Transplanting a Seattleite

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/34/32/dtg_bridgeparkdealmain_2011_08_12_bk.html

I could say oh, so very, very much. After all, there's the I-was-a-JW-and-much-of-my-family-still-is angle. There's the print-on-paper-is-dying angle. There's the development angle.

And there's that whole alternate universe thing, in which, what if D. had convinced the WTBTS to take her on to help out with automation back in the late 80s? Would she still have developed health problems? Would it have led to a qualitatively different sort of crisis? Would she still have gotten married? Odds on, if that had worked out, I would never have come out to visit as a high school graduation present and seen DC for the first time, which means I would have been that much less likely to return to DC with cousins over a decade later, and certainly wouldn't have appreciated the difference that time made in the nature of the city. If she had gone to work for HQ and they had treated her well, would it have impacted my attitude towards the religion and perhaps stuck it out for longer? This is probably all just an artifact of a total loss of concentration.

Wondering where they are going to?

http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110825/NEWS/108250327/-1/SITEMAP

Apparently, Warwick, NY.

ETA: Above, I say "There's the print-on-paper-is-dying angle". I was sort of kidding. I shouldn't have been.

http://www.jw.org/

Front page is downloadable, multiple format magazines, yearbook, publications, etc. Geez.

Obviously, one thinks instantly of Oakland, but SF is part of the discussion as well.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-urban-farming-20110731,0,7597562.story

In order to sell what you grow in the city, SF was requiring an expensive permit. Meat animals were controversial, so they created a lightweight permit for small producers excluding meat animals. Oakland is in process and is trying to include meat animals.

I _loved_ Novella Carpenter's _Farm City_. I believe a healthy urban area includes food production. In the past, that was at the periphery, but our urban areas are a mostly low density environment in which it makes no sense to go all the way out to the periphery (which is currently often still very expensive residential anyway) when there is inexpensive arable land closer in. I sympathize with the controversy associated with slaughtering animals (especially in SF!), but I also think that we've industrialized meat production to the point that a swing back in the other direction makes a lot of sense.

ETA: And Chicago:

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-07-27/news/ct-met-urban-farming-20110727_1_urban-agriculture-urban-farmers-urban-gardening

They're including aquaponics (fish + agriculture).

http://www.examiner.com/city-hall-in-chicago/green-jobs-will-come-from-urban-farming

Emanuel is presenting it as a potential job creator and a way to deal with "food deserts". I'm not sure what to think of an article that starts with urban farms and ends with Wal-Mart.

ETAYA: And San Diego

In this case, the focus is food deserts, immigrants and childhood obesity. The farmer's market and urban farm are being developed together, and integrated with federal assistance (WIC and food stamps) through a local token currency.

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/jul/27/urban-farms-try-feed-inner-city/

Not just in the US: Berlin

Here, aquaponics on rooftops (including commercial rooftops).

http://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/news_europe/2011-07-26/berlin-embraces-rooftop-farming.html

New operation, presented as a low-intensity, healthy, rewarding hobby.

British Columbia (the idea that you need a permit to farm in the Nanaimo area seems, um, really wrong): http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/07/19/bc-lantzville-urban-farm-becker.html

In this case, farming on a residential plot in conjunction with a farmer's market and social activism. For Canadians, a decent chunk of excitement.

Still more: Minneapolis, as one might expect, recently passed a framework (they didn't call it that) for writing regulations for urban farming, but even they weren't prepared for a commercial egg raising operation next to a bike path and light rail.

http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2011/07/29/chickens-move-minneapolis

The chickens moved when the local kids were a little too aggressive about getting into the coop, stealing eggs and throwing them at cars. (There's a solid reason for having onsite caretakers of commercial food raising operations, especially in high-traffic areas. Urban farm stories _always_ involve strategies for dealing with people wandering in and taking things.)

"Growing Lots has been converting industrial spaces, such as the parking lot next to Coastal Seafoods, into sustainable commercial farms since April 2010."

Here's some profoundly misguided commentary on urban farming:

http://articles.boston.com/2011-06-16/bostonglobe/29666344_1_greenhouse-gas-carbon-emissions-local-food

Hey, we're _already_ low density. The idea is to actually _use_ the garbage strewn lots for something other than just sitting there waiting for the next boom. No one is proposing to stop "higher" use development to preserve an urban far much less create one. The goal is to covert nothing to something.

Trust a Harvard guy to pick on a black woman for supporting a reasonable activity (growing vegetables in empty spaces in city neighborhoods that have no access to healthy foods) by suggesting it is somehow inhibiting property developers from building high rises. Worse, the embedded assumption that we must ship either people or food is nuts. Okay, maybe not the best word.