Stand Together Or Starve Alone

The United States-one of the world's wealthiest and resource-richest nations-has multiple food-related problems: declining food quality due to industrialization of its production, obesity across all age groups, and a surprisingly large number of households suffering from food insecurity. These issues threaten to shorten the lives of many and significantly reduce the quality of life for millions of others. This book explores the root causes of food-related problems in the 20th and 21st centuries and explains why collective impact-the social form of working together for a common goal-needs to be employed to reach a successful resolution to hunger, obesity, and the challenges of the industrial food system. Authored by Mark Winne, a 45-year food activist, the book begins with background information about the evolution of the U.S. food movement since the 1960s that documents its incredible growth and variety of interests, organizations, and sectors. The subsequent sections demonstrate how these divergent interests have created a lack of unity and deterred real change and improvement. Through examples from specific cities and states as well as a discussion of group dynamics and coalition-building methods, readers come away with an understanding of a complicated topic and grasp the potential of a number of strategies for creating more cohesion within the food movement-and realizing meaningful improvements in our food system for current and future generations.

We face two global threats: the climate crisis and a crisis of democracy. Located at the crux of these crises, sustainable cities build on the foundations and resources of democracy to make our increasingly urban world more resilient and just. Sustainable Cities in American Democracy focuses on this effort as it emerged and developed over the past decades in the institutional field of sustainable cities—a vital response to environmental degradation and climate change that is shaped by civic and democratic action. Carmen Sirianni shows how various kinds of civic associations and grassroots mobilizing figure in this story, especially as they began to explicitly link conservation to the future of our democracy and then develop sustainable cities as a democratic project. These organizations are national, local, or multitiered, from the League of Women Voters to the Natural Resources Defense Council to bicycle and watershed associations. Some challenge city government agencies contentiously, while others seek collaboration; many do both at some point. Sirianni uses a range of analytic approaches—from scholarly disciplines, policy design, urban governance, social movements, democratic theory, public administration, and planning—to understand how such diverse civic and professional associations have come to be both an ecology of organizations and a systemic and coherent project. The institutional field of sustainable cities has emerged with some core democratic norms and civic practices but also with many tensions and trade-offs that must be crafted and revised strategically in the face of new opportunities and persistent shortfalls. Sirianni’s account draws ambitious yet pragmatic and hopeful lessons for a “Civic Green New Deal”—a policy design for building sustainable and resilient cities on much more robust foundations in the decades ahead while also addressing democratic deficits in our polarized political culture.

Touching on everything from farm-based breweries and distilleries to urban hoop house farms to grass-fed beef, The Chesapeake Table celebrates the people working hard to put great local food on our plates.

An in-depth look at Black food and the challenges it faces today For Black Americans, the food system is broken. When it comes to nutrition, Black consumers experience an unjust and inequitable distribution of resources. Black Food Matters examines these issues through in-depth essays that analyze how Blackness is contested through food, differing ideas of what makes our sustenance “healthy,” and Black individuals’ own beliefs about what their cuisine should be. Primarily written by nonwhite scholars, and framed through a focus on Black agency instead of deprivation, the essays here showcase Black communities fighting for the survival of their food culture. The book takes readers into the real world of Black sustenance, examining animal husbandry practices in South Carolina, the work done by the Black Panthers to ensure food equality, and Black women who are pioneering urban agriculture. These essays also explore individual and community values, the influence of history, and the ongoing struggle to meet needs and affirm Black life. A comprehensive look at Black food culture and the various forms of violence that threaten the future of this cuisine, Black Food Matters centers Blackness in a field that has too often framed Black issues through a white-centric lens, offering new ways to think about access, privilege, equity, and justice. Contributors: Adam Bledsoe, U of Minnesota; Billy Hall; Analena Hope Hassberg, California State Polytechnic U, Pomona; Yuson Jung, Wayne State U; Kimberly Kasper, Rhodes College; Tyler McCreary, Florida State U; Andrew Newman, Wayne State U; Gillian Richards-Greaves, Coastal Carolina U; Monica M. White, U of Wisconsin–Madison; Brian Williams, Mississippi State U; Judith Williams, Florida International U; Psyche Williams-Forson, U of Maryland, College Park; Willie J. Wright, Rutgers U.

The Routledge Handbook of Urban Food Governance is the first collection to reflect on and compile the currently dispersed histories, concepts and practices involved in the increasingly popular field of urban food governance. Unpacking the power of urban food governance and its capacity to affect lives through the transformation of cities and the global food system, the Handbook is structured into five parts. The first part focuses on histories of urban food governance to trace the historical roots of current dynamics and provide an impetus for the critical lens on urban food governance threaded through the Handbook. The second part presents a broad overview of the different frames, theories and concepts that have informed urban food governance scholarship. Drawing on the previous parts, part three engages with the practice of urban food governance by analysing plans, policies and programmes implemented in different contexts. Part four presents current knowledge on how urban food governance involves different agencies that operate across scales and sectors. The final part asks key figures in this field what the future holds for urban food governance in the midst of pressing societal and environmental challenges. Containing chapters written by emerging and established scholars, as well as practitioners, the Handbook provides a state of the art, global and diverse examination of the role of cities in delivering sustainable and secure food outcomes, as well as providing refreshed theoretical and practical tools to understand and transform urban food governance to enact more sustainable and just futures. The Routledge Handbook of Urban Food Governance will be essential reading for students, scholars, practitioners and policymakers interested in food governance, urban studies, sustainable food and agriculture, and sustainable living more broadly.

George Hunt spent more than fifty years as a community planner and landscape architect. This included hands-on work in impoverished and low-income areas which helped him understand the dynamics that hold us back from achieving self-sufficiency. In this book, he outlines a sustainable community project that seeks to solve social problems that most community planners overlook. The pilot project includes numerous ways to make communities self-sufficient, and while it’s geared for those in middle- and lower-income brackets, anyone can use its concepts. He explains how multiple-purpose buildings can be used to house a diversity of people, ways to launch a business within the community by collaborating and sharing with others, how to obtain a vocational work/study program offered on site, and more. The book is also a reference manual on transition community design, creating a purpose, the meaning of happiness, sustainable agricultural practices, how to live without stuff, and how to reduce anxiety and depression.

Only one thing stands between Detective Veronika Heydrich and her coveted promotion: uncovering the truth behind the King Of The Hoboes, a man who prides himself on helping the homeless people of New York. Convinced he is more dangerous than helpful, Veronika goes undercover and learns first hand of the trials and tribulations the poverty-stricken must endure - and of the mysterious past of the King himself. It is up to Veronika to save the innocent homeless of New York, and protect the city itself. But can she discover the truth about the enigmatic King, while saving the people she has come to know and love as her own?