. Health L. & Pol’y 20. Fall 2009; and  Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Renia Ehrenfeucht. Sidewalks: Conflict and Negotiation over Public Space. MIT Press, 2009

Scattered enforcement of municipal and County regulations, low entry costs for sidewalk food vendors, and the demand for street food creates an odd juxtaposition in which street food is forbidden but ubiquitous. Vendors themselves are highly visible magnets for activity on the streets, celebrated in popular culture, persecuted by the law, but largely invisible in policy debates about the future of the city.

A snapshot of street vending in South Los Angeles

A street food vendor in Eagle Rock

For our recent project on trasnportation and food access in South Los Angeles with CRA/LA and Esperanza Community Housing Corporation, promatoras from Esperanza interviewed 45 street vendors who were selling food in the project area using every kind of vehicle from improvised push carts to trailors pulled behind cars. Of those interviewed, only 30.2% reported being aware of any laws governing street or mobile vending. 34.9% reported having had encounters with law enforcement in the past. If a legal permit were available, 50% of vendors surveyed said they would pay up to $100 for a permit.  16% of surveyed vendors said they would pay for a permit ‘no matter its cost’. Only 4% said they would not pay for a permit.

Vendors were selling a range of items, with snacks and drinks the most common, but a quarter of vendors sold fruits and vegetables, highlighting the possibility that mobile vending could be a source of healthy food in underserved areas.

Foods Availability by Mobile Vendors

Changing the Rules

Since most street vendors are interested in being able to sell legally and because street food should be a valued part of a diverse and healthy city, it’s worth considering some models for changing the law to allow food to be sold on sidewalks in the City of Los Angeles. I’ll summarize four options: a legalize and regulate model; a greencarts model, a private land model, and a ‘benign neglect’ model.

1. Legalize sidewalk vending and support and regulate mobile food vending. The City of Los Angeles should allow permitted sale of food on city sidewalks. A legal permitting process would recognize the value of street and mobile vending, create opportunities for entrepreneurship in the legal economy, and allow the City to regulate and influence street food to make it healthier. This option, which is the recommendation of our food and transportation in South LA project, would have a few components:
1. Legalize sidewalk vending -  without onerous and expensive requirements. The more restrictions that are placed on vendors such as limits on where they can operate, needing permission from adjacent stores/ restaurants, mandatory dimensions or aesthetics for carts, etc, the harder it will be for vendors to afford or comply with permits. There are some specific recommendations on the what/ where / who/ how of sidewalk vending on pages 22-23 of our food and transportation report.  Los Angeles County Department of Public Health will have to be actively engaged in figuring out ways to make health regulations easy to understand and to comply with.
2. Incentivize vending of healthy items. The City should use incentives and disincentives to encourage more vending of healthy items by produce trucks, food carts and other mobile vendors. The mobile food task force of the Los Angeles Food Policy Council is working on a point system for rating vended food that could be the basis for definitions of healthfulness. Incentives could include lower price permits for vendors of healthier items, priority access to private or public sector loans/ grants, permission to sell at a broader range of zones or priority in receiving permits to sell at desirable spots, waiver of requirements to store carts at commissaries, etc.
3. Maintain and enforce restrictions on unhealthy vending near schools. With LAUSD improving the nutrition of school food, vendors of junk food and snacks setting up near school campuses have become a major source of bad food for students. To support schools as healthy places to learn and oases from the junk and fast food that characterize many neighborhoods, the City should maintain and enforce a ban on unhealthy food vending near schools.

2. Legalize ‘green carts’ that sell only healthy food. An alternative to legalizing vending of all food on sidelwalks is to just legalize the sale of healthy items. Cities such as New York have created a separate class of green cart vending permits for sales of fruits and vegetables.l Los Angeles County is exploring whether they can start a pilot project of green carts in unincorproated regions of the County.

3. Focus on privately owned space near sidewalks as sites for vending.  In some cities like Portland, Oregon (where it is legal to sell on sidewalks), most food carts are located on privately owned lots just off the sidewalks. http://www.foodcartsportland.com/maps/ If it proves too difficult to legalize or regulate sales of food on sidewalks in Los Angeles, a fall back position could be to ensure that zoning laws governing private land allow siting of food carts and sales of food.

4. Encourage regulators to treat healthy street food with ‘benign neglect.’ Advocates for health could work with vendors and regulators so that policie and health inspectors do not target sellers of fruits, vegetables, and healthy meals. There is some evidence that current enforcement already follows this pattern, with hotdog vendors more likely to be sited than sellers of cut fruit. 

