GROUND HERE: COLLABORATIVE WORKS OF KEN MCCOWN
DESIGN AND RESEARCH: URBAN, TRANSITION AND ERGONOMIC/BEHAVIORAL
Below are draft page spreads from a sustainability atlas for Las Vegas. In this chapter, our team identified major issues related to resilience in the Las Vegas metropolitan area. The chapter begins with an analysis of food availability. The major issue related to food supply for the metro is its lack of closeness to farms. This lack of closeness to farms can impact prices, with increases to food prices disproportionately affecting people of lower incomes. People within the metro also can have limited access to quality foods, while having easy access to poor foods. We have identified where these areas are within the Valley.
Las Vegas shares in susceptibility to climate change with the rest of the United States. Several areas will be too hot and dry to be agriculturally productive in the projections about climate change.
This chapter of a sustainability atlas helps people frame what issues are related to food systems in Las Vegas, shows where problems might occur, and sets a platform for action to incite changes to how the food system operates in the Las Vegas metropolitan area. Thank you to Nasar Saghafi for his leadership on the chapter.
(click on all images to see them in a light box)
A diagram of how a food system works - note the complexity of the system!
Communicating food systems through most people’s interface with it - in the grocery. The small group of global corporate food providers can be seen primarily in the center of the building.
The corporate logistics network over top of the major agricultural growing areas of the United States. Corporations’ products correlate with the location of the source foods for their products.
The center of the supermarket, supplied by global corporations is what our team calls the ‘oof’ (Out of Foodshed). This food, coming from a national and international infrastructure, is not from the traditional definition of a foodshed.
Supported by our research; we extended the Las Vegas Foodshed to a two-hour radius to capture farms that do supply Las Vegas Valley residents with fresh food.
There are farms in the Valley as part of the foodshed; and many are direct suppliers to consumers.
After sources, we tell the story of accessibility to food in the Las Vegas Valley.
Food accessibility and Food Desert data can be ‘chainsaw’ data; we add in additional layers through local research to refine the food desert boundary.
After accessibility, we explore through correlation of data, if it is an issue. Are people hungry? Will they be able to get food outside of a food desert?
Non-profits and religious organizations are working effectively in zones of the city where people are poor and/or hungry.
How much food moves through this outreach, and how does it compare to other cities in the region?
Collecting all of the outreach and support against food desert, poverty and hunger. The outreach is geographically spot on in its location. Whether or not it is resilient is a question to pursue further.
Bus routes / stops and fast food franchises correlate exactly, potentially leading to ‘food swamps’ - areas where obesity and hunger/ poor nutrition coexist. This is an area that should be studied in more detail as a follow up to this report.
Moving scale to the larger food system to explore ‘meta' - issues related to energy and cost of food.
Climate change will affect the region, nation, and agricultural zones around the world with potentially devastating consequences. Relying on a metro’s ‘bioregion,’ in the face of this change, must be a priority.
Exploring historic, contemporary and future trends in food affordability and nutrition. Nutrition is a foundation for success; often student achievement correlates with nutrition, for example.
Shown on the right of the previous image, our team mapped the geography of shopping for different income groups, and evaluated their meals for nutrition. Each set of people fundamentally ate similar ingredients; quality moved upwards as income and breadth of ability to shop increased.
The following pages are a discussion and analysis of future solutions to make a more resilient food system in the Las Vegas Valley metro.
Several food hub studies were done by this team and appear elsewhere on the ‘groundhere’ site. More to come.
One area in Las Vegas is significant for composting, but since report has moved.