Report finds reduction of Chicago’s “food desert” between 2006 and 2009
July 13, 2009 at 9:07 pm | Posted in food deserts, grocery stores, health, neighborhoods, organizational density, poverty, what to read | Leave a commentThe Mari Gallagher Research and Consulting Group has released a follow-up of its 2006 report on “food deserts”—areas deprived of grocery stores selling high quality foods—in Chicago. The researchers find that, on average, the total Chicago food desert became smaller by 1.4 square miles. However, the change was uneven, and in some neighborhoods conditions worsened. The study finds that most neighborhoods deprived of quality grocery stores are located on the West and South sides.
Mario Small publishes book on networks of mothers in urban childcare centers
June 5, 2009 at 12:26 am | Posted in barbershops, beauty salons, childcare centers, churches, grocery stores, neighborhoods, new books, organizational networks, poverty, social capital, what to read | Leave a comment
Mario Small has published a new book, Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everday Life. From the book description: Social capital theorists have shown that some people do better than others in part because they enjoy larger, more supportive, or otherwise more useful networks. But why do some people have better networks than others? Unanticipated Gains argues that the answer lies less in people’s deliberate “networking” than in the institutional conditions of the churches, colleges, firms, gyms, childcare centers, schools, and other organizations in which they happen to participate routinely. The book illustrates and develops this argument by exploring the experiences of New York City mothers whose children were enrolled in childcare centers. Relying on scores of in-depth interviews with mothers, quantitative data on both mothers and centers, and detailed case studies of other routine organizations (from beauty salons and bath houses to colleges and churches), Unanticiapted Gains shows that how much people gain from their connections depends substantially on institutional conditions they often do not control, and through everyday process they may not even be aware of. Click here for more information and an excerpt.
Joe Galaskiewicz receives NSF funding to study Phoenix organizations and their impact on the urban community
May 21, 2009 at 7:34 pm | Posted in amenities, barbershops, beauty salons, churches, grocery stores, neighborhoods, news, non-profits, organizational density, organizational networks, social service agencies, supermarkets | Leave a comment
Joe Galaskiewicz at the University of Arizona recently received $162,274 from
the National Science Foundation to fund his project, “Organizations and their
Impact on the Urban Community.” This funding helps Joe continue his research on
the distribution of organizational resources across the Phoenix metropolitan
area, their effect on what children do in the free time on the weekends, and
how organizations migrate across the metropolitan community in response to
demographic shifts, changes in zoning laws, and competition among
organizational providers. The research looks at a broad range of
establishments that serve community residents including parks, recreation
centers, churches, retail outlets, restaurants, bowling and fitness centers,
barber shops, department stores, malls, theatres, and many, many more local
establishments. For some of Joe’s preliminary results, go to:
http://www.childresearch.net/RESOURCE/RESEARCH/2007/GALASKIEWICZ.HTM
New paper: Availability of healthy foods may decrease hypertension
March 28, 2009 at 8:28 am | Posted in amenities, food deserts, grocery stores, health, hypertension, neighborhoods, supermarkets | Leave a comment“Neighborhood Characteristics and Hypertension,” authored by Mahasin Mujahid and others, was recently published in Epidemiology. From the abstract: The goal of this study was to investigate cross-sectional associations between features of neighborhoods and hypertension and to examine the sensitivity of results to various methods of estimating neighborhood conditions. We used data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis on 2612 individuals 45-85 years of age…. Neighborhood (census tract) conditions potentially related to hypertension (walking environment, availability of healthy foods, safety, social cohesion) were measured using information from a separate phone survey conducted in the study neighborhoods…. Residents of neighborhoods with better walkability, availability of healthy foods, greater safety, and more social cohesion were less likely to be hypertensive.
New book by Martin Sanzchez-Jankowski
August 9, 2008 at 2:47 am | Posted in barbershops, beauty salons, gangs, grocery stores, neighborhoods, new books, what to read | Leave a comment
Cracks in the Pavement: Social Change and Resilience in Poor Neighborhoods (University of California Press), based on nearly a decade of fieldwork in New York and Los Angeles, examines how several types of local organizations—the grocery store, the barbershop and beauty salon, the local high school, the gang, and the housing project—structure order and stability in urban neighborhoods.
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