Happy Halloween, transit riders. All charts via: Transit Civil Rights & Economic Survival in Los Angeles

Yesterday afternoon, the Bus Rider’s Union and thirteen allied organizations released “Transit Civil Rights & Economic Survival in Los Angeles: A Case for Federal Intervention in LA Metro,” a report detailing how service cuts and fare hikes have devastated working class families in the past four years.  Since the expiration of a court ordered consent decree which mandated levels of service, Metro slashed 12% of its bus service hours while approving a series of fare increases.

“The tragedy of the MTA policies over the last four years is that they roll back almost all of the transit improvements – namely more buses, more bus lines, and lower fares – that MTA implemented under federal court order in response to the BRU’s civil rights lawsuit and 10-year federal consent decree,” states Barbara Lott-Holand, the co-chair of the Bus Riders Union and a transit rider herself for the last 35 years.

Metro and the BRU are awaiting the results of a Civil Rights Audit conducted by the Federal Transit Administration at the request of the Bus Riders earlier this year.  Only transit agencies in Atlanta and Los Angeles underwent this review in the past year.

A lot of the facts and figures found in the report won’t be new to regular readers of Streetsblog and others familiar with recent Metro policy, but it’s still striking to see some of the figures laid out, showing the cumulative impact of the service cuts and fare hikes that have been a major part of Metro’s bus planning since 2007.  The BRU also rejects Metro’s argument that the cuts are about increasing efficiency noting that Metro’s buses carry more passengers per mile than any bus fleet in America except New York City’s.

The report goes on to argue that the cuts and hikes have a disproportionate impact on struggling minority communities noting the higher rates of unemployment and poverty facing many bus riders.  90% of all bus riders are from minority communities and over 70% of all transit riders are minorities in Los Angeles.  In Los Angeles county alone, African Americans are facing a 19% unemployment rate while Latinos face 14% unemployment.

Some of the numbers in the report are a result of timing.  Much of the increase in Metro’s budget comes from Measure R, the half-cent sales tax passed by L.A. County voters in 2008 to fund transit and road improvements.  While most of the funds in these projects are “locked in” to certain projects and can’t be readily moved to fund transit operations, other sales taxes dedicated to Metro are more fluid.  One of the reports arguments is that some of those funds that are going towards rail expansion ought to be used instead to protect bus service and fare costs.

The result of all these cuts and increases is reduced ridership in an era where people have less disposable income to spend.  As a result, people’s ability to care for their families is reduced or their dependency on an expensive automobile is increased.

“When bus service cuts make it hard for people to get to medical appointments, jobs that feed their families, and schools, it’s an attack on their health and their rights,” explains Martha Arguello, Director of the Los Angeles chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. ”And in the worst-polluted city in the US, Metro’s policies have driven down mass transit use, and the health effects of more cars on the road are devastating for low income children and families. ”

The report concludes with a series of potential fixes to the bus cuts/fare hikes crisis outlined in the report.

• Reinvest resources in the bus system and keep resources in neighborhoods: Any changes to the bus systems made in the name of efficiency should be invested 100% back into the bus system.
• Open an honest debate about Metro’s funding allocation decisions based on transparent accounting of the availability
• of operation eligible funds.
• Decisions about service changes should protect civil rights and be based on fair and balanced analysis of modes and
• efficient use of resources.
• Ensure minimum impact of service changes through strict standards for alternative service.

Joining the Bus Riders Union in the release of the report are the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, Communities for a Better Environment, East Los Angeles Community Corporation, Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance, Los Angeles Community Action Network, Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles, Public Advocates Inc., Restaurant Opportunities Center – Los Angeles, SEIU-United Service Workers West, SEIU-United Long Term Care Workers, Southeast Asian Community Alliance, Strategic Action for a Just Economy, and Urban Habitat.

A view of Bodger Street during a visit to Arceo Walk on July 7 of this year.

Martha Sera likes walking.  A former high school track star, Sera regularly goes for mile-long walks with her husband, father and children, ages two and five.  That Sera has found a way to walk for a living is just a bonus.

Sera is one of a handful of organizers for the City of El Monte Walking Club, an innovative attempt by the city to increase the physical activity of its residents.  Participants in the club show up at an assigned location, either a public park or school, stretch and go for a walk.  Upon completion of the mile walk, they receive a ticket that can be turned in for a prize.  Five tickets earns a pedometer; 15 tickets, a t-shirt.

“You should try and take 10,000 steps a day to have a healthy lifestyle,” Sera notes.  According to her pedometer, Sera takes 1,400 steps per mile.

It's ok to tread on me. Messages on the sidewalk encourage people to walk...

When I met Sera, she was sitting under a tree with a sign-in sheet for the first of two walking club meetings last Saturday morning at 8:30 at Arceo Park.  After a brief introduction, the two of us took off on a walk around the park, looking for more club members than the handful who had shown up.  An hour later, we were at Columbia Middle School, less than a half mile away for the second meeting.

Every community that’s taken part in the PLACE program, a 2008 public health grant program sponsored by L.A. County to improve communities’ overall health through better transportation planning,  benefits from unintended consequences.  Creating a walking club for adults wasn’t part of the initial PLACE grant from the City of El Monte, but the hundreds of adults and their children who have taken to walking to improve their health because of the program is an unintended, but happy, consequence of their new transportation vision.

The idea for the club is simple.  El Monte residents have a higher-than-average rate of obesity and asthma, and the easiest solution to these related issues is to increase their activity.  More than two-thirds (66.8%) of adults in El Monte were either obese or overweight in 2007, more than that of adults in LA County (58.1%) and the state as a whole (61.3%.)  Nearly half (47.7%) of El Monte’s children are either obese or overweight.  On top of that, 9.8% of adults in El Monte were diagnosed with asthma compared to 6.5% of adults in Los Angeles County. In that same year, 4.1% of adults and children in both the El Monte Health District and LA County as a whole had been diagnosed with chronic respiratory conditions.

While attendance at the park was sparse this particular weekend, Sera had more success at Columbia Middle School.  More than 60 participants, many of them parents with their children, attended one of the three “meetings” over the course of the week.  Saturdays tend to be more lightly attended, so we had two parent-child combos, both of whom first heard about the program through the school.  At the park, walkers could walk around the park or on the Arceo Walk route (more on that later) that stretches east from the Park to Santa Anita Boulevard and back.  At Columbia, they walk on a track.

The walking club just began its third year last month.  The club runs for nine months and has traditionally centered around the three parks Arceo, Lambert and Mountain View Parks.  This year a new partnership with local school districts has expanded the program to Columbia Middle School and Mira Monte School.  Both are now allowing students and adults to use school grounds on certain days.  At Columbia Middle School, Sera leads stretches and walks every Tuesday and Thursday evening and Saturday morning.

A handful of Saturday walkers at Columbia's track last Saturday.

“I like it here,” Sera says of the track.  ”When we’re at the schools we have more kids.  A lot of parents bring their kids with them.”

On Saturday, there are two kids among the dozen club members at the Columbia track this Saturday morning.  ”Edgar” and his mother “Jenny” are two of the first three people to arrive.  Edgar has asthma and takes part in the walking club to get exercise.  Sera is familiar with his exercise habits noting that last Thursday he was able to run for much of the track, but today he chose to walk next to his mother.

The walking club is a family affair for adults and their parents as well.  Carmen Arambula started her third year in the walking club.  ”Walking helped me a lot, I had high blood pressure,” she began. “My dad too, last year I made him join us for the walks.”

But for many participants, the club provides one of the few ways that people can safely go for a walk.  Sporting an “El Monte Walking Club t-shirt” Adrianna Esquirrel complained that the grocery store is too far away and there aren’t enough sidewalks to walk regularly.  The distance also prevents making daily trips, so when the shopper does go to the store he or she has to bring so many bags that walking home would be difficult.

Over 400 people are on the Healthy El Monte email list that receives updates on the program, but Sera thinks that word of mouth and promotion through the schools has been the most effective way to get the word out.  Half of the people attending Saturday’s event at Columbia Middle School has joined the club in the past month.  All but one had heard about the walk through the Middle School.  The other woman was brought by Esquirrel.

El Monte’s walking club program is sponsored by the Center for Civic Partnerships, California Healthy Cities and Communities.  For more information about the club, visit the Healthy El Monte website.

Photo: Randy Hi

Apparently I was wrong.

Just watching the excellent Consumer Watchdog segment aired September 1st on ABC News confirmed for me what I had always suspected about researchers who take money from the soda industry and use the patina of their university affiliation to veil their paycheck-inspired research findings.  The University of Alabama must be very proud to have David Allison, AKA Joe Cola, on its faculty.

What’s refreshing in a Madison Avenue soda ad sort of way about this mainstream media piece is it is just that.  A mainstream media piece on a news broadcast not known for its heavy lifting.  And what’s more ABC News is where most Americans get their news.  Scratch that.  Most Americans get their news from Jon Stewart and The Daily Show, but ABC is an actual news broadcast rather than a late night comedy hour.  What moved the network to run the piece.  Who knows?  Perhaps the boys and girls at ABC News were watching Mad Men and had a sudden pang of guilt about the industry spokesman statements they too often take as gospel.

The ABC piece carefully lays out the evidence against Professor Allison’s bias thoroughly discrediting him and the shameless industry that pays his mortgage, flies him first class to conferences and funds the so called “research” he conducts on the connection between obesity and soda consumption.  Manufactured facts I call them because that is what they are.

These are tough times, and we all need to make a living.  But shilling for the soda industry on an issue as important as America’s diabetes and obesity epidemic is beyond the pale.

ABC’s outing of Professor Allison is a welcome development for a medium not known for pushing hard against lies and the hired guns who get paid handsomely to utter them.  Thanks to the network for taking a hard look at Allison and the industry that relies on shills like him.

Joel Epstein is a Los Angeles-based strategic communications consultant focused on transportation, public health and other critical urban issues.  Visit joelepstein.com

to learn more.

The above map shows Long Beach broken down geographically by census data and racial diversity. The lighter the dot, the higher the percentage of residents are Caucasian. The Vista Street Bike Boulevard, 3rd and Broadway Segregated Bike Paths and 2nd Street Green Sharrow are in the South Central and Southwest parts of the city, leading to charges that Long Beach’s bike boldness has been about servicing well-to-do caucasian areas and not the rest of the city.

During the past three years, Long Beach has shown a commitment to pushing the envelope when it comes to promoting clean and green transportation options.  However, the purpose of this article and last week’s series is to examine if the city has lived up to its agreement with the L.A. County Public Health Department to fulfill its Policies for Livable and Active Communities and Environment (PLACE) Grant the city was awarded in 2008.

The other four communities that received a PLACE Grant used their funds to bring in experts and planners to create master plans.  Long Beach used most of their grant to hire Charlie Gandy, a leader in the field of transportaion infrastructure and a spokesman that oozes charisma, but by his own admission “isn’t much of a master plan guy.”

As a result, the other four communities provided me with hundreds of pages of documents prepared as part of their grant.  Long Beach provided quite a bit less, although what they did provide is part of a Master Plan update that is planned for later this year.  But for now, Long Beach is in first place among the five cities that received PLACE Grants, but they’re in fifth as far as the planning portion of the grant.

That’s the bad news.  The good news is it appears that based on the information available, Long Beach is on the right track.  In the long-run, the content of the final document is what’s most important, not what month it is passed in.

While Long Beach city staff have worked on updating their mobility element, much of the city’s attention has been drawn to the innovative measures bicycle projects and that’s by design.

“We wanted to show people what was possible,” explains Derek Bunham from the city’s planning department.  ”It can be hard for the public, hard for the decision makers, to see the policy on a large scale.  So we decided to show them what can be done with demonstration projects.”

Many of these pilot projects have been in business districts and the well-to-do community along Vista Street, where the first Bike Boulevard was put in earlier this year.  Four different people commented to me, all on background, that Long Beach was “putting in the most for the people that need it least” with its progressive programming.

Longtime Long Beach resident Alan Allesio was not one of those people.  Alessio refers to the much-praised infrastructure as “kind of a tease” to the rest of the city and “There are certain areas that got a lot, and if you happen to live in that area, then you can really dig what’s going on.  I don’t live in one of those areas.”

For their part, city staff understands their issues and says that better bike projects are on their way for the entire city soon.  “When you build demand, you start with the early adopters, the neighborhoods that get it and want to go first,” Gandy explains.  ”We were funded for fifteen miles of bike boulevards, and we’ve just begun with 1.5 miles.  The rest will happen, and they won’t happen on streets that look like this one.”

In other words, the city is hearing complaints about equity but when the funded projects are completed, the projects that will most likely get done barring something unforeseen happening, then the equity issue will vanish.  Rather than just take city staff at their word, we created this map to test their claims.

You can view the full map at GeoCommons.

The above map breaks Long Beach up in to its different census tracts.  Inside each tract is a small circle which shows what percent of the residents living inside the tract are minorities and how many are Caucasian.  Clicking on the dot will give you that data.  The red, orange and white lines show bike projects that will be completed in the short-term.  Clicking on the line will tell you what street, the length of the project, and whether the project will be a bike lane, bike boulevard, or something else.

The map demonstrates that the city, if it follows through on the short-term and funded projects in the map, that the city will create a network that serves communities of all races and will provide residential connections to the beaches, the Downtown, the new transit plaza and those Bike Business Districts that are proving so popular.

But that’s not to say that existing bicycle infrastructure, even the new ones in the upper-class, mostly Caucasian neighborhoods or business districts are for everyone.

“There’s our indicator species,” Gandy remarked during our bike tour, gesturing to a Latina woman and two tween-age children on beach cruisers heading down Broadway on a trip to the beach.  ”She feels comfortable enough in a separated bike lane to ride in normal clothes, without a helmet.  That trip is probably made in a car without that lane.”  Don’t worry, the kids were wearing bike helmets.

Later on our ride, we followed a family of five, all Latino, and their neighbor from next door, who was riding to the beach path from Pacific Avenue across town.  When we chatted with the family.  In the words of the father, “No way we would have tried this a couple of years ago.  No way.”

Or, as former Long Beach resident and founder of the L.A. County Bike Coaliton Joe Linton put it, “Long Beach is the most bike friendly city in Southern California.  All that new infrastructure is used by everyone, regardless of where they live.”

But while Long Beach has tripled its infrastructure of bicyclists in the last three years, the city has also been working on an update to the circulation element to its Master Plan.  As Bunham put it, “the policy is going to catch up the infrastructure.”

The city has done outreach to create an element that incorporates both traditional and new facilities for cyclists and pedestrians.  While the plan hasn’t been revealed to the public, a twenty-page document entitled “Principles for Active Living and Complete Streets” that outlines the goals that Long Beach’s transportation and circulation element should meet when it comes to the City Council in the fall or early winter.

“If you look at our existing Mobility Element, you see a lot about road widenings about moving cars,” Dunham explains, “Now we want to focus more on people than cars.  Focus on pedestrian, bike ant transit travel  This is such a big shift, we wanted to create a public document that showed the principles so that people can see what we’re talking about.”

“We’re not trying to play a zero sum game, or declare war on the car or anything like that.  We’re trying to link modes together not get rid of one.”

So what does “Principles for Active Living and Complete Streets” promise Long Beach?  It outlines the principles that Long Beach should follow.

• Balance the Needs of all Modes of Travel
• Promote Walking
• Promote Bicycling
• Promote Transit
• Create Dynamic and Context Sensitive Streets
• Protect and Enhance the Environment
• Build Healthy and Active Neighbors
• Create Transit Oriented Development Along Transit Routes
• Ensure Connectivity to Active Routes and Other Modes

“Our big focus has been on shifting short trips,” explains Ira Brown, who is working on the Master Plan update with the planning department. “People would usually take the car to go to the laundromat, go to the store, and that trip can be made on a bike or by foot. We want to help people make that decision.”

Which isn’t to say that there’s nothing for advocates to do in Long Beach.  While the principles and maps released are a great start, there are always things that can go wrong in a couple of months.  When Long Beach does release its Draft Master Plan this fall, Streetsblog will update its Long Beach series.

Damien Newton wrote this story while participating in The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, a program of USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

It’s the stuff of nightmares.  As people grow older, they face the fear that as their body ages, they will have fewer and fewer options to help them get from one place to another.  Denied this basic right, they eventually find themselves isolated in their homes, with few options to interact with other people on a daily basis.  According to a new report from Transportation for America, by 2015 over 15.5 million people over the age of 65, including 17% of senior Angelenos, will face this dilemma.

If you’ve ridden a Metro bus in Greater Los Angeles, you’ve seen them.  Those weird tv’s which either seem to be stuck at a blasting volume or completely muted, playing a mix of mind numbing trivia, local public interest news, or advertisements.  Purchasing some time on TransitTV is a pretty cost effective way to get out a message, when you consider that 2 million people ride Metro buses every day.  But most Metro riders find the televisions to be a waste of space at best, noise pollution at worst.

Thanks to a new art video series, “Out the Window” is seeking to change that.  Instead of streaming the odd mix of paid programming, Transit TV will devote some time to streaming video art.

From June 13 through the 17th, the films will run once an hour, but on the 18th and 19th, the films will run for 45 out of every 60 minutes.  All of the showings on Transit TV are being donated by the company.

The videos were produced by a team of 75 local high school students working with artists and teachers at Echo Park Film Center and with Public Matters at East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy and Pilipino Workers Center; coordinated by Freewaves with the conceptual and technical direction of UCLA REMAP.

Heidi Zeller, with Freewaves, explains how the video series is actually an interactive art experience. “Out the Window adds a little something different to the bus riding experience in LA. Some of the videos share poetic visions of the city while others offer insightful critiques. All of them end with questions that viewers can respond to via text. We want to get a citywide dialogue going! What are the possibilities for LA? To participate in this conversation just ride the bus armed with a cell phone. Answers will be posted on our blog.”

The above video is part of a series called “Have You Noticed” which has posted three videos to Vimeo already.  Students from the East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy created the series with Public Matters around healthy food access issues in their community?  As you can see, the videos aren’t heavy on conversation, but focus the viewers attention on the screens with some reading of printed text and a donated by compelling soundtrack.

In addition to “Have You Noticed How Far You Have to Go to Get to a Supermarket,” you can also view “Have You Noticed How Much Junk Food We Eat” and “Have You Noticed How Often We Eat Fast Food” at Vimeo.

Other video series that will be running include Hidden Hi Fi, students’ lives in Filipinotown including experiences with migration and immigration and The Sound We See: A Los Angeles City Symphony, an exploration of the “urban symphony” of sound in Los Angeles.

“Place is the new identity politics. The youth in Out the Window examine this subject anew hopefully in
dialogue with fellow commuters, 91% of who say they like art,” says Anne Bray, Executive Director of
Freewaves, LA’s public media arts organization.

If you don’t ride the bus, or don’t ride it enough, and want to catch all of the films, there will be a public screening on Sunday June 12, 3 pm at Inner City Arts, followed by a reception at 720 Kohler St in downtown LA near Central and 7th Streets.

For more on food deserts and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health's RENEW project aimed at reducing childhood obesity and diabetes, visit: publichealthadvocacy.org/ Photo: How Stuff Works

But a food desert is also not my image of the sun beating down on the arid land in Twenty Nine Palms or Mojave.  In reality it is a common sight here in Los Angeles County.  Often a neighborhood and sometimes an entire city, a food desert is a place where you can’t easily find healthy foods because there is little to be had.  The good stuff’s not there for a variety of reasons including an absence of stores that carry quality fresh fruit and vegetables at a fair price.

If you want to find the food deserts in L.A. just follow the trash in any of the County’s junk food districts.  You can find the desert next to or even inside many South LA convenience stores or at the To Go window at a fast food restaurant in a Baldwin Park or San Fernando mini mall.  The soda bottles, candy wrappers, Styrofoam containers and empty chip bags are the telltale signs of the food desert.  Like the tumbleweed, shell casings and tin cans of the real desert, junk food containers betray the food wasteland.  And they are one big reason why more and more Angelenos young and old alike are struggling today with obesity and diabetes.

(It would be tempting to say that food deserts are brought to you and caused by the people who brought you “The Real Thing.”  And in many ways they are, because soda is often the cash cow in fast food establishments.  But Coke, Pepsi and Sunkist don’t just want to sell their products in lieu of food in the food desert.  They of course want to sell their junk everywhere.)

Whatever the cause or combination of causes, the challenge now is making the food desert bloom with large and small stores that offer quality fruits and vegetables at good prices.   The fact is it is often not easy to attract quality markets to poor communities.  Sure there is still redlining (the practice by banks of writing off parts of the city to business investment) but sometimes the resistance comes from the small independent storeowners who fear a loss of their livelihood in the arrival of the big players.  Acknowledging these concerns and that buying power means everything to a small store owner, if they’re not offering healthy food in their establishments then perhaps they don’t deserve the community’s patronage.

As has been proven in some parts of L.A., the food desert doesn’t have to be our fate forever.  Large supermarkets like Food For Less have long demonstrated that poor and working class people will flock to a market that gives them quality at a fair price.  And Fresh & Easy, a new arrival in South LA and elsewhere, is demonstrating that healthy markets and the community can coexist.

Farmers markets are another important solution.  And best of all, they bring the produce to the community, so you can often walk or bike to them.

These open-air street marts, ideal for the LA climate, create a direct connection between growers and vendors and their customers.  So what’s it going to be, another Coke or some fresh fruit picked this morning?  Now that’s something we can all call the real thing.

Joel Epstein is a Westside resident, Metro customer, and strategic communications consultant focused on transportation and other critical urban issues.  Visit joelepstein.com to learn more.

One slide from TransForm's Stuart Cohen's presentation yesterday. You can download the entire presentation here.

Streetsblog readers are likely at least somewhat familiar with many of the  connections between health and transportation; conference speakers explored those connections, with an emphasis on their impacts on underserved communities of color. This equity/transportation/health dialog was then tied into calls for action on local, state and federal campaigns.

After an introduction from CPEHN’s Ruben Cantu, speakers got underway with a presentation from TransForm‘s Stuart Cohen. TransForm is the kind of San Francisco Bay Area group that Los Angeles’ livability advocates should be jealous of - and should emulate. TransForm advocates for transit, walking, biking – focusing from local to regional to statewide. Cohen outlined trasportation/health connections, including somewhat familiar statistics: rising rates of obesity nationwide, declining rates of walking and biking to school. And some not as familiar: inadequate transit as a healthcare access issue (folks miss their clinic appointments when it’s difficult to walk or take transit to get there – more info here.)

Cohen expressed optimism over current initiatives from the Great Communities Collaborative to SB375 (CA’s greenhouse gas legislation), but stressed that strong coalitions, centered on health and equity, will be critical to success. Cohen also stressed that respected health professionals can be key in selling livability: when an environmentalist testifies about greenhouse gases, it’s generally not as effective as when a physician or nurse testifies about childhood obesity.

Next was a “panel of fierce women” (Ohland’s description) featuring Los Angeles based efforts toward transportation, equity and health – all of which have been covered at L.A. Streetsblog. Panelists included:

• Allison Mannos of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition – presenting on multiple bike advocacy campaigns, emphasizing the coalition’s innovative award-winning City of Lights program that organizes immigrant day-laborer cyclists, and how that program dovetailed with campaigns for planning and prioritizing bike facilities in Los Angeles’ immigrant neighborhoods.
• SunYoung Yang of the Bus Riders Union – presenting on BRU’s organizing successes in preserving and enhancing Metro clean-fuel bus service, and further campaigns for Bus-Only Lanes, Clean Air, and Climate Justice.
• Jocelyn Vivar Ramirez of East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (and the L.A. Streetsblog board of directors) – presenting on EYCEJ’s coalition and community organizing work to combat the community impacts from international goods movement: from port pollution to 710 Freeway expansion to unsafe eastside streets.
• Gloria Ohland of Move L.A. (and occasional L.A. Streetsblog writer) – presenting on Move L.A.’s support of bus and rail and complete streets and complete neighborhoods.

A fierce panel: Ohland, Vivar-Ramirez, Mannos and Yang. Photo: Joe Linton

Break-out sessions followed, with a focus on how health, equity and transportation issues can inform legislative campaigns, including these current State Assembly bills:

• AB 441 (ensuring that health and equity are part of planning developent decisions)
• AB516 (ensuring state Safe Routes to School grants prioritize disadvantaged communities)

Conference details, including presentations, are available on-line at the CPEHN website.

(Note: this post also appears at Reporting On Health. – DN)

In the summer of 2008, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health awarded five Policies for Livable, Active Communities and Environments (PLACE) grants to communities throughout Los Angeles County.  The goal of the PLACE Grants is to change the character of the community plans to encourage more walking, bicycling and active lifestyles.  The grant program is the first attempt to try and link transportation policy and the creation of healthy communities that support active lifestyles with the public health of the community’s residents.

Many of the changes to Long Beach's streets are a result of the PLACE Grants. Photo: Russ Roca Photography

As part of a California Endowment Health Journalism Mini-Fellowship , I’ll be looking at the five communities that were awarded PLACE Grants to see how their programs are proceeding and how the communities have changed as a result of the grants.  In some cases, Streetsblog has already covered part a portion of the PLACE program in the community, and in other places we’ll be giving the communities a first look.  Each PLACE Grantee is expected to create progressive updates to their Master Plans or other planning documents, bring about some sort of physical change and program promotional events designed to encourage more active lifestyles.

In each case, our coverage will include a site visit, Streetsblog articles and a mini-series of audio and visual interviews.  The video won’t rise to the level of a Streetfilm, but will allow participants to speak in their own words with their own voice about how the PLACE program is proceeding.

The easiest of the PLACE Grants for Streetsblog to cover will probably be the City of Long Beach’s Vision Plan.  The ultimate goal of the plan is to change The International City in to the “Most Bike Friendly City in America.”  Streetsblog has already provided some coverage of the exciting changes occurring in Long Beach, including stories by myself, Drew Reed and Joe Linton.  As a matter of fact, Linton will publish a story on Long Beach’s new separated bike lanes later this week.

For the purposes of our grant, we’ll be looking beyond the interesting and fun infrastructure improvements in Long Beach to examine whether they’re actually making a difference in the overall public health of the city.

While the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition was the recipient of the PLACE Grant, it’s the City of Glendale that will reap the rewards from the work of Grant Coordinator/LACBC staff member Colin Bogart in creating and promoting the Glendale Safe and Healthy Streets Plan.  While Glendale hasn’t seen the dramatic changes that Long Beach has, Bogart and City staff have programmed a series of events to encourage residents to explore their city outside and move around the city without their cars.  Meanwhile, the Bike Master Plan that was partially funded by the PLACE Grant will be voted on by the City Council on April 28.

Culver City received a grant to create the “Culver City Bicycle and Pedestrian Initiative.”  The goals of the initiative are to create a city where residents, workers, businesses, schools/colleges, transit systems are interconnected, for residents of all ages to walk and bicycle safely and comfortably in their community and  to make walking, bicycling, and transit everyday modes of transportation.  The PLACE Grant funded the creation of the first Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan for Culver City.  While the City completed an exhaustive public outreach for the Master Plan, parts of the bike portion of the plan proved too controversial for some residents and politicians who tried to remove some of the more progressive parts of the plan. The Council vote on rescinding a portion of the Master Plan was scheduled for late March, but has been postponed until further notice.

Upgrading signage along the Arceo Walk is one change that's made El Monte a more inviting place to be outside.

The City of El Monte used their PLACE funds to undertake changes to their general plan designed to promote healthy, active lifestyles.  El Monte is focusing both on encouraging healthy eating as well as active living.  The changes to the general plan include creation of “complete streets” policies as well as new policies to encourage schools to use their open space to get children outside when class isn’t in session.  As for physical changes, the City recently upgraded the signage and quality of its signature walking trail.

The last grantee we’ll be covering is Pacoima Beautiful.  PB is a non-profit community-based organization dedicated to environmental health and justice, the mission of which is to empower community members through programs that provide environmental education, advocacy, and local leadership in order to foster a healthy and safe environment.  PB and its partners are developing a vision plan for the section of the Pacoima Wash (a tributary to the Tujunga Wash which is in turn tributary to the Los Angeles River) located within Los Angeles city limits, in the communities of Pacoima and Sylmar.  One of the main goals of the project is to create a series of greenways along the wash to provide places for residents and families to play (or just be) outside.

Each of these grants are different from the others in many ways and it will be a new challenge for Streetsblog to cover them.  In the cases of Pacoima and El Monte, Streetsblog has never actually reported on the communities meaning we’ll have to learn on our feet as our coverage of the PLACE Grants continues.  If anyone has any suggestions on things we should be looking for as we begin our summer series, please leave a comment below or drop me an email at damien@streetsblog.org.

Does transportation have an impact on public health? What do you think? Photo: Wikimedia

(The following article is by Ruben Cantu, the program director for the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network.  This month, they’re holding a series of community convenings throughout California to discuss the public health impacts of our transportation decisions on our communities.  Los Angeles’ convening will be at the California Endowment Building one week from today from 10 A.M. to 2 P.M.  To register, click here. – DN)

From the air that we breathe to getting to school safely, the ways we move around impact our health and the wellbeing of our communities. That’s why the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network is hosting a series of regional community convenings, The Road to Health: Improving Community Wellbeing Through Transportation, to address the many ways that transportation impacts us.

A statewide health advocacy organization, CPEHN’s mission is to eliminate health disparities by advocating for public policies and sufficient resources to address the health needs of communities of color. While many know us for our work on ensuring access to affordable, quality care and fighting budget cuts, our fight has increasingly moved toward addressing the environmental and social factors that impact our everyday lives. As we canvassed community stakeholders about the issues on which we should focus, transportation rose to the surface.

We know there are many benefits to healthy transportation planning. Safe streets for pedestrians and bicyclists encourage a more active lifestyle for residents of all ages. Quality transit increases access to parks, healthy food, and other neighborhood services. The right focus in planning can help reduce the number of injuries and fatalities from collisions. All of these are reasons for us to get involved in local planning efforts.

Join us on April 27 for The Road to Health, held at the California Endowment at 1000 N. Alameda from 10 am to 2 pm, the event promises to provide insight into how to we can work together to build healthier, more robust neighborhoods. We’ll feature a presentation from TransForm, a leading transportation advocacy organization, and a panel of local advocates, including the LA Bus Riders Union, the LA County Bicycle Coalition, and East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, who will share their efforts to ensure cleaner air, safer streets, and access to public transport. We’ll also talk about opportunities for you to be involved in local, statewide, and federal efforts to influence transportation policy and planning, including a CPEHN-sponsored bill, AB 441 (Monning) , which would incorporate health and equity considerations in state general plan and regional transportation plan guidance